RandEx: Randomized multiple choice exams

randex is a library and a CLI tool that creates exams by randomizing multiple-choice questions selected from a user-defined pool of questions. The final exam is generated as a LaTeX document and compiled into a PDF. Multiple exams can be created at once.

To install it with pipx (see also this article), run the following command:

pipx install randex

Now you can use the randex CLI tool to create exams.

Download examples

First, download some example to demonstrate the usage of the CLI tool:

randex download-examples

Create an exam with all the available questions

Then run:

randex validate -t examples/en/template-exam.yaml -o tmp --overwrite "examples/en/folder_*"

in order to create one exam with all the available questions in the examples/en/folder_* folders.

Use the flag --show-answers to show the answers in the exam.

Open the file tmp/exam.pdf to see the exam.

Create a batch of exams

To create a batch of exams, you can use the randex batch command.

randex batch -b 5 -n 2 -n 2 -n 2 -t examples/en/template-exam.yaml -o tmp --overwrite "examples/en/folder_*"

This will create 5 exams with 2 questions each from the examples/en/folder_* folders. The exams will be saved in the tmp folder. Open the file tmp/exams.pdf to see all the exams.

Grade the batch of exams

First create a batch of exams in a tmp folder. Then create a csv file with random answers to the exams,

randex random-answers -e tmp/exams.yaml

Then grade the exams,

randex grade -e tmp/exams.yaml -g tmp/answers.csv

The -n option can be used to specify the negative score for each wrong answer. If not provided, the negative score is computed as 1 / (number of answers - 1) for each question. Set it to 0 to disable the negative scoring.