Structure of a OPL problem

Thoughts about a next gen OPL

This document will start to organize how we want a next generation of the OPL to look like. In short, the OPL will still just be a large set of pg problems, however if organized better, it will be easier to sift through problems we want.

Future Features

• better search capabilities

• Some code analyzing (which variables are used/not used, ...) -- AST (abstract ... .. ) stacker perl code tree structure

• An interface to evaluate problems

  • report bad problems
  • report bad coding
  • report bad subject/chapter/section tagging

Current Tags/Metadata for Problems

• Database subject tags
  • DBsubject
  • DBchapter
  • DBsection
• Date
• Authorship tags
  • Author
  • Institution
• Problem tags
  • MLT : More like this
  • Level : difficult
  • Keywords
  • MO
• Textbook tags
  • title
  • author
  • publish
  • pubdate
  • edition
  • chapter
  • problem number

New tags/metadata for Problems

• old directory tag (this will let people find old problems)
• status: (accepted, pending, needs revision, deprecated)
• can problem be solved by Wolfram Alpha?
• pedagogical features (scaffolding, free response, multiple choice, randomizable?, number of random problems, ...)
• what resources for the student (calculator, CAS)?
• what external dependencies (SAGE, R, ...)
• what other resources (non-standard macros, images, ...)
• Problem Quality
  • quality of problem rating (1-5 stars)
  • difficult rating

Tags/Metadata for a Collection/Set/Sequence

This is for collections (Problem sets, Homework Sets, Gateway Quizzes, ...) as a new data structure that is available to everyone.

• other information in it
• does set depend on previous set?
• other resources

Questions about the tag structure

• Which tags are mandatory?
• Which tags are optional?
• Which tags are unique?