QZB Re: search for quiz software [Fwd: helping with seul-edu]

[rnd@sampo.karelia.ru]

Hello!

This is what QZB project is about!
(The QZB is aka QuizBrowser.)

Look at http://cvs.seul.org/~rnd/index.html
or (which is the same host) http://cran.mit.edu/~rnd/index.html

So far I have not produced any  working  code  to  the  public,
because I need to think more about input file formats.

The piece of code I have is doing exactly what  you  criticize:
it receives a text file and produces html page + dat-file  with
answers.

However, I want QZB to be more flexible  in  scenarios  so  the
questioning could be made more complex.

Daniel, we could combine our efforts if you agree  this  to  be
GPLed code, of course.


On Fri, 25 Dec 1998, Daniel P. Kionka wrote:

>I just found out about seul-edu, and sent mail to Doug Loss.  He said I
>should introduce myself to the mailing list, so I am including the mail
>I sent to him.
>
>I plan to work on a quiz generator and have been doing web searches to
>see what is out there.  Since other people on the list may be interested
>in what I found, I organized my bookmarks into a web page:
>http://www.blueneptune.com/~dkionka/quiz/  Let me know of other sites I
>should add.  If there is someone in the group keeping track of sites
>like this, I will gladly turn this over to him.
>
>Dan Kionka

Thanks for the URL!
However, I know there are a lot of ready things  (thousands  of
such things!). So I don't worry to look at them:  sometimes  it
is easier to concentrate on a project when  you  reinvents  the
wheel. (And do it better, because I am not going to  a  feature
hunt. I just want  to  have  a  model  which  will  incorporate
features in a way understandable by teachers who has no  degree
in Computer Science ;-)

I will be very glad to hear from you!

First priority now is to MAKE A SPECIFICATION of the input data
format which will be
* easy for the people (NO programming for non-power users!)
* flexible enough to embrace all kinds of quizes with all
  kinds of question ordering and so on.

*** MY NEW IDEAS on QZB ***

After fiddling with different kinds of scenarios I came to  the
conclusion that there is a need to have two layers  of  control
files:

1) question/task database ("content")
2) scenario file which will specify a certain quiz
   scenario, using questions from the database

This way quiz questions  could  be  accumulated  and  exchanged
freely  between  educators  while  quiz   procedure   will   be
independent of problem content.

Any ideas for the format of the taskbase file?
What about scenario file?

Example of _task file_ (task000):

---------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: math
Difficulty: 3
Comment: just an example of something simple

1.) How much is 2x2
( ) 1
( ) 2
( ) 3
(x) 4
( ) 5
( ) 22

...
---------------------------------------------------------------

Example of _scenario file_ (mathquiz):

---------------------------------------------------------------
Use: task000
Questions: 5
Order: shuffled
Scoring: "+=1"
Criteria: 0-2 : "2" : "bad!",
            3 : "3" : "satisfactory." ,
            4 : "4" : "good!",
            5 : "5" : "excelent!!!"
Comment: this is an example (grades are 2-5, as in Russia or Sweden)
---------------------------------------------------------------


It will be some markup language, as I see it now. And  it  need
to be something like sdf (simple document format) or even  more
easy for enduser...

And yes, QuiZBrowser will sometimes need QuiZGenerator (QZG)...
So, Dan, you are welcome!

Sincerely yours,
Roman A. Suzi


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