Exercises with tasks in Runestone Assignment Builder

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Jennifer Nordstrom

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Jun 26, 2025, 1:09:17 PMJun 26
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If an exercise has tasks, only the tasks show up in the Runestone Assignment builder. Instructors need to add the tasks separately in an assignment and they do not include the introduction. At least the introduction should come with each task, but it would also be ideal if an instructor could just add the whole exercise so that the tasks are clearly grouped.

Rob Beezer

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Jun 26, 2025, 1:23:49 PMJun 26
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Thanks, Jen. The exercise/introduction should probably be duplicated into
each "task" as they are headed to Runestone, which happens via the "manifest".

We've done this before. I think when we had an #exercisegroup full of WeBWorK
#exercise. Since the problems become "standalone" WW exercises in an archive
full of WW exercises that we manufacture, and thus each needs a copy of the
overall introduction.

Not really sure how the encompassing #exercise (structured with #task) should
surface in the Runestone Assignment Builder.

Rob
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Jennifer Nordstrom

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Jun 27, 2025, 2:13:40 PMJun 27
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It seems like an exercise should also include "hints" in the assignment builder, but maybe that is hard since an exercise might have hidden hints and solutions. I could understand if it difficult to include only all or none. But it would be good for students to know they may need to check the book for "extras."

Sean Fitzpatrick

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Jun 27, 2025, 4:27:46 PMJun 27
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I believe (based on trying it in the past) that putting a label on the exercise enclosing the tasks doesn't move the exercise into the manifest, since the exercise itself doesn't contain graded components.

The one difference between this and a WeBWorK exercise group is that for an exercise group, you need the introduction to know what to do in each question, but the questions themselves are independent.

For an exercise structured with tasks, you might need to know what part (a) says in order to do part (b).

Maybe we still want to allow teachers to assign some (but not all) tasks in an exercise, but they might want to be aware of the potential for lost context if they do.


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Bradley Miller

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Jun 27, 2025, 4:51:51 PMJun 27
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All,

Runestone components have never had the notion of a multipart question, or a question composed of  several tasks.  I can almost imagine how we could implement such a thing, by creating a new type of component that was a list of other components, and for grading would roll up the scores on the individual components.  Maybe….  It would require a lot of runestone-manifest trickery.   Not at all sure how to make something like this fit into the assignment builder other than creating each task separately and then creating a new question that creates the list by referencing the already created tasks.



Brad

Rob Beezer

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Jun 27, 2025, 6:01:39 PMJun 27
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I know this is asking a lot of Runestone. You do know how to say "no", right? ;-)

It would not be hard to put *into* the manifest, in most any way you'd want it. I do see it requiring trickery to be *digested* from the manifest on the Runestone side.

Rob
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Bradley Miller

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Jun 29, 2025, 4:50:01 PMJun 29
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I definitely was not saying yes… I’ve got a lot of big projects ahead of something like that. But I wouldn’t turn down a PR I suppose.

I think adding hints and/or solutions might be a good request for the new assignment builder. Then we would probably want to figure out how to unify hints/solutions and make them look more integrated with all of the components, and log looking at hints or solutions...

That last sentence sent me down a rabbit hole! It looks like a lot of our knowl logging broke after the reimplementation with the details tag… , and nobody caught it.

Brad
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Chrissy Safranski

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Jun 29, 2025, 7:52:53 PMJun 29
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Even if it's not fully integrated as a single multi part exercise, can we still get the whole exercise to show up on the assignment page the way it does in the book in context? With its introduction and conclusion? I'm okay with each task counting separately towards the assignment in the meantime, but it's really not ideal that if a student is on the assignment page, all they see are tasks without the surrounding instructions, graphs, do function definitions, etc, that are commonly found in the introduction of a structured exercise.

In the short term, a "This is a single task of a larger problem. Please view this problem in context" alert would be better in the short term than the status quo. 

Chrissy

Sean Fitzpatrick

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Jun 30, 2025, 12:42:56 AMJun 30
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I think Chrissy's suggestion of a warning would save a lot of confusion for students.


Sean Fitzpatrick

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Aug 14, 2025, 4:39:20 PMAug 14
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I've just run into another situation where it would be helpful to be able to display the introduction:

I want to do some peer instruction exercises this year.
I wrote the questions into the book (since I think it makes sense to include them as part of the project), putting them all into a component.

Then I (a) build with that component included, which writes the problems into the database, and (b) rebuild with that component excluded, so that the questions aren't visible to students in the book.

This is fine. But I just realized that it was a mistake to author a problem with parts, because the introduction doesn't display, and in this case, there is no way to show the problem "in context".

I will rewrite these as separate problems, but tasks seemed like a natural structure. I had something like:

<exercise>
  <introduction>(some image and a bit of text)</introduction>
  <task>(first MC problem about the image)</task>
  <task>(second MC problem about the image)</task>
</exercise>

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