When you are working together with your colleagues on or are making bigger changes yourselves to an exercise, using the "draft + publish" feature helps in making sure you only "publish" changes as soon as they are ready to be used.
However, sometimes you are not completely sure what has changed between versions. Whether this is between two draft versions or between the latest published version and the most recent draft, being able to see those changes helps you determine whether the exercise is ready to be published.
You can see those changes by using the version comparison feature. Read more in this article on how to get there and how to use it.
How to get to the exercise version comparison page?
If you are editing an exercise and you save changes as a draft, you will see an information box at the top of your exercise. This will show a "view changes with published version" button, allowing you to view the changes made between the latest published version and your current version.
When you are using the "Exercise versions" functionality to view different versions, you will see other buttons as well, allowing you to compare the currently selected version with the latest published or most recent draft version (if it exists). See an example of such as view below.
Click any of the buttons which starts with "View changes with ..." will bring you to a new page which shows the differences between versions.
What does the exercise version comparison page show?
Once you have arrived at the page, you will see a schematic outline of your exercise. You can fold and unfold each part to see the full structure. See an example below.
At the top you can select which versions you want to compare in the two dropdowns. If you only want to view the changes and not the whole exercise structure (including all properties which are unchanged), you can select the "only show changed properties" checkbox which will hide all unchanged properties.
Icons are used to indicate what has changed. In the example above, the answers of a question has changed because one answer is deleted, one answer is moved and feedback is added, and another answer has been added.
In addition, also the description of the question has changed, as indicated by the blue pen icon.
You can view what each icons means by clicking the "Legend" button, which will show a legend for the different icons used.
How to use the exercise version comparison page?
To utilise this feature to its fullest potential, you should combine with the viewing of different versions. If you are viewing what has changed between two versions, take the following approach:
open the exercise version comparison page as explained in this article and select the right versions to compare with each other
open the edit view of the same exercise and open the exercise versions panel on the right
in the exercise version comparison page you can see what has changed and use this knowledge to view what has changed in those properties by checking out the edit view of the two versions.
If you have enough room on your (second screen) we suggest to open three windows/tabs:
Exercise version comparison page with the correct versions selected
Exercise edit view for the (old) version = version selected in first dropdown in the version comparison page
Exercise edit view for the (new) version = version selected in second dropdown in the version comparison page
What is the exercise structure based on?
The exercise structure shown is based on our open format. We are continuously working on an open format for math exercises with the goal to improve operability between different math practice platforms. If you are interested please let us know and/or engage with us on Github where you can find the current definition of our open format.
Questions or feedback?
We are working intensively on our version control system since we believe this is a crucial part in allowing teachers all of the world collaborate together on open math exercises. If you have ideas, questions, suggestions or feedback regarding this functionality, please reach out to us via the chat icon in the bottom of the screen!