The Geodata Quiz
Jason Sadler (GeoData Institute, University of Southampton)
Question Delivery Over The Web Using TML
Paul Browning, Jane Williams, Dan Brickley and Helene Missou (University of Bristol)
Teaching and Courseware Online (TACO)
Angela Sasse (University College London)
TRIADS: TRIpartite Assessment Delivery System
Don MacKenzie (University of Derby)
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Presented by: Jason Sadler (GeoData Institute, University of Southampton)
The GeoData Institute:
The Geodata Quiz - Update 24/09/98
The Quiz
Features:
Electronic Publishing Group
GeoData Institute
University of Southampton
http://www.geodata.soton.ac.uk/ElecPub
The Quiz application is a PC-based software tool to help you develop interactive quizzes for student revision and assessment. It enables rapid development and customisation of tests and examinations, with powerful reporting and assessment facilities. Simple to design and intuitive for student use, the application has been extensively tested by over 400 undergraduates.
Developed with the support of a number of departments within the University of Southampton, the application provides a generic tool for questioning students in the Windows environment. The Quiz has been applied as a teaching and revision tool on a number of courses, and successfully used in the formal assessment of over 200 Biology students - the entire process, from the first sitting to collecting all marks, taking a single afternoon.
The Quiz can also be tailored to any educational level, such as schools and colleges, as well as for commercial training and evaluation. The application will benefit anyone with a requirement to question, examine, or seek response from a group of users. It will save you writing and updating scripts, evaluating marks, and provides immediate feedback for students.
The executable program presents information from Quiz configuration files which determine all aspects of the application behaviour. Questions are specified using a small set of standard templates including:
Quiz configuration files use the standard Windows INI file format and may be quickly developed either by editing them directly, or using the accompanying Quiz Writer application, which allows non-technical users to enter appropriate template values.
A variety of Quiz facilities can be configured by the user. These may be specified globally for the quiz as a whole, for each question, or default values used.
The Quiz and Quiz Writer applications are now available. Demonstrations can be readily arranged either on a regional basis or at the GeoData Institute. The application can be supplied as a ready-to-run package, or, if you prefer, the Electronic Publishing Group can develop and customise the Quiz to your requirements and specification.
| Jason Sadler | |
| Electronic Publishing Group | Tel: 01703 592719 |
| GeoData Institute | Fax: 01703 592849 |
| University of Southampton | |
| Highfield | E-mail: geodata@soton.ac.uk |
| Southampton SO17 1BJ | http://www.geodata.ac.uk |
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Paul Browning, Jane Williams, Dan Brickley and Helene Missou
University of Bristol
The Tutorial Mark-up Language (TML) is an interchange format designed to separate the semantic content of a question from its screen layout or formatting. The language supports several different types of question within the same content model and is essentially a super-set of HTML. Various tools allow the questions contained within TML files to be delivered to students via the World Wide Web and for responses to be tracked and analysed. Fuller details and example question sets are available from the NetQuest project page:
http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/mru/netquest/tml/
The interchange format is based on work initially done by Neil Holtz from the University of Carleton. It has, however, been extensively re-written and extended, principally via the addition of scoring and hot-image type questions. The core of this work was undertaken by Joel Crisp whilst working at ILRT. We are indebted to Neil Holtz for releasing his original work into the public domain. In the spirit of the best traditions of the Internet, TML remains freely available. This development work has been made possible by grants from the Teaching & Learning: Excellence & Innovation and Continuing Education Development funds of the University of Bristol and the charity Baby LifeLine.
During the development of this interchange format, a program was written to convert the information in a TML file to raw HTML which could be delivered to a standard WWW browser. This program is a CGI-compliant program currently working with the Unix NCSA Web server; ports to both Windows/NT and Mac systems are in progress.
A TML file is a plain text file containing only HTML and TML. A number of "tags" are defined which act as semantic descriptors. These tags allow the definition of several different parts of a question, including scoring, and optionally the defaults for any section.
So far, four different types of question been implemented (Multiple-Choice, Poly-Choice, Word-Match and Hot-Image), and from the experience with these a much wider range should be possible. A typical TML file has a number of sections which comprise: a title for the tutorial, a section describing defaults, the actual question text in HTML, the correct and incorrect answers, a set of responses tied to the answers, a set of scores tied to the answers and a set of hints.
The limited number of sections provide a simple format for the file but are capable of representing a wide range of question types. Any standard HTML 3 mark-up may be used for the question type, answers, responses and hints; links to other documents, images and equations (when browsers eventually support them) may be included.
Delivery Program
The program which has been used to test the TML format is a Perl script which runs on the WWW server to convert the TML file into sequences of normal HTML pages. It takes the information in the tutorial, the feedback from the student and the saved state for the real (in "authenticated" mode) or fake (in "anonymous" mode) user ID and constructs a suitable response page. The flexibility of the program is extended by its modular architecture. Each question type is implemented in a small module, and a core set of functions exist in an `engine' file which handles logging, navigation and TML parsing.
Reporting Program
A reporting program can analyse the results from the tests. At the time of writing, this program reports the number of questions attempted, the total score and the number of hints for each ID. It is being extended to report also on a per question basis, which can help to identify areas of knowledge which are lacking across all the students, in addition to questions which are inappropriate or incorrect.
