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Buttons in CDFs Created for Homework Assignments

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg128093] Buttons in CDFs Created for Homework Assignments
• From: Gregory Lypny <gregory.lypny at videotron.ca>
• Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2012 03:37:39 -0400 (EDT)
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Hello everyone,

I'm using CDF as the format for a series of undergraduate multiple-choice quizzes and graduate assignments that I am developing.  Both generate unique homework exercises for each student by drawing random samples from real-world data sets.  I have already used them successfully in an intermediate undergraduate theory course in financial economics.  But something came up yesterday when I was putting the finishing touches on a prototype for multiple-choice quizzes, and I suppose it should have occurred to me before I even started.  I included radio buttons for the answer choices to each question, knowing that free CDFs cannot export, but thinking that the answers chosen could be dynamically updated in a table, and students could then use the table to enter their answers into a web form for submission.  No problem with this as long as the quiz is completed all at once.  But students are not be able to come back to complete a quiz that they had started earlier because free CDFs c
 annot sa
 ve the interface state and do not allow importing (which, presumably, could be used to create a file to do the same thing).  All this being said, I was wondering if someone on the list might confirm, and perhaps suggest a workaround if one exists.  A volume license for Player Pro is not an option at my institution.

I think CDFs are neat, but the inability to save states, severely limits their usefulness for homework, and I am now wondering whether I might just as well use Mathematica to create a workflow to generate a unique PDF for each student instead of a CDF.  Even if a student does not print a PDF, they can always annotate them, and in that way, save their work.

I guess this is a shout-out to Wolfram to consider expanding the capabilities of free CDFs for these purposes.

Regards,

Gregory

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Buttons in CDFs Created for Homework Assignments
    • From: Murray Eisenberg <murray@math.umass.edu>