U070 โ Special characters and scientific notation in BookWidgets
There are various ways in which BookWidgets caters to Science and Math teachers, or perhaps teachers of languages that are written with special characters that students don't have readily available on their keyboards. This article provides an overview of the possibilities.
Unicode characters
There are scientific, mathematical and alphanumeric symbols that exist as singular unicode characters, such as special characters of a language's alphabet , arrows , mathematical symbols for number sets โ , math operators , superscript and subscript characters and many more. If the use of these symbols suits your purposes (e.g.: HโO), you can use these throughout BookWidgets.
As a teacher
To put unicode characters in your question formulations or assignments, simply copy them from a source (for example W3 Schools or TypeIt) and paste them in BookWidgets.
As a student
If students need to have access to these symbols for using them in text input fields, you can enable the widget setting General > On-screen keyboard. Choose one or more predefined sets of characters, or input your own in the Extra characters field.
If the on-screen keyboard is configured, students will find a keyboard symbol in the top-right corner of the widget with which they can select any of the characters you preconfigured, and insert it into their answer.
LaTeX
If you require more extensive scientific notation forms, like for example fractions, roots or matrix notations, you can make use of the fact that BookWidgets supports LaTeX.
As a teacher
For teachers, LaTeX is supported in almost all input fields of all widget types. Open a LaTeX expression in BookWidgets by typing two dollar signs . This will open up a small editor window in which you can compose your expression.
As a student
If students require the input of LaTeX-based answers, use a Quiz or Worksheet widget to which you add an Equations question type. If students place the cursor in one of the input fields, a pop-up window with LaTeX-based notation forms will appear which they can use to compose their answer.
The Equations question type is intended strictly for numerical, non-textual answers. If students need to provide a textual answer, you will need to use a Fill-in-the-blanks question type, possibly assisted by the on-screen keyboard (see above).
Teacher setup
As a teacher, you can configure which symbols appear for students in the aforementioned pop-up. You find the settings in General > Equation editor. If you unfold the menu, the following table will be displayed:
You can click any of the buttons to change their color, which will determine whether the symbols or notation forms are available to students or not. The colors have the following meanings:
- A is the default. If all buttons are blue, the input assistant will display only those symbols that are required for providing the correct answer(s) as well as symbols that belong to the same group. For example, if "element of" (โ) is required for students to provide a correct solution, then related symbols used for expressing set membership will also be provided as to not give away the correct answer.
- A means the symbol is always availble to students, even if it isn't required anywhere. You can add individual symbols to the pool to make your exercise more challenging.
- A can be used to remove symbols from the input assistant that would otherwise be in it. For example, if you make an exercise where students should only answer whether something is an element of something else (โ) or not an element (โ), you can consider turning the buttons for the other set membership elements (โ โ โ โ etc.) red.
If you remove all of the symbols that are required for providing correct answers by turning them red, then all of the symbols will be displayed in the student input assistant.
If you don't want students to have the pop-up at all, use a Fill-in-the-blanks question type instead.
The equation editor provides a configuration on the widget level, not on the question level. A widget can have multiple questions of the Equations question type and the equation editor configuration will apply to all equally.
Student use
If students place the cursor into an input field of an Equations question type, they'll receive a pop-up that conforms to the widget settings explained above. For ease of use, the pop-up has the following functionalities that you can consider passing on to your students:
- If the amount of available symbols spans more than three lines, a scrollbar is available.
- The pop-up itself can be moved by pressing and holding the horizontal bars icon in the bottom left โฃ.
- If mouse and/or keyboard movement is difficult or unavailable, the upper set of arrows on the left (white arrows in black background) can be used to highlight text as if with the mouse, while the set below it (black arrows without background) can be used to move the cursor within the expression, the same way as with the arrow keys on a keyboard.