Ximera determines all credit in percentages for everything. An assignment is associated to a ’xourse’ file (xourse here is a document class). Within the xourse file is a list of activities and practices, which represent the tiles that students see when they open the assignment (see ’making an assignment’ tile for more).

1 Credit for an assignment

Credit for an assignment is determined at the xourse level, where each tile (regardless of type or content) is equally weighted toward the percentage complete. So if you have 7 activities and 3 practice tiles, then each of those tiles is worth 10% of the credit for the overall assignment. This is good to keep in mind as you decide the content of each, since you want to be aware of how that impacts the weight of the content within the tile - although students rarely seem to put that level of thought into it themselves.

2 Credit for a specific tile

Like tiles at the assignment level, environments in a tile are what contribute to the progress. Somewhat unfortunately, the total progress of a given tile is broken up evenly at each breadth-first level for any environments.

For example, let’s say you have the following layout in an assignment:

            \begin{theorem}
 
                If $x$ is a real number, and $x=1$, then $x+x = 2$.
 
            \end{theorem}
 
            \begin{problem}
 
                In order to apply the theorem, $x$ must be (select all that apply):
 
                \begin{selectAll}
 
                    \choice{a variable}
 
                    \choice[correct]{a real number}
 
                    \choice{an arbitrary constant}
 
                    \choice[correct]{equal to 1}
 
                    \choice{Uh... what?}
 
                \end{selectAll}
 
                \begin{problem}% This opens when the previous problem is answered
 
                    What does the theorem conclude that $x+x$ equals?\\
 
                    $x + x = \answer{2}$
 
                \end{problem}
 
            \end{problem}
 

 
            \begin{explanation}
 
                We have the theorem given to us, and it has two parts, the ‘‘if’’ statement that sets the necessary hypotheses to apply the theorem, and the ‘‘then’’ statement which tells us the result.
 
            \end{explanation}
 

 
            \begin{question}
 
                How last are you?
 
                \begin{multipleChoice}
 
                    \choice[correct]{Very.}
 
                    \choice[correct]{Somewhat.}
 
                    \choice[correct]{Not sure.}
                                                                                                     
                                                                                                     
 
                    \choice[correct]{Not much.}
 
                    \choice[correct]{Not at all.}
 
                \end{multipleChoice}
 
            \end{question}
 
        

Each of the commands and environments above have their own sections in this guide, but for the sake of our current interest, we want to note that there are 4 top-level environments: a theorem, a problem environment (which contains another problem) an explanation environment, and a question environment. That means each of these is worth one quarter of the completion of the page. Moreover, the problem environment has a selectAll environment to finish and also a followup problem - which itself has an \answer box, so the answer box determines if the nested problem is flagged as complete, and then the completion of the nested problem and the selectAll environment determines the completion of the outer problem. This is confusing to write out, but consider the following breakdown (which should hopefully be clearer)

1:

Theorem Environment: Worth 25% contingent on completion

• No interactives, so automatically and immediately flagged as complete.

2:

Problem Environment: “In order to apply the theorem...” Worth 25% contingent on completion

1:

selectAll Environment Worth 50% of the Problem Environments Credit - contingent on completion

• Getting a “correct” flag gives completion.

2:

Problem Environment Worth 50% of the Problem Environments Credit - contingent on completion

• Getting a “correct” flag on the \answer box gives 100% of the nested problems credit for completion.

3:

Explanation Environment: Worth 25% contingent on completion

• No interactives, so automatically and immediately flagged as complete.

4:

Question Environment: “We have the theorem given to us...” Worth 25% contingent on completion

• Getting a “correct” flag gives completion.

In table form:

So, there are three things to notice here.

(a)

Environments that don’t have interactives (i.e. some kind of way for students to contribute or answer for grade validation) automatically give credit as soon as the page is loaded. This also means that a large portion of the tile’s credit could (theoretically) be given just for loading the page, without doing anything.

• This can actually be a good thing - it’s a bit of a morale booster, and in practice students typically really strive for perfect scores on these things since they have time to do it and want every fraction of a point they can get. So getting some credit for loading the page doesn’t seem to result in less effort spent on the page - and tends to make students feel better about their progress without actually changing the amount of progress or effort they expend.

(b)

The only things that can give credit are environments. This means, if you put some kind of interactive (like an answer box) just floating around in the middle of the page without it being in an environment, it won’t actually count toward credit for the tile - indeed, it may not even render or resolve correctly.

(c)

Arguably most importantly: since credit is split evenly at the top-level environment count only, problems with lots of nested problems, can end up with nested problems that are worth significantly less compared to a problem that has no nested problems. This can be reasonable or not depending on the problem design, but it is worth bearing in mind as you design the problems on your page.