Some embodiments of the invention provide computer-delivered curriculum
content to a student. The curriculum of some embodiments includes
learning interactions that are designed to give a student substantive
feedback when the student provides a response to a "puzzle-like"
question. Puzzle-like questions are questions that have a solution space
with a relatively large number of potential responses (e.g., with more
than one correct answer or partially correct answer or partially
incorrect response or incorrect response). Some embodiments provide
assessment analysis for the puzzle-like questions. When a test taker
provides an incorrect response or a partially correct response, for
example, some embodiments present to the test taker prestored feedback
regarding the particular misunderstanding that is associated with the
response in order to explain the possible misunderstanding. Some
embodiments perform the assessment analysis for puzzle-like questions by
using a rule-based technique to describe multiple acceptable responses
(e.g., one or more completely correct answers and one or more partially
correct answers). Rules can be specified to associate commentary to
different possible responses. Some embodiments embed the rules in an XML
format that is utilized at runtime.