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Free text input

At it's core, STACK provides input boxes into which students can type algebraic expressions. The "equivalence reasoning" input type extends this, allowing multi-line input but that's also limited to algebraic expressions. What's missing is the facility to type a complete mathematical argument.

The free-text input allows students to type a complete mathematical argument. By default:

  1. Students type unicode text. Text-formats give complete transparency over what the student types and are future-proof.
  2. Students use markdown for document structure and formatting.
  3. Students can include AsciiMath/Space Math for mathematics.
  4. Students optionally include LaTeX mathematics environments (using brackets \(...\), leaving $ for currency).

Sometimes, but not always, students may include calculations between {@...@}. Rather than reaching for an external calculator, the software will replace the requested calculation with the answer.

This can be used with semi-automatic marking. Or, (algebraic) expressions can be extracted and used in standard STACK inputs for automatic marking.

The processing and display of free text inputs is rather flexible and is controlled by the [[ascii]] block.

The default is for students to use unicode text in markdown format, extended by AsciiMath.

An example question which uses regular expressions for assessment is 

Doc-Examples/Specialist-Tools-Docs/Free-text-input/Free-text_with_regex.xml

Help for students

Built-in help for students can be provided with either

[[facts:free_text]]

or

[[hint title="Input help"]][[commonstring key="free_text_fact"/]][[/hint]]

Help with how to embed calculations can be given by [[commonstring key="free_text_calc"/]] (Since teachers can't type {@...@} into the question text without it being treated as castext, [[commonstring key="free_text_calc_min"/]] is just {@...@}.)

There is also documentation for students.

CSS Style

The free-text input and [[ascii]] block can be contained in the <div class="free-text-container"> so they appear side by side.