** Using WeBWorK **

To see quiz mode in action, go to https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/moodle/ and click on WeBWorK Quiz. The interface scripts for quiz mode are still in rough shape, so I am not yet making them available. There still may very well be bugs in the code. Please let me know if you come accross a bug and send me the details on how it happens.

Zig Fiedorowicz

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Very impressive! I tried it a couple of times and have the following comments.

• The first time I tried it (with Netscape 4.7x on Solaris 8), I was unable to display the problem page, which made it difficult to take the quiz. I've most often seen this problem with Netscape when a closing </table> tag is omitted somewhere, but it might just be a bug in the browser too. It displayed fine in Mozilla.
  
• The navigation, which makes pretty good sense for homework, confused me at first in the quiz context--my tendency was to click "Next problem" to get the next problem (after working on the first), which of course would result in me losing my work. This may be a result of my experience with other testing software, rather than an actual user interface issue. This could probably be resolved by renaming some of the buttons.
  
• While working on the problems, it would be nice to have feedback on the front page as to which had been completed.
  
• It would be nice to get some feedback other than the grade when the quiz is submitted for grading. In the homework you immediately see what you did wrong and any comments that might be set up for the problem when you grade it--it would be nice to have similar feedback when the quiz is submitted.
  
• When trying to look at "test gateway 1 score", I get the response "weird assignment error." :)
  

Cheers,
Gavin

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Hi Gavin,

Thanks for your comments.

>The first time I tried it (with Netscape 4.7x on Solaris 8), I was unable
>to display the problem page, which made it difficult to take the quiz. I've most
>often seen this problem with Netscape when a closing table tag is omitted
>somewhere, but it might just be a bug in the browser too. It displayed fine in
>Mozilla.

I don't have Netscape 4.x available on my office machine, but I'll look into it.

>The navigation, which makes pretty good sense for homework, confused me at
>first in the quiz context--my tendency was to click "Next problem" to get the
>next problem (after working on the first), which of course would result in me
>losing my work. This may be a result of my experience with other testing
>software, rather than an actual user interface issue. This could probably be
>resolved by renaming some of the buttons.

This is doable but takes some work. My postprocessing wrapper script will need
to rewrite the page emitted by processProcessProblem8.pl so as to have a single
input form instead of 3 or 4 as it does now.

>While working on the problems, it would be nice to have feedback on the
>front page as to which had been completed.

I'm not sure what you want here. I thought that the quiz format is not supposed
to provide feedback on individual problems until the entire quiz is submitted
for grading. Or do you just want feedback on which problems have been attempted?

>It would be nice to get some feedback other than the grade when the quiz
>is submitted for grading. In the homework you immediately see what you did wrong
>and any comments that might be set up for the problem when you grade it--it
>would be nice to have similar feedback when the quiz is submitted.

But it does provide such feedback! Namely when you click on the "Submit Quiz for
Grading" button, you get the problem page back again. If you click on Get Problem,
you will get the problem page with the answers you submitted showing. Instead of
a Submit Answers button, there is a Show Correct Answers button. Now I grant you
this is a little round-about, but the limitation of the method I'm using is that
I am constrained to use the basic web page format provided in WeBWorK. Besides that
I think there may be some pedagogical benefits to this format,instead of immediately
showing the correct answer. I think it is helpful to allow the student a chance
to spot their own mistakes first.

>When trying to look at "test gateway 1 score", I get the response "weird
>assignment error." :)

I think what happened is that the database table for that assignment got
corrupted while I was still debugging earlier versions of the script, but
I'm still looking into it.

Zig

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Hi Gavin,

>The first time I tried it (with Netscape 4.7x on Solaris 8), I was unable
>to display the problem page, which made it difficult to take the quiz. I've most
>often seen this problem with Netscape when a closing table tag is omitted
>somewhere, but it might just be a bug in the browser too. It displayed fine in
>Mozilla.

This should now be fixed.

