1. EDIT
  2. 6. Programming exercises
  3. 6.13 Questions about learners' code

Questions about learners' code

This chapter demonstrates how to use the questions about learners' code (QLC) feature to automatically generate questionnaires about details of the student's own solution to an exercise. If a followup QLC questionnaire has been configured, after getting full points in an exercise, the student will be presented with a generated questionnaire with questions about their own code.

QLC pre-requisite configuration

The initial setup to enable the system requires a couple of steps as described in https://github.com/apluslms/grader_qlc and https://github.com/apluslms/grader_qlc/tree/main/aplus_followups, but below are the steps summarised.

  1. Clone the grader_qlc repository anywhere on your machine:

    git clone https://github.com/apluslms/grader_qlc.git /tmp/grader_qlc

  2. Copy the aplus_followups directory from the repository to your exercise directory:

    cp -r /tmp/grader_qlc/aplus_followups <course-dir>/exercises/followups

  3. Copy the followups.js file to your static files:

    cp <course-dir>/exercises/followups/followups.js <course-dir>/_static/followups.js

  4. Add the following line to your course's HTML template, e.g. to <course-dir>/_templates/layout.html:

    <script src="{{ pathto('_static/followups.js', 1) }}" data-aplus></script>

This will enable you to use QLC followup exercises anywhere on the course.

Enabling QLC for an exercise

  1. In your exercise's yaml configuration file:

    • Use apluslms/grade-python:3.11-4.9-4.9u1 or newer as the grading image

    • Prefix your grading command with qlc_wrap, e.g. if your command is /exercise/run.sh, change it to qlc_wrap /exercise/run.sh

    • Add a qlc section:

      # ... other parts as before
container:
  # ... as instructed
qlc:
  cmd: ["qlcpy", "--json", "-un", "5", "submitted_file_name.py"]

      Further configuration options for the qlcpy command are listed here.

  2. In your chapter rst, include a followup section right after the exercise:

    Submit the programming assignment
---------------------------------
.. submit:: hello_world 75
  :config: exercises/hello_world/config.yaml

Follow up questions
-------------------
.. submit:: followup 15
  :ajax:
  :config: exercises/followups/config.yaml

Python example

Here is an example file you can submit for the exercise below:

from typing import List

def find_first(words_list: List[str], initial: str) -> int:
  f = False
  for i in range(len(words_list)):
    if words_list[i].startswith(initial):
      return i

def count_average() -> None:
  s = 0
  n = 0
  word = None
  while word is None or word != '':
    word = input('Enter number or empty line to count average')
    try:
      s += int(word)
      n += 1
    except ValueError:
      print('Not a number')
  if n > 0:
    print('Average', s / n)
  print('No numbers')

The exercise below has been configured to give full points on any (valid) python file to always generate the followup questinnaire.

A+ presents the exercise submission form here.

After getting full points from the exercise above, questions about the submitted code will be generated below. The followup exercise must be the next exercise in the chapter's material.

A+ presents the exercise submission form here.

Posting submission...