Expressing/labeling tasks with multiple choice options

[StevenClontz]

(moved a CSS issue to #1550)

I'd like to propose that task headers be written as (Task a) rather than just (a), to better distinguish from <ol label="a"/>.

Proposed change (or maybe '(Part a)'?):

[davidfarmer]

Is there a posted HTML slide with the activity containing the task, so I can check that any CSS changes are working as expected?

I suspect seeing the word "Task" repeatedly, instead of just the bold letter in parentheses, will start looking like visual clutter.

But maybe an ol in a task should not use a, b, c, ... by default, for exactly this reason.

This also is one of the ways in which entrenched habits get in the way of having PTX source truly represent the structure of the document. We took one step in that direction when we structured the activity as a sequence of tasks (not as a list, which would be expected in LaTeX). But now there is a list in that task, when really it is a sequence of subtasks.

[StevenClontz]

The list within the task demonstrated is not a sequence of subtasks - it's enumerating multiple choices for students to consider during the task. I'm only slightly insulted that you'd suspect me of expressing tasks as an ordered list in PreTeXt. :-)

I wonder if the repeated "Task" is perhaps no less visual clutter than a repeated "Activity" or "Theorem".

The examples to compare are

• https://stevenclontz.github.io/cal2-tbil-2021/slides.html#/2/1
• https://stevenclontz.github.io/cal2-tbil-2021/TI1.html#activity-1

But things are under rapid development at a workshop I'm helping run this week, so here's some commit sources in case those get broken:

• https://github.com/StevenClontz/cal2-tbil-2021/blob/770b7f2bb154b07d2dd0ad02b4bb931d6b66db24/source/01-TI/01.ptx#L12
• https://github.com/StevenClontz/cal2-tbil-2021/blob/770b7f2bb154b07d2dd0ad02b4bb931d6b66db24/docs/slides.html#L48
• https://github.com/StevenClontz/cal2-tbil-2021/blob/770b7f2bb154b07d2dd0ad02b4bb931d6b66db24/docs/TI1.html#L104

[Alex-Jordan]

My opinion: labeling these with lowercase alph is right, as they come in a sequence right under something that is numbered with arabic. There are places where I find the styling on "(a)" too heavy, but that is something I have been meaning to report separately.

Is it more traditional for multiple choice options to use uppercase Alph?

Thinking out loud, multiple choice options are a special thing. Not really an ordered list, except maybe sometimes there are some options you want to appear last. And not an unordered list, because each item needs a unique label. And not a description list because there is rarely a good option for a title for each item.

[StevenClontz]

There are pedagogical reasons to avoid permuting within a multiple choice list, particularly when the MCQ is being used for instruction rather than assessment, as they would be in an <activity/>.

Perhaps the lowercase (a) for task and A. for MCQ choices is a sufficient distinction.

[Alex-Jordan]

There are pedagogical reasons to avoid permuting within a multiple choice list,

Right, and to clarify, the possibility to permute is not what I mean by suggesting that multiple choice options are not an "ol". What I mean is, there is no intrinsic complete ordering to the options. Each item needs a distinct identifier, for sure. And it's tradition to use ordered enumeration for those identifiers. But they might as well be ★, ●, ⚇, ▱, etc.

There is often a partial ordering to the items, where something like "none of the above" should come at the end. WeBWorK handling of multiple choice sets respects this (to a degree) with input syntax like [[blue, black, gray],teal]. In practice the ordering of [blue, black, gray] is randomized, and all three are presented before teal. But again I don't mean to focus on the random ordering.

Please consider this open philosophizing about the nature of multiple choice, not (yet) a proposal to change how PreTeXt handles multiple choice options.

[StevenClontz]

Here's an example that caused communication tripups during a mock teaching session this afternoon with the part-letters and choice-letters.

Since choice-letters are frequently alphabetical, it makes me wish tasks were numerical for ease of distinction. (I suspect maybe this specific question could be posed better, but I think the general case is still problematic.)

Please consider this open philosophizing about the nature of multiple choice, not (yet) a proposal to change how PreTeXt handles multiple choice options.

Noted, although I think what this may be revealing is that maybe there's a need for <choices/> distinct from <ol/> for project-likes. Authors probably shouldn't care about the labeling of their multiple choice, and PreTeXt maybe should ensure that choices are labeled in a way that doesn't conflict with how e.g. tasks are labeled.