ProFormA Programming Question Type

Maintained by Karin Borm

Quiz question type for automatically graded programming questions. Questions can be created in Moodle or imported as ProFormA tasks (https://github.com/ProFormA/proformaxml). Plugin requires the qbehaviour_adaptiveexternalgrading plugin and ProFormA Praktomat (https://github.com/elearning-ostfalia/Proforma-Praktomat).

Free

Download for free

Supports Moodle 3.4-5.1 See all versions

Latest release: 2 months ago

Installations: 77

Downloads (last 90 days): 183

Frankenstyle name: qtype_proforma

Question types

The ProForma Moodle Question Type is a Moodle Plugin that is used for automatically grading programming questions in Moodle quizzes. Questions are internally stored in the ProFormA format (https://github.com/ProFormA/proformaxml).

In order to generate the submission grade a predefined testsuite is run on an external server (Praktomat).

Standard test frameworks are used for specifying tests. Currently the following programming languages and test frameworks are supported:

Java: JUnit 4, JUnit 5, Checkstyle
C++: GoogleTest (CMake/make)
c: CUnit, GoogleTest (CMake/make)
Python: Python Unittest, Python Doctest
Setlx: Test, Syntax Check

Any other programming language resp. test framework can be used as long as the Praktomat (or any ProFormA compatible other test runner used as back-end) supports it. Since all code is open source, it can be easily extended to other languages and frameworks.

The plugin comes with a built-in Java question editor so simple Java questions can be created directly in Moodle.

More complex questions must be created outside of the system with a stand-alone editor (https://proforma.github.io/formatEditor/proformaEditor.html) or by other means (e.g. script). These questions can be imported by use of another Moodle plugin.

Copyright note: The renderer code partly bases upon the renderer from essay question type (Moodle core).
Small code parts (in particular in qbehaviour_adaptiveexternalgrading) are copied from Coderunner
(https://moodle.org/plugins/qtype_coderunner).

Features

Various submission formats:
- editor with programming language support such as syntax highlighting or automatic indentation
- multi tab editor (explorer) for submission of more than one file
- file upload (for more than one file)
- external repository (version control system)
Code snippet as starting point for student
Immediate feedback for students (optional)
Supported programming languages are only limited by the available grader back-ends
Bulktest with model solution for administration purposes

Installation

The ProFormA question type also requires:

the Moodle plugin "qbehaviour_adaptiveexternalgrading" (https://moodle.org/plugins/qbehaviour_adaptiveexternalgrading) for question engine adaptation and
the ProFormA Praktomat to run the tests (https://github.com/elearning-ostfalia/Proforma-Praktomat).

Set the grader URI in qtype_prfoforma to match your Praktomat installation!

Optional plugins:

For importing questions from an external source you also need to install the ProFormA import plugin:

Moodle-Plugin qformat_proforma (https://moodle.org/plugins/qformat_proforma, import for ProFormA questions)

You can get a separate Javascript editor for creating tasks at https://github.com/ProFormA/formatEditor. An online version is available at https://proforma.github.io/formatEditor/proformaEditor.html. Of course ProFormA tasks can be created by different other external tools as well.

In order to download all students' submissions for e.g. checking for plagiats the plugins