Auto-generate OLX (Open Learning XML) pages for ESaaS homeworks
This tool generates a homework assignment "module" in OLX (Open Learning XML) format that can then be imported into an OpenEdX course. Specifically, it creates a single Sequential with the necessary embedded elements, which can then be imported into a Chapter in an OpenEdX course. Explanations of these terms are in the Details section below.
Installing and running
Install the tool with gem install hw2olx.
The tool assumes that the homework's repo or directory follows the following conventions, which we established for homework assigments in the Engineering Software as a Service (ESaaS) MOOC:
Run the tool with hw2olx student-readme.md autograder-config.yml, where:
-
student-readme.mdis a student-facing Markdown file that serves as an assignment handout and embeds information about autograding, self-check questions, and so on as described below. In ESaaS, for a homework namedfoo, this file is found in the private repohw-foo-ci/README.md. -
autograder-config.ymlis a YAML file containing configuration information for the cloud-based Ruby autograder rag. In ESaaS, for a homeworkfoo, this file is usuallyhw-foo-ci/autograder/config.yml. If the homework does not rely on students submitting files to a cloud-based autograder, this config file need not be present and this argument can be omitted.
The output will be a directory studio/ containing the
various subdirectories and OLX objects needed to represent the
assignment in edX Studio.
Details: OpenEdX course elements
Each major unit in an OpenEdX course is called a chapter. In an
OpenEdX course, when you click Courseware, the chapters run down the
left-hand navbar.
A chapter is composed of sequential elements. When you click the
flippy triangle next to a chapter name, you'll see its sequentials.
A sequential, when clicked, reveals the horizontal nav ribbon. The homework assignment module generated by this tool corresponds to one sequential.
Each element in a sequential's horizontal nav ribbon is confusingly
called a vertical. (One vertical equals one page-render.) A vertical
contains one or more content elements such as HTML text, inline
multiple-choice questions, or forms for submitting to an external
autograder.
Given this structure, hw2olx processes the student-facing README as
follows (recall that Markdown files can also contain legal HTML5 markup):
-
Each toplevel heading (
<h1>-equivalent) becomes a vertical. -
Within a vertical (that is, between two
<h1>s):
** an element with <script language="ruql" data-display-name="Foobar"> is passed
to the RuQL edXML generator and the results are packaged as an OLX
<problem> element whose student-visible title will be the value of the
data-display-name attribute.
** an element with <div class="autograder" data-display-name="Foobar"> will emit
a <problem> element that submits to an external autograder. This
requires the presence of the file autograder/config.yml as part of the
homework; see below.
** any markup not enclosed in one of the above <div> types is collected
into an <html> static page element.
The result will be a studio/ directory containing subdirectories
sequential, problem, vertical, html. Copy the contents of each
of these subdirectories into the corresponding subdirectories in a
course exported from Studio. There will be a single Sequential so a
single new module in your left-hand navbar.