Grading with source materials

Without source materials, the AI grades answers with its own general knowledge and the rubric. When you attach the materials a course is based on, such as a textbook chapter, lecture slides as PDF or a recorded lecture, Examplary looks up what they say about each question and takes that into account when grading. Answers are then judged against what students were taught, including definitions, terminology and examples that are specific to your course.

Adding source materials takes two steps: create a source material from a file, and attach it to the exam.

Step 1: Create a source material

Source materials are created from a file's URL. Any public HTTPS URL works, and Examplary keeps its own copy of the file, so the original link doesn't have to stay online. If your file isn't online, upload it to Examplary first.

{
  "url": "https://example.com/course-101/chapter-3.pdf",
  "contentType": "application/pdf",
  "externalId": "course-101-chapter-3",
  "tags": [
    "course-101"
  ]
}

These file types are supported:

• Documents: PDF, DOCX, TXT and HTML
• Images: PNG and JPEG
• Audio: such as MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, OGG and FLAC
• Video: such as MP4, MOV, MPEG, AVI and WebM

Examplary uses contentType to tell what kind of file it is, or the file extension in the URL if you leave it out. We recommend keeping files under 50 MB. Web pages work when their content is in the page's HTML: set contentType to text/html. Pages that only load their content with JavaScript, and video sites such as YouTube, aren't supported.

The response includes the material's id, which starts with material_.

Step 2: Attach it to the exam

Link materials to an exam with its sourceMaterialIds. You can do this straight after creating them: there's no need to wait for them to be processed. Pass them when creating the exam, or set them later:

{
  "sourceMaterialIds": [
    "{materialId}"
  ]
}

sourceMaterialIds replaces the exam's list of materials, so include all of them when you add one. The same materials are used for every question in the exam.