Password Protection Program
When the tutorial engine is used in authenticated mode, an auxiliary program to enable lecturers to quickly and easily set up student passwords and classroom groups is being developed. This program uses a WWW-based front end.
Tutorial Authoring Tool
Presently TML files are constructed using any editor. We are investigating other tools for authoring (e.g. wizards in Word/Excel/Access, a forms- based Web tool).
Image Map Authoring Tool
A JAVA applet is being developed to allow hot-image type questions to be authored quickly and easily.
Questionbanks
We wish to provide searchable catalogues of questions to enable "intelligent" selection from a database.
XML
TML is in fact an SGML DTD. The development of XML offers the prospect of presenting (and processing) TML as a client-side XML application (without having to use CGI scripts on a server to render tutorials).
Import-Export filters
We would like to provide filters to allow the easy exchange of question content from one assessment delivery system to another via the medium of the TML interchange format.
Other platforms
We are presently documenting a port of the TML system to Windows/NT and will then consider doing the same for MacOS. Other sites have already completed ports of TML to both these operating systems.
TML is open, easily modifiable, networkable and - by virtue of being Web-based - independent of platform. It offers the potential to:
TML is being used within a growing number of departments at the University of Bristol and it is anticipated that this form of question delivery will become very significant over the next few years.
The hardest thing about TML is constructing good quality questions to deliver with it!
| Institute for Learning and Research Technology | Telephone: +44 (0)117 928 8478 |
| University of Bristol | Fax: +44 (0)117 928 8473 |
| 8 Woodland Road | Email: j.williams@bristol.ac.uk |
| Bristol BS8 1TN | URL: http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk |
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Angela Sasse (Department of Computer Science, UCL, Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT)
a.sasse@cs.ucl.ac.uk
http://taco.cs.ucl.ac.uk:8080/taco/www/noframes/index.html
TACO was developed as a focus on questions, interaction, logging and authoring. The idea behind TACO was to make the process of writing web pages as simple as possible.
A few computer-based teaching and assessment systems have been developed by members of staff in a number of departments within UCL (LAPT by A. Gardner-Medwin and QUASI by Kevin Boone in Physiology, B123 by Angela Sasse and Chris Harris in Computer Science) and used with some success. Developing specific systems for each subject is neither effective or efficient; at the same time, a system developed for one particular academic course cannot be easily adapted for use in another. The primary aim of the TACO project was to build on the existing systems, and experience gained with them, to provide a shell system which allows lecturers from a wide range of courses within UCL to set up and run computer-based self-teaching exercises and assessed coursework.
History
TACO was piloted in the Autumn of 1997 in order to address the following issues:
The staff were given a Web form with which to select question types and were requried to submit various questions (for each question produced the computer can randomly generate variants). Students were allowed to practise with the system as much as they liked (feedback in the form of comments or URLs to notes on the Web) but only had one go at the assessed exam.
Results of the Evaluation of the Pilot
Overview of TACO-2
| Need to design and think about: | Who is involved? | Question Types: |
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Authoring Materials
Collaborative authoring - make links from e.g. maths terms in subject context to maths
glossary.
Cost:
TACO runs workshops to train staff to use the system and to provide information on pedagogical aspects etc..
JAVA-based version will handle sound and video.
Maths topics have already been written - other disciplines can add contextual links
CD-ROMs may be used to overcome web down time problems.
7 TACO has its own server and, at present, anyone may request access.
For further information see the website or contact:
Angela Sasse, The TACO Project, Department of Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
Sending an email message totaco@cs.ucl.ac.uk; which will address the entire TACO team
fax: 0171 387 1397
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http://www.pcweb.liv.ac.uk/apboyle/triads/index.html
The Tripartite Interactive Assessment Delivery System TRIADS is a toolkit for users of Authorware Professional designed to facilitate rapid and easy production of computer aided assessments. The sign-on, question sequencing, results calculation and filing are handled automatically.
The System has been developed in operation over the last six years at the University of Derby and is currently being extended in collaboration with Earth, Physical, Natural and Medical Science departments at the University of Liverpool and the Department of Earth Sciences at the Open University under the auspices of the Assessment of Learning Outcomes Project led by the University of Liverpool and funded by the HEFCE under the FDTL initiative.
Question templates and proformas are provided to speed the production of a wide variety of question styles and experienced Authorware programmers may insert their own questions into the system by use of the empty question shells supplied, subject to obeying a few simple rules.
A question 'Editing Mode' skips the start-up screens and provides enhanced on-screen information about questions during their construction and on completion. Once created, questions may be saved as Authorware 'model' files for use in subsequent assessments.
Assessments, once packaged may be loaded onto a network and configured at run-time by the tutor with respect to mode of assessment and nature and location of results output. Results may be saved in MS-Excel compatible text files or as encrypted files which may be translated by means of a separate program supplied to the tutor with the system. TRIADS is therefore much more than just a multiple-choice question generator.
The system harnesses all the facilities of one of the most powerful authoring systems available which allows the production of questions in a very wide selection of interaction styles up to the level of full multimedia simulations. It is therefore much more flexible than any of the dedicated commercial systems currently available and easily customised to local requirements.
More Information
Question Styles
18 Evaluations sites
Online manual
Demonstration
For more information contact:
Dr Don MacKenzie, Division of Earth Sciences, University of Derby, Derby DE22 1GB
Tel: 01332 622222 x. 1720
Fax: 01332 622747
Email: D.Mackenzie@derby.ac.uk
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