TentaMaker

This Python package provides a system for building exams (tentor) at Chalmers.

Based on a pool of questions and solutions, the system generates exams both in the form of PDF files for printing and PNG files for inclusion in online exam systems such as Inspera or Canvas.

Documentation

First, install the package by the following command:

$ pip install tentamaker

Then, create a directory where you want to create and store the generated exams and enter the directory, for example:

$ mkdir exams
$ cd exams

Then, run the following command to create the initial structure for your exams:

$ init-exam

This will populate the current directory with a number of directories where the output will be stored. This will also create a directory named config containing the configuration of the exam.

To create an exam, you first need to build a pool of questions. Edit the file config/pool.tex to build the pool of questions. Each question should be entered in LaTeX in the following format

% X.y.z
Formulation of question.
% Answer
Solution to question.
%

See the file config/pool.tex for examples of how to write questions and solutions.

Each question has a label in the format X.y.z where X is a capital letter (A, B, C, ...) denoting which part of the exam that the question belongs to. The number y denotes the number of the question within the part X and the number z denotes a variant of the question. Each question can have many variants.

When generating exams, the last variant of each question is selected, unless the randomization option is set (see below).

The next step is to edit the configuration file conf/conf.toml to set the title of the course, the course code, name of examiner etc.

Once this is done, you may proceed to generate the exam by running the following command:

$ make-exam yyyy-mm-yy

Here, yyyy-mm-yy is the date of the exam. This will generate PDF files in the directory pdf and snapshots of the questions in the directory png.

The command make-exam supports a number of optional command-line arguments described below.

Add --randomize to randomize the selection of questions. The randomization uses the seed specified in conf/conf.toml. If the seed is missing, the seed will use a "non-deterministic" seed from the operating system.

Add --verbose to see more detailed output. This is useful for example if the process hangs at "Building PDF file..." to see what might have gone wrong when running LaTeX (pdflatex).

Add --no-snapshots to skip generation of PNG snapshots. This is useful during the creation of an exam (not creating PNG files until the exam is final).

Authors (in order of appearance)

• Anders Logg

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license.

Copyright is held by the individual authors as listed at the top of each source file.