RMarkdown Format¶

Otter Assign is compatible with Otter’s R autograding system and currently supports Jupyter notebook and RMarkdown master documents. The format for using Otter Assign with R is very similar to the Python format with a few important differences.

Assignment Metadata¶

As with Python, Otter Assign for R also allows you to specify various assignment generation arguments in an assignment metadata code block.

```
BEGIN ASSIGNMENT
init_cell: false
export_cell: true
...
```

This block is removed from both output files. Any unspecified keys will keep their default values. For more information about many of these arguments, see Usage and Output. The YAML block below lists all configurations supported with Rmd files and their defaults. Any keys that appear in the Python or R Juptyer notebook sections but not below will be ignored when using Otter Assign with Rmd files.

requirements: requirements.txt # path to a requirements file for Gradescope; appended by default
overwrite_requirements: false  # whether to overwrite Otter's default requirements rather than appending
environment: environment.yml   # path to custom conda environment file
generate:                      # configurations for running Otter Generate; defaults to false
    points: null               # number of points to scale assignment to on Gradescope
    threshold: null            # a pass/fail threshold for the assignment on Gradescope
    show_stdout: false         # whether to show grading stdout to students once grades are published
    show_hidden: false         # whether to show hidden test results to students once grades are published
files: []                      # a list of file paths to include in the distribution directories

Autograded Questions¶

Here is an example question in an Otter Assign-formatted Rmd file:

**Question 1:** Find the radius of a circle that has a 90 deg. arc of length 2. Assign this
value to `ans.1`

```
BEGIN QUESTION
name: q1
manual: false
points:
    - 1
    - 1
```

```{r}
ans.1 <- 2 * 2 * pi * 2 / pi / pi / 2 # SOLUTION
```

```{r}
## Test ##
testthat::expect_true(ans.1 > 1)
testthat::expect_true(ans.1 < 2)
```

```{r}
## Hidden Test ##
tol = 1e-5
actual_answer = 1.27324
testthat::expect_true(ans.1 > actual_answer - tol)
testthat::expect_true(ans.1 < actual_answer + tol)
```

For code questions, a question is a some description markup, followed by a solution code blocks and zero or more test code blocks. The description must contain a code block (enclosed in triple backticks ```) that begins with BEGIN QUESTION on its own line, followed by YAML that defines metadata associated with the question.

The rest of the code block within the description cell must be YAML-formatted with the following f ields (in any order):

name (required) - a string identifier that is a legal file name (without an extension)
manual (optional) - a boolean (default false); whether to include the response cell in a PDF for manual grading
points (optional) - a number or list of numbers for the point values of each question. If a list of values, each case gets its corresponding value. If a single value, the number is divided by the number of cases so that a question with \(n\) cases has test cases worth \(\frac{\text{points}}{n}\) points.

As an example, the question metadata below indicates an autograded question q1 with 3 subparts worth 1, 2, and 1 points, resp.

```
BEGIN QUESTION
name: q1
points:
    - 1
    - 2
    - 1
```

Solution Removal¶

Solution cells contain code formatted in such a way that the assign parser replaces lines or portions of lines with prespecified prompts. The format for solution cells in Rmd files is the same as in Python and R Jupyter notebooks, described here. Otter Assign’s solution removal for prompts is compatible with normal strings in R, including assigning these to a dummy variable so that there is no undesired output below the cell:

# this is OK:
. = " # BEGIN PROMPT
some.var <- ...
" # END PROMPT

Test Cells¶

The test cells are any code cells following the solution cell that begin with the comment ## Test ## or ## Hidden Test ## (case insensitive). A Test is distributed to students so that they can validate their work. A Hidden Test is not distributed to students, but is used for scoring their work. When writing tests, each test cell maps to a single test case and should raise an error if the test fails. The removal behavior regarding questions with no solution provided holds for R notebooks.

## Test ##
testthat::expect_true(some_bool)

## Hidden Test ##
testthat::expect_equal(some_value, 1.04)

Manually Graded Questions¶

Otter Assign also supports manually-graded questions using a similar specification to the one described above. To indicate a manually-graded question, set manual: true in the question metadata. A manually-graded question is defined by three parts:

a question metadata
(optionally) a prompt
a solution

Manually-graded solution cells have two formats:

If the response is code (e.g. making a plot), they can be delimited by solution removal syntax as above.
If the response is markup, the the solution should be wrapped in special HTML comments (see below) to indicate removal in the sanitized version.

To delimit a markup solution to a manual question, wrap the solution in the HTML comments  and  on their own lines to indicate that the content in between should be removed.

<!-- BEGIN SOLUTION -->
solution goes here
<!-- END SOLUTION -->

To use a custom Markdown prompt, include a  block with a solution block, but add NO PROMPT inside the BEGIN SOLUTION comment:

<!-- BEGIN PROMPT -->
prompt goes here
<!-- END PROMPT -->

<!-- BEGIN SOLUTION NO PROMPT -->
solution goes here
<!-- END SOLUTION -->

If NO PROMPT is not indicate, Otter Assign automatically replaces the solution with a line containing _Type your answer here, replacing this text._.

An example of a manually-graded code question:

**Question 7:** Plot $f(x) = \cos e^x$ on $[0,10]$.

```
BEGIN QUESTION
name: q7
manual: true
```

```{r}
# BEGIN SOLUTION
x = seq(0, 10, 0.01)
y = cos(exp(x))
ggplot(data.frame(x, y), aes(x=x, y=y)) +
    geom_line()
# END SOLUTION
```

An example of a manually-graded written question (with no prompt):

**Question 5:** Simplify $\sum_{i=1}^n n$.

```
BEGIN QUESTION
name: q5
manual: true
```

<!-- BEGIN SOLUTION -->
$\frac{n(n+1)}{2}$
<!-- END SOLUTION -->

An example of a manuall-graded written question with a custom prompt:

**Question 6:** Fill in the blank.

```
BEGIN QUESTION
name: q6
manual: true
```

<!-- BEGIN PROMPT -->
The mitochonrida is the ___________ of the cell.
<!-- END PROMPT -->

<!-- BEGIN SOLUTION NO PROMPT -->
powerhouse
<!-- END SOLUTION -->

Otter-Grader documentation