1. To extend the current survey questions part of the student database to include on-line quizzes and evaluation forms. It makes sense to design these all together as all depend on a design for questions. The differences will be in whether they are graded and what kind of statistics and reports are generated.

2. It is also our goal that the design be compatible with other well-known systems. This document discusses the design of WebCT, and other designs relating to students, quizzes and course materials will be examined, such as IMS and PAPI.

WebCT on-line quizzes and surveys

We report here on what we surmise to be the information kept for quizzes and questions, and for courses and students as it relates to the quizzes. This is reverse engineering as we have no design document; we examine the functionality of webct and surmise what information must be kept. (Of course, we have files created by the CGI scripts with : separated fields, but these are undocumented and there are in the neighborhood of a hundred scripts, so it would be pretty hard to read the scripts to see what the fields are.)

Quizzes are created as sets of questions and belong to a particular course.

Quizzes:

There are also surveys, but they seem to go to same creation pages as quizzes.

• have a list of questions
• each questions has number of points it counts in this quiz
• from a question set, say how many alternates are to be randomly picked to be on the quiz.
• there is an ordering on the questions as to how they are displayed
• the display can be "customized": colors, counter, bg image, banner, header, footer
• availability - start time and ending time when quiz can be taken.
• duration allowed to take quiz
• total points

Questions:

• question title
• the question itself
• format
  • HTML
  • text
• image
• General feedback text (to be printed after the student answers the question.) also has html or text option.
• questions come in 5 types according to how they are answered:
  • Multiple choice:
    • Allow students to choose one answer or multiple answers
    • Scoring is cumulative or "all or nothing"
    • Allow negative score is yes or no
    • answer layout is vertical or horizontal
    • any number of possible answers
      • each answer has format HTML or text
      • each answer has value (% correctnes of score) or it is marked either as a right answer or a wrong answer
      • each answer has feedback text (presumably printed if student picks that answer.
  • Matching
    • choose a marking scheme for each questions
      • answers are equally weighted
      • all or nothing
      • right less wrong
    • choose whether to preview columns or not (appears to be same as choosing long answer for both columns) - displays randomized list of columns before asking each item.
    • list of matching pairs:
      • list of first items (first column)
      • short or long answer for first items (overrides preview columns)
      • list of second matching items (second column)
      • short or long answer for second items (overrides preview columns)
  • Calculated
    In the case of a calculated question, words enclosed in {, } are used as variables in a formula for the answer.
    • formula
    • variables
      • each variable is given a minimum and maximum value
      • number of decimal places of accuracy
      • number of decimal places to display
      • format of answer
    • random answer set to be displayed with the question
    • answer tolerance field
    • units of answer
      • whether students required to give units in the answer
      • if required, what percentage of question does it count
      • ignore spaces or not
      • ignore case or not
  • Short Answer
    • Number of answerboxes
    • case sensitive or not
    • list of answers
      • for each answer, give the answer text
      • what value (%) of question this answer counts
      • width in characters ?
      • which answerbox this question is allowed in: give one or all
  • Paragraph
    • size of answer box, lines by columns of characters wide
    • pre-fill for answer box
    • correct answer.

• questions also belong to a category (category names are given by designer)
• questions may beong to a question set

Question Sets:

• unique id

Students

When you create a quiz for a course, columns are made for each student to have a grade from that quiz.

Answer Sets

Whenever a student takes a quiz or a survey, record the answers of that student.

Remarks for NPAC student database

These question designs almost look sufficient for the quizzes, surveys and evaluation questionnaires that I want to give. The only additional thing is what we currently have on surveys: I would like to be able to design a set of multiple choice questions that all have the same set of answers. This would lead to a nicer display and also to an easier definition page, as you wouldn't have to retype all the answers.

Also for the quizzes, surveys and evaluations, I think it is useful to distinguish which they are. And in addition to the items that they mention about the appearance of the quiz, I would like to be able to add text at various points in the layout of the quiz/survey/evaluation.

For all quizzes/surveys/evaluations, I would like to be able to review the answers of individual students (which I can't do now for surveys) in addition to getting overall statistics.