About Problems, Exercises, and Tools

About Problems, Exercises, and Tools#

You can add a variety of problems, exercises, and tools to your course outline. By default, a core set of problem types is available in Studio for you to include in your course. You have the option to expand the initial set of core problem types by enabling additional exercises and tools.

Enhancing Your Course with Additional Exercises and Tools #

“Exercises and tools” is a general way to refer to the robust variety of content that you can integrate into an online course. Software developers use the XBlock component architecture to contribute new exercises and tools to the Open edX platform and provide new and varied options for reaching learners. Exercises enhance the core set of problem types by challenging learners to complete graded and ungraded assessments. Tools deliver a variety of other types of course content.

To use an exercise or tool in your course beyond the core set of problem types, you must explicitly enable that exercise or tool. For more information, see Enable Additional Exercises and Tools.
After you enable an exercise or tool for use in your course, you might need to select Advanced, Text, or Problem on the unit page to add content of that type to your course.

The topics in this section introduce the core set of problem types and a selection of other exercises and tools that you can add to your course.

See also

Guide to Problem Types (reference)

Working with Problem Components (reference)

Guide to Problem Settings (reference)

Gradebook Assignment Types (reference)

Best Practices for Providing Feedback (concept)

Adding Feedback and Hints to a Problem (reference)

Configure a Hint in a Problem (how-to)

Awarding Partial Credit for a Problem (reference)

Set the Assignment Type and Due Date for a Subsection (how-to)

Adding Tooltips to a Problem (reference)