Question: What technologies/tools to use for developing an MCQ testing system for my students?

Last time a spent hell of a time doing the drudgery work of correcting a huge pile of papers which were the answer sheets of my students to the tests I had given them.

I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of papers and decided from then to rescue myself from falling into this again. I started thinking of developing an online testing system that presented students with MCQ questions in order for correcting their answers to be automatic and their scores to be got instantly, right after they take their exam.

It would not only relieve me, but would also make my boss happy as he can easily track the student results right away and any time in the future.

The basic idea behind this system is to be web based, and installed internally on our intranet. Instructors can add questions, management can see student scores, and students can answer exam questions all through a web interface.

My question is: what shall I use to implement this system?

My first attempt was to search for ready made open source freely available solutions for that. Indeed I did find some MCQ stuff, but did not satisfy me or offer the flexibility I needed or was not for free.

So, my second thought was having to develop it myself. I do not want to take it as a dream project, or something to spend much time on it. I want to make it the fastest and easiest way just to get the results and relieve myself from the tedious task of correcting student papers manually.

I thought of developing it using Perl, or perhaps PHP with MySQL. Then it came to my mind, as our intranet is windows based, to develop it the easy way using ASP + Access. The technologies listed above are the only ones I know, so please do not suggest any others (it'll take me some time to do it in Java, I prefer it the easy way).

At first, I started to implement it in Perl and text files. The text files gave me a lot of flexibility, but then I went in fear that a file system would not allow concurrent access. Moreover, if the system would track student names and classes and so on, then it'd be way easier just to use a database and let SQL manage everything easily instead of paying more time dealing with files. (By the way, the number of students is way low, just about 45 distributed on 4 classes).

Then I went to Dreamweaver and started playing with it to try and make the system. Dreamweaver MX supports both PHP and ASP. I started this system with ASP though. After that, I had a second thought and asked myself why not just do it in Perl? The problem is that Dreamweaver offers so cool tools for developing websites, templates for instance being just one fancy little thing that is hard to resist (in the new version, it even supports nested templates!) [A note is due here for those not familiar with Dremweaver templates. They have nothing in common with FrontPage templates. FrontPage templates are static. Dreamweaver templates if changed, propagete the changes to all files based on them. And much more...]

So, for those of you who have used Perl or similar technologies to build web sites, what development tool do you suggest if any? Or is it just the normal text editor or similar that does not support whole site creation? If so, what is the common practice for putting repeating elements, such as navigation bars, in all pages of a site if a text editor is used to write the whole site?

I'll be so grateful for a reply. I really need to decide on what technologies (from the ones I know) to use and which tools if any. Yet keep in mind that I want to do it the fastest and easiest way, just to relief myself from correcting piles of student papers.

Ashraf Al Shafaki

don't use perl on windowz
there is no file locking, likely you'll get
flock(), Not implemented on this platform. when you try to use flock() to lock
text files
use MySQL and perl, or php and mysql.
i don't use dreamwaver, I write all the code and HTML in a normal editor.

a simple answer that does not work on linux(unfortunly) is use dreamweaver with the e-learning extension (free extension from macromedia exchange)
THIS WILL DO THE JOB PERFECTLY on windows or MAC but linux is not supported by dreamweaver however the resulting files will run on any browser
bye
joe

I didn't test this, but there is a Zope class that can help you create exams. Zope itself is a python based CMS. Zope is open source, and works on many platforms and very powerfull. Plugging this thing to a database shouldn't be a problem I think.

http://www.zope.org/Members/J.A.R.Williams/exam


The aim of this product is to enable the creation and maintenance of
on-line assessments and examinations. Although originally designed
for multiple choice questions the design is flexible and is not
limited to supporting this question type. Numerical questions and
multiple answer questions are also now supported as well. Much
customisation is possible so it should meet a wide range of needs
from informal self-help tests to formal timed examinations.


--

A small tip: Try using Mozilla Firebird in Kiosk mode, for added security and control over the interface of the test.

http://tln.lib.mi.us/~amutch/pro/phoenix/kiosk.htm

One of the most important steps in creating a kiosk browser is deciding how secure the browser must be. In a true kiosk situation, you may not want to allow any changes to the browser interface or behavior. In other situations, you may want to allow a limited amount of functionality while still retaining control over interface elements

Thank you both for your help.

The exam system at Zope seems cool, but unfortunately I'm not familiar with Python (I would love to be, but not much time for that at the moment.)

As for Macromedia's extentions, I have not found an extention called e-learning, but there seems to be a couple of extentions related to learning there. Thanks a million for pointing me to there. I would have not occared to my mind at all.

So thank you both for your help. In the meantime I'll try the Macromedia Dreamweaver extentions. Perhaps I'll eye Python as something to learn in the (hopefully near) future.

I've installed Zope on Window 2000 with IIS running.

It installed smoothly. I started the server (using a batch file included with the instalation).

So now what? What can I do with it? How to access web pages through it?

(Also, do I have to stop IIS for it to run?)

I want to start anything just to see how it works. I want to see any kind of result in my browser. The documentation at the site seems not to be very kind to pure newbies like myself.

Please help.

Thanks a million for pointing me to there. I would have not occared to my mind at all.
not at all dear
I have not found an extention called e-learning
it's name is "course builder" in the category e-learning
please dear,if u want ,tell me more about what u want to do,and i may have something to tell as i have some experience in that field
bye
joe

In order for me not to get lost in this mini-project, I started playing about with a "Requirements Document." Here is what I've put in it till now (you can regard those as "use cases"):

MANAGER
- sign in [high]
- sign out
- view student scores for a course [high]
- print student scores for a course
- change manager password
- change instructor password
- change admin password
- add course (name) [med]
- delete course [med]
- update course (name)
- add class (name)
- delete class
- updae class (name)
- view average score for exam [low]
- print average score for exam
- add student [high]
- delete student
- update student info

INSTRUCTOR
- sign in [high]
- sign out
- add mcq [high]
- delete mcq [high]
- update mcq
- set exam time period for course
- set number of questioins for exam
- view test statistics (percentage of correct answers for each question in a course) [med]
- format question [low]

ADMIN
- sign in [high]
- sign out
- start exam for student [high]
- end exam for student [high]

STUDENT
- view randomly picked MCQ questions for a course (with scrambled choices)
- select answer for viewed MCQ question

Zope, wow!

Thanks keteeer for telling me about it.

I've just finished it's tutorial, it's fantastic!

I'll try playing with it for a while now.

Thanks again.

well sorry for not answering your inquiries above. Well, from my very humble experience with zope, you can make it run with apache or its own webserver(which is easier) but I dont know about IIS.

I've downloaded Macromedia's CourseBuilder for Dreamweaver MX. It looks great.

Does it support reading questions dynamically from a database? It did not appear capable of doing so.

What it was capable of doing was to communicate results of student activity to a database, but not to read questions from a database.

Is that true?