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The STACK question library

STACK is distributed with a library of over 4200 questions.

  • Examples are tied to documentation and to demonstrate features.
  • Templates for particular types of problems, e.g. drag and drop Parsons proofs
  • Collections of questions for particular groups of students, e.g. engineering students.

Individual question files can be imported via the STACK library page.

  1. Create a new STACK question in your required question category.
  2. On the question edit form click on the 'STACK question library' link. You can then browse and import questions.

The question files are contained in the STACK source code under

 /qtype_stack/samplequestions/stacklibrary

This directory contains sub-directories with large libraries of questions, some of which arose from specific projects:

  • HELM provides comprehensive workbooks for engineering undergraduates. Question numbers are linked to the original workbooks.
  • Algebra-Refresher contains elementary algebra questions to cover all parts of the The Map of Algebraic Manipulation. Question numbers are linked to the map.
  • Calculus-Refresher contains questions to cover all of the Calculus Refresher by Dr Tony Croft and Dr Anthony Kay.
  • Introductory-Mathematics is a comprehensive course of mathematics questions for students at the upper level of school or the transition to university.
  • Topics contains questions on a variety of mathematical topics.

The following directories are linked to documentation and templates

  • Doc-Examples contains questions linked to documentation pages. These are not intended as exemplar questions! (They may be incomplete, and illustrate a starting point for an exercise for question authors to complete.) This is split by documentation section.
  • Features contains questions to illustrate the features of STACK such as different input types. These are intended as exemplar questions.
  • Templates contains questions which are templates for question authors to use. They should require a small amount of editing to make them into a complete tailored question.

A significant advantage of using questions from the STACK library is that they are distributed with the source code, and therefore use features which match your version of STACK. Consider using Gitsync to manage large question banks.

Import folders and quizzes

You can use the question library to import a whole folder of questions, or a quiz.

Some directories have quiz files which are stored as .json files in the directories. If you import this file then STACK will create a simple quiz. Which questions, the order in quiz, pagination, etc. are imported. Assessment policies such as behaviour (e.g. adaptive mode), due date, number of attempts and so on need to be set by hand.

HTML fragments

STACK questions in the library are incomplete .xml files, missing the following fields

  • Standard PRT feedback (e.g. "Correct answer, well done"
  • Decimal separator option

When imported STACK chooses the current system default.

Local site libraries

Additional libraries of STACK questions can be installed on your Moodle server. Once STACK is installed, there will be a stack/sitelibrary directory within the Moodle data directory. STACK will interpret each top-level subdirectory of stack/sitelibrary as a separate library and allow you to switch between them (and the STACK question library) using a dropdown on the library page displaying subdirectory names. Ask your server administrator to copy a library you wish to use into a suitably named subdirectory in stack/sitelibrary. After any update to an installed library, the Moodle MUC cache will need to be cleared.

Note, questions in stack/sitelibrary will be available to any teacher on this moodle site to import.

Moodle courses released with STACK

STACK is released with a demonstration course.

 /qtype_stack/samplequestions/STACK-demo.mbz

You can "restore" this into your version of Moodle. It has a number of quizzes, pre-created with questions and deployed variants. It also has a large question bank, with questions not arranged into quizzes.

Open Educational Resources

  • The FETLAR project released a large collection of STACK questions in English covering calculus and algebra in April 2010. These materials have been redeveloped are now part of the STACK library.
  • Abacus is a material bank for STEM education which seeks to produce, share and host high-quality educational material between collaborators. For more information see https://abacus.aalto.fi/