>The navigation, which makes pretty good sense for homework, confused me at
>first in the quiz context--my tendency was to click "Next problem" to get the
>next problem (after working on the first), which of course would result in me
>losing my work. This may be a result of my experience with other testing
>software, rather than an actual user interface issue. This could probably be
>resolved by renaming some of the buttons.

Also this.

>When trying to look at "test gateway 1 score", I get the response "weird
>assignment error :)

And this too.

I'd like you and anybody else who is interested have a go at this again
and let me know whether anything else needs fixing.

Thanks,
Zig

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Neato cool.

• The "Next Problem" adjustment is very nice. Having that retain answers from problem to problem, it's tempting to say that the next thing would be simply to get rid of the "submit problem" button entirely. Then the student would have a nice sense that he/she was working through each problem on the test, possibly stopping back at the top page to check on the list of problems, without wondering what it means to "submit" a problem in the middle of the test. Instead, he/she does all of the work and then clicks the intuitively labelled "submit the quiz for grading" button.
  
• With regards to the "feedback on the front page" I mentioned before, I was thinking, as you intuited, of something indicating which problems had been attempted. Actually, if I had the ability to make arbitrary changes to the system, I would also put a summary of the problems on the front page in the right-hand box of the problem list page. Then when I as a student am working through the test I can not only see what problems I've done but what the problems are that I have left.
  
• Regarding feedback on the quiz as a whole, I had missed how I could see what the correct answers are after the quiz had been graded. That does resolve some of the question I had before.
  

A couple of other thoughts. From the perspective of the gateway testing that we do here it's nice for the students to be able to get a single page that summarizes what they did right and which problems they missed. I'm not sure to what extent that's logical in the system that is running here.

Also, we restrict the number of times a student can take the quiz in a day. I didn't notice if this was possible with this system, but it's a highly desirable feature. (We don't want to, and realistically probably can't, require proctors to enforce that type of limit.)

I'll try and look at this again when I have a bit more time to think about how it's working.

Thanks!
Gavin

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Hi Gavin,

Thanks again for your comments.

>The "Next Problem" adjustment is very nice. Having that retain
>answers from problem to problem, it's tempting to say that the
>next thing would be simply to get rid of the "submit problem"
>button entirely. Then the student would have a nice sense that he/
>she was working through each problem on the test, possibly

>stopping back at the top page to check on the list of problems,
>without wondering what it means to "submit" a problem in the
>middle of the test. Instead, he/she does all of the work and then
>clicks the intuitively labelled "submit the quiz for grading"
>button.

I agree that this is a good idea. It's trivial to implement.

>With regards to the "feedback on the front page" I mentioned
>before, I was thinking, as you intuited, of something indicating
>which problems had been attempted.

Now that you've clarified this point, I'll put this into the next
version of the scripts.

>A couple of other thoughts. From the perspective of the gateway
>testing that we do here it's nice for the students to be able to
>get a single page that summarizes what they did right and which
>problems they missed. I'm not sure to what extent that's logical
>in the system that is running here.

Perhaps this could go into the screenHeader.pg for the assignment?

>Also, we restrict the number of times a student can take the
>quiz in a day. I didn't notice if this was possible with this
>system, but it's a highly desirable feature. (We don't want to,
>and realistically probably can't, require proctors to enforce
>that type of limit.)

This should be easy to implement via inspection of the WeBWorK
login.log for the course.

Zig

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This is great. I tried your Quiz in the Demo Course. It looks like each time the quiz is attempted, a version of the problems with a different seed is given to te student, so students don't get the exact same problem when re-taking the quiz. Nice feature. I noticed that the due date listed in webwork was listed as 3/17, while the one listed on the Quiz Score page in moodle was different.

Are you planning on making the scripts for this available on the web site. I'd be happy to test it for you.

Thanks, Lars.

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I've made the quiz mode scripts available for download in https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/moodle_scripts/ in the quizmode subdirectory. You also need to download updated versions of welcomeAction.pl and view.php

Finally you need to install the following Perl CPAN modules: Crypt::DES and Crypt::CBC

Zig

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Nandor

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