Last Modified: 24 March 1998
The GeoData Quiz
A generic application for revision and assessment
The GeoData Quiz comprises a collection of applications for producing and presenting quizzes and questionnaires either in a Windows environment or via the Web (WebQuiz).
An interactive Windows Quiz application has been developed with the
support of a number of departments within the University. The design
philosophy behind the application was to create a generic tool for
questioning students in the University networked Windows environment,
replicating and extending typically used question formats. The Quiz
application has on a number of occasions successfully been used in the
formal assessment of several hundred (Biology and Medical) students in
a single afternoon.
The executable program presents information from quiz configuration
files which determine the application behaviour and specify an
arbitrary number of quiz questions using several standard templates.
Quizzes are fully modifiable by course tutors either by editing the
files directly, or using the associated Quiz Writer application.
Available question types are True-False, Fill the Gaps, Multiple
Choice, Drag and Drop, and Identify features from an Image. Current
facilities include question timing, practice and assessed questions
(with optional scoring and feedback), variable tries per answer,
flexible answer matching through the use of wildcards and accepted
variations, and multimedia linking. Facilities for enforcing exam
conditions include the inability to exit or restart the application,
options for ensuring all question parts are completed before
continuing, and quiz file encryption.
The Quiz and Quiz Writer are freely available to all groups within the
University of Southampton (you can download
them if you are within this domain, or have a key), and the
Institute is currently looking into wider dissemination of these
applications. Prices are also available
for other academic institutions, and to commercial users on application.
The Windows Quiz and QuizWriter
Sample Quiz screens
(1,
2,
3,
4,
5), and
Quiz Writer screen.
Here are the Quiz brochure pages.
The WebQuiz
A World Wide Web version of the Quiz has also been developed by
the GeoData Institute. Quizzes can be developed and tested using the
Windows QuizWriter and seamlessly delivered via the Internet. The
current version (3.0, June 2000) supports virtually all features of
the Windows version, plus
additional Web functionality. This diagram shows the system architecture
of the Windows and WebQuiz applications, illustrating the interaction
between the two. The WebQuiz uses standard HTML forms and the CGI
interface to deliver quizzes from a Web server to any browser
supporting these standards - no plug-in technologies or Java or
Javascript functionality are required.
Here is another sample quiz, displaying the same questions all at once rather than one at a time and using slightly different quiz file settings (sample2.qiz).
Here is third sample quiz, displaying a list of questions and allowing users to move among them until they are ready to finish(sample3.qiz).
You can also try out some Quizzes from our New Forest pages.
Using the WebQuiz application in Questionnaire Mode provides an efficient mechanism for generating Web-based forms and questionnaires. The collection and collation of results is handled robustly and efficiently by the logging facilities of the program. For example, here is a version of the University Standard Evaluation Questionnaire, the results of which are collated into the log file in a compact format, with one submission per row. This may easily be imported into a spreadsheet package for further analysis.
The WebQuiz will be freely available to all groups within the University of Southampton and the Institute is currently looking into wider dissemination of the Quiz applications. Prices are available for other academic institutions, and to commercial users on application.
Please contact us if you would like more information on these products.
Electronic Publishing Group,GeoData Institute,
jds@geodata.soton.ac.uk