Add Regular Expressions to Quizzes

[rwatkins]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Currently in quizzes, for fill-in-the-blank or short-answer questions, you have to come up with every possible phrase combinations to match what students might type that would be correct. Previous recommendations asked that the answer "contain" keywords rather than match.

I would like to see regular expressions, which have been in every major programming language since the 1950's and every LMS until Canvas. Regular expressions are also known as regex, pattern matching, and wildcards.

Here is a good example:

    Who was the major African-American civil rights leader of the 1960's assassinated in 1968?

The official answer is "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.", but what if they forget to put "Dr.", abbreviate Luther as "L.", or forget "Jr.". Is it wrong? How many permutations of the right answer could there be? Is punctuation included?

Using regex, the answer would be /.*Martin.*L.*King.*/i, meaning anything before Martin, must contain an L
between Martin and King, can contain anything after King, and "i" means case insensitive. If you use "g" with the "i", you
can apply multiple phrases across an entire document so you can check papers for content automatically.

Please add this to quizzes. Most programming languages (including JavaScript) accept this as a phrase or function.

This extends upon Allow fill-in-the-blank answers that can *contain* a term vs having to match a term  and Improve Regular Expression Tool (pattern matching).

Comments from Instructure

This idea was completed with general availability of Quizzes.Next.  You can find more information about the overall project in the Quizzes.Next User Group.‌

• Quizzes.Next is now available for all paid accounts.
• Quizzes.Next documentation will live in the Quizzes.Next User Group until July 14, 2018. On July 14, 2018, all of the documentation will be moved to the Canvas Guides in the Canvas Instructor Guide or Canvas Student Guide. 
• Quizzes.Next updates will be included in the Canvas Release Notes. This includes new features, updated features, and relevant fixed bugs. New and updated features will be deployed to Quizzes.Next near the same time as the Canvas release. Fixed bugs may be deployed at any time.

[Stef_retired]

 @hasti ‌, the spotlight search that appears at the top of every page allows the user to toggle to a directed search, as detailed in https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-1329 

[hasti]

Then I would suggest that every search field that shows up within a page of the Canvas guides be removed as it leads to a completely false impression of how to search.

Not to mention that clicking on the magnifying glass in the upper right corner initially does not give me any indication that the ability to restrict my search further will magically pop up once I start typing. This is extremely poor design - I should not have to read a whole user guide (or invest time into experimenting) to figure out how search works differently in this place than it does, say, in my web browser (Firefox), where it doesn't give me additional options for restricting my search just because I've started to type something.

[Renee_Carney]

This idea has been developed and is On Canvas Beta Quizzes LTI User Group 

This feature is now available through the new Quizzes LTI tool.  Find more information on the Quizzes LTI tool, and how to access it, at Quizzes LTI User Group 

The specific guide for this feature in the Quizzes LTI tool is How do I create a Fill in the Blank question in the Quizzes LTI? 

[Renee_Carney]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas 

This idea was completed with general availability of Quizzes.Next.  You can find more information about the overall project in the Quizzes.Next User Group.‌

• Quizzes.Next is now available for all paid accounts.
• Quizzes.Next documentation will live in the Quizzes.Next User Group until July 14, 2018. On July 14, 2018, all of the documentation will be moved to the Canvas Guides in the Canvas Instructor Guide or Canvas Student Guide. 
• Quizzes.Next updates will be included in the Canvas Release Notes. This includes new features, updated features, and relevant fixed bugs. New and updated features will be deployed to Quizzes.Next near the same time as the Canvas release. Fixed bugs may be deployed at any time.

[tpavlic]

Yet another feature that most of us won't be able to use because it is impossible to use Quizzes.Next at institutions that require the use of LockDown Browser/Monitor. 

Instructure needs to continue supporting and developing Quizzes as it is clear that Quizzes.Next won't be ready for real production for at least another year if not longer.

[gutow]

I would like to 2nd Ted Pavlic's comment above. It is quite clear as I have been migrating a large course from another LMS, that Quizzes.Next is essentially at the beta stage as it is missing key features (a preview that does not require publishing first, anyone?). Please port the regular expression code (again something that has been available in every real programming language and essentially all complete LMSs for a long time) to the more stable and functional legacy quiz tool.

I am not pleased that my organization is basically paying to test what appears to be at best beta to Release Candidate quality software. Everything has bugs, but Canvas is missing basic abilities! These missing quiz features are just the most important.

Jonathan Gutow

Chemistry Professor and a programmer. I have contributed to Jmol and SageMath.

[kjohn113]

Is there a guide to regular expressions that can be used in Quizzes.Next?  I couldn't find one in the user's guide, and using RegExes appears to be quite a bit different from the Pattern Match options in Blackboard's Test Canvas.

[CraigOgden]

I use this website to check my regular expressions to make sure they are correct.

https://regexr.com/ 

You do not need the beginning / and the ending /g.  Canvas puts them in automatically.

[kjohn113]

Thanks!  I'll try it.

Keith

[CraigOgden]

I live regular expressions. It has it limits and could be better, but it is

much better than what we had in the past.

On Tue, Oct 8, 2019, 4:09 PM kjohn113@asu.edu <instructure@jiveon.com>