Generating custom links for students in a quiz

[tclements1]

Hello -

I have a rather complicated sounding idea that I was trying to implement, but haven't been able to. I want to generate custom links for students either in a quiz or an assignment that would take them to a data page for an online lab. I want students to not all have the same data for the lab, so I have created several pages with different lab data. The student would click on the link which would give them the data they need to complete the lab. Once a link is generated for a student, it needs to be static in case they want to access it again, which is why I was thinking a formula question in a quiz.

I tried using a formula question in a quiz to generate a URL such as

     https://www.example.com/abc20.html

The abc is static, and the 20 is generated for the student. I do this using a formula question with the text

     https://www.example.com/abc[num].html

and this works great for the URL text, but not for the internal HTML code to make the URL correct and clickable. In the <a> link in the HTML the square brackets get % encoded, and "num" just stays there, which means the URL text and the URL location don't match. I tried editing the direct HTML to put [num] back in there, but it didn't work, it gets % encoded. I can make the text work and have the students copy and paste it into their browser, but I really want the link to be clickable because I am teaching a class with relatively low tech literacy.

I am open to doing this other ways, as well, if anyone has ideas that are relatively automatic (not manually e-mailing every student with a link.)

Cheers,

Todd