Publishing PTX questions to Brightspace CSV or IMS QTI

[Matthew Leingang]

Hi gang,

I'd like to be able to write quizzes in PreTeXt and import them into Brightspace, the LMS in use at my place of work.

There are two formats for importing questions into Brightspace: a CSV file, and something called an IMS QTI package. The first format seems to be designed to be authored by humans, while the second seems to be some universal format for transferring content between LMSs. Here's a web page from D2L describing the first format.

I searched, and there doesn't seem to be an existing workflow in PreTeXt for these. How hard would it be to build it? I'm happy to help where I can.

Best,

Matthew

--

Matthew Leingang (he/his)
Clinical Professor of Mathematics
Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies

Department of Mathematics
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
New York University

212.998.3107

Schedule an appointment with me at https://calendly.com/leingang

[Charilaos Skiadas]

Hopefully someone will correct me, but:

1. It may be simpler to generate QTI as that is essentially XML and is more of a standard that can work across multiple LMSs. I think it would boil down to working through a guide like https://www.imsglobal.org/question/qtiv2p1/imsqti_implv2p1.html to understand what needs to be produced, then figuring out how to use our existing XSLT infrastructure to produce the appropriate results.

2. One of the challenges in a generic solution is that PreTeXt supports a number of exercise formats that might not be shared directly via QTI, for example coding problems with automated testing in various languages. So designing a generic tool would present some challenges on that front.

3. A possibly simple solution to your overall problem, and what we are working towards for our particular exercise sets at Hanover, is to have your PreTeXt resources published via Runestone (either your own Runestone server, or at Runestone Academy if that is suitable), and then set up LTI integration between Runestone and your LMS. This means students would be going to Runestone for work on the problems, but you would be able to link things back to your LMS.

Charilaos Skiadas
Department of Mathematics
Hanover College

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[Rob Beezer]

Does Brightspace support SCORM? Oscar has got that support working Canvas. I'm sure he will say more.

On August 4, 2025 9:20:51 AM PDT, Charilaos Skiadas <cski...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Hopefully someone will correct me, but:
>
>1. It may be simpler to generate QTI as that is essentially XML and is more of a standard that can work across multiple LMSs. I think it would boil down to working through a guide like https://www.imsglobal.org/question/qtiv2p1/imsqti_implv2p1.html to understand what needs to be produced, then figuring out how to use our existing XSLT infrastructure to produce the appropriate results.
>2. One of the challenges in a generic solution is that PreTeXt supports a number of exercise formats that might not be shared directly via QTI, for example coding problems with automated testing in various languages. So designing a generic tool would present some challenges on that front.
>3. A possibly simple solution to your overall problem, and what we are working towards for our particular exercise sets at Hanover, is to have your PreTeXt resources published via Runestone (either your own Runestone server, or at Runestone Academy if that is suitable), and then set up LTI integration between Runestone and your LMS. This means students would be going to Runestone for work on the problems, but you would be able to link things back to your LMS.
>
>Charilaos Skiadas
>Department of Mathematics
>Hanover College
>
>
>> On Aug 4, 2025, at 9:05 AM, Matthew Leingang <lein...@nyu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Hi gang,
>>
>> I'd like to be able to write quizzes in PreTeXt and import them into Brightspace, the LMS in use at my place of work.
>>

>> There are two formats for importing questions into Brightspace: a CSV file, and something called an IMS QTI package. The first format seems to be designed to be authored by humans, while the second seems to be some universal format for transferring content between LMSs. Here's a web page from D2L <https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/3411-import-questions-into-the-question-library> describing the first format.

>>
>> I searched, and there doesn't seem to be an existing workflow in PreTeXt for these. How hard would it be to build it? I'm happy to help where I can.
>>
>> Best,
>> Matthew
>>
>> --
>>
>> Matthew Leingang (he/his)
>> Clinical Professor of Mathematics
>> Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies
>>
>> Department of Mathematics
>> Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
>> New York University
>>

>> 212.998.3107 <tel:212.998.3107>

>>
>> Schedule an appointment with me at https://calendly.com/leingang
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PreTeXt support" group.

>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to pretext-suppo...@googlegroups.com <mailto:pretext-suppo...@googlegroups.com>.
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>

[Matthew Leingang]

Yes, Brightspace does support SCORM. I have successfully published PreTeXt documents without exercises as SCORM archives in Brightspace. I'm not sure how exercises are affected. 

Best,

Matthew

[Matthew Leingang]

Dear Charilaos,

1. I agree with you; I think IMS QTI is a more robust option than the CSV format which looks like it's pretending to be YAML

2. That makes sense. I imagine they can be converted to a less dynamic question type, or simply filtered out

3. This is a smart idea, but neither my university nor my department is willing to support it. So I'm trying to adapt to the resources we have available to us.

Best,

Matthew

[Rob Beezer]

OK, good that you have explored that option. I figured exercises could be a hangup.

Rob

>> >> 212.998.3107 <(212)%20998-3107> <tel:212.998.3107 <(212)%20998-3107>>

[Oscar Levin]

I have not had a chance to explore further, but with scorm you definitely can have exercises that are tracked and recorded by the LMS.  I think it will require some javascript that reports correctness to the LMS in some way.  It is definitely something I want to work on but keeps getting bumped down my list.  Maybe it should be at the top of my list and everyone's though; it seems like it could be the killer feature of PreTeXt if it works.

In the mean time, QTI from PreTeXt does sound promising now that there are the Runestone question types.  

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