This is the repository for the Crowdsource Hinter XBlock. The Crowdsource Hinter serves to provide students with hints when they incorrectly answer a problem within a course. The hinter is compatible with numerical input and text input type problems.

This XBlock is still a prototype.

An example of a student recieving a hint

An example of after a student corrects their answer

To bring the crowd sourced hinter into a demo course:

Follow https://github.com/openedx/edx-platform/wiki/Installing-a-new-XBlock for basic xblock installation. The name of the module to set in the advanced settings tab is "crowdsourcehinter".

In studio view, edit the hinter so that the "Problem Element" is set to the "data-usage-id" of the problem block (findable by inspecting element of the problem block). If no problem element is set manually, the hinter will default to respond to the first problem block on the page.

The two key features of the crowdsource hinter are the abilities to show students hints and to have the students themselves create hints to be shown to future students.

When a student incorrectly answers a problem, the hinter will look through its database to search for a hint that has been stored for that exact incorrect answer input (i.e. when the database is large enough, two different incorrect answers would not receive the same hint). If hints exist for a student's incorrect answer, this hint is shown to the student. The student then may have the opportunity to input their answer again, which may prompt another hint to be displayed.

After a student re-submits an answer correctly, they can rate hints for their usefulness or contribute a new hint to be used by other students. Rating hints works by upvoting, downvoting, or reporting hints. The new hint that is contributed by a student is specific to the incorrect answer that they make (currently the first incorrect answer will be prompted for contributing new hints).