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Quiz Background Customization
Previously, the only way to change the background image was to create a whole new theme. Now you're able to override the background and loader images much more easily.
You can use any .gif, .jpg or .swf(version 6 and under) to display as a background for your quiz, and as a loading image. This means that your quiz can fit seamlessly into your website or corporate brand.
Posted by Alexander on February 26, 2008 | Quiz Background Customization| TrackBack
Question Writer API
This is only going to make sense if you're technically minded, but there's now a code library to help creating Question Writer quizzes. If you'd like to export to the Question Writer format from your .NET application or website, you can use this QW_API.dll - there's also full documentation on how to use it.
Posted by Alexander on February 26, 2008 | Question Writer API| TrackBack
Importing Questions
You know the old joke, you wait for hours for one import format, and then two come along at the same time!
Question Writer now supports importing questions from text format (.txt and .rtf) and also from Moodle XML format. I can't guarantee that these will work perfectly for every single possible question from the outset - the permutations are just too great. However, we're serious about getting this right. If you experience difficultly importing a set of questions - send the file you're importing to support@questionwriter.com and we'll do our level best to correct the problem.
Also, I'm interested to know what other import formats you'd like to see supported - more widely used formats have a better chance of making it into QW, but drop me a line, ideally with samples from the format and I'll see what we can do.
Posted by Alexander on February 26, 2008 | Importing Questions| TrackBack
Explanation Question
There's not a lot to say about the 'Explanation Question' - although, notably, it's not a question. It allows you to add text and/or an image to a page in the quiz, without having to have an interactive element or score. It's useful if you want to add an introduction to a section, a breather in the middle of a long quiz, or provide some reading material for a reading comprehension.
I think it will be one of the less frequently used elements so I haven't added it to the main toolbar - there's two ways to add it though, my favourite, with a right click and 'Add Question' -
and there is also the left click on the menu bar, and 'Add Question' -
Posted by Alexander on February 26, 2008 | Explanation Question| TrackBack
Language Selector
Question Writer 3 now has a language selector. It's in the 'Language' menu that is visible before you've opened or created any quizzes in the interface. After you've changed the language, you need to restart the application for the change to kick in. The currently supported languages are
English
French
German
Turkish
Japanese
I'm also looking for translators (native speakers and QW users ideally) for other languages and have a Question Writer 3 - Academic License to offer in exchange translations into the following languages
Portugese
Danish
Spanish
Polish
Swedish*
Italian*
Korean*
You can get an idea of what's required for with a translation by looking at the following file in your QW3 install,
C:\Program Files\Question Writer 3\Languages\quiz.resx
E-mail me at alex@centralquestion.com if you're interested. Also drop me a line if there's another language you'd like to see supported.
* Languages marked with an asterix are still available.
Update: To start the translation - you need to edit the terms in the quiz.resx file mentioned above. There's a nice, simple, freely available program called ResX Editor - this makes editing a cinch!
Posted by Alexander on February 26, 2008 | Language Selector| TrackBack
Sequencing Question
The Sequencing question type can also be thought of as a ‘ranking’ or an ‘ordering’ question. I’ll cover the basics first and then I’ll tell you why ours is much better than any ranking questions you’ve seen before (or try it out right now).
Creating one couldn’t be easier – just enter the items in the correct order on the question properties page –
Here’s what the user will see - a ‘drag n’drop’ interface where the items are ranked by dragging them from the right to the slots on the left.
The big innovation is that partial credit can be awarded for partially correct answers. Take our sample question for example – the sizes of cities in Italy. Most students will know that Rome and Milan are the largest cities, but very few (if any) will know with certainty that Genoa has a larger population than Palermo. We can give most of the marks for knowing the basics, and extra credit for those fully in command of the details.
The scoring is based on ‘correct relative pairs’ - here’s how it works – firstly the sequence is broken down into relative pairs. In our example, there are 6 elements, which allows for 15 possible relative pairs. They are
Rome-Milan
Rome-Naples,
Rome-Turin,
Rome-Palermo,
Rome-Genoa,
Milan-Naples
Milan-Turin,
Milan-Palermo,
Milan-Genoa,
Naples-Turin,
Naples-Palermo,
Naples-Genoa,
Turin-Palermo,
Turin-Genoa,
Palermo-Genoa.
The scoring then subtracts the number of incorrect pairs from the number of correct pairs, it maps it to the number of points available for the question and rounds it to the nearest integer (or zero, no negative marks are awarded overall for a question). If you want to award a single point for each correct relative pair there’s a correct number of points based on the number of elements –
2 elements – 1 point
3 elements – 2 points
4 elements – 6 points
5 elements – 10 points
6 elements – 15 points
7 elements – 21 points
8 elements – 28 points
n elements – n * (n-1)/2
Also new in the Question Writer 3 – You can group your questions using sections.
Posted by Alexander on February 25, 2008 | Sequencing Question| TrackBack
Sections
Today, I’d like to introduce you to ‘Sections’. Grouping questions into sections sounds like quite a tame feature at first. But it opens up so many possibilities that I’ve put it top of the list of new features.
Each section can be individually randomized, and have a time-limit. Sections can also contain subsections, allowing a tree structure for really detailed control over question selection and timing.
Question Balancing
Firstly, you can balance questions in a quiz. Let’s say you’ve got a geography quiz with easy, medium and hard questions and you’re randomly selecting 30 from 90. Ideally, you want to have 10 easy, 10 medium and 10 hard. Sections allow you to guarantee that by grouping the questions into three different sections and then choosing to ask 10 randomly from each 30 question section.
Mandatory Questions
Sometimes you’ll want certain questions to always be answered, but others to be randomly selected – this is often the case where you ask for a student’s e-mail or ID number at the start of a quiz, but then randomize the questions later on – you can do this by leaving the mandatory questions outside of the randomized section.
Time-Limit Sections
In the earlier example, we might want to time the questions, but not the information gathering