Parsons with choice logic

[Sean Fitzpatrick]

I somewhat recall that there is a way to make a "choose your own adventure" version of a Parsons problem.

In the Sample Book, I see most of the problems have an "Or" block, and looking at the source suggests that I can structure a block with 'choice' elements. But I don't see documentation for this in the guide:

https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/topic-interactive-exercises.html#parsons-problems

What I was interested in doing is a Parson's problem where there are two ways of solving a problem. An example might be integration by parts of a function like exp(3x)sin(4x). It doesn't matter if you initially choose u=exp(3x) or u=sin(4x), but once that choice is made, it determines what you do next.

Can a structure a Parson's problem so that there are two possible choices for each step, but the correct choice depends on what the previous steps were?

[Andrew Scholer]

Nope.

You can have choices for a given block where only one choice is correct. And you can have partial ordering on the blocks. But you can't mix the two ideas to create something like what you describe.

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[Sean Fitzpatrick]

Dang. But not surprising. 

What is the advantage of using "choice" versus just adding distractors? Just to give hints? 

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[Andrew Scholer]

I use them as less distracting distractors. I might want a student to think carefully about which loop logic to use, but also make it clear that only one of the options should get used. Especially if there are multiple blocks with choices, the number of possible permutations can get pretty intimidating and obscure the big picture logic I want the students to follow.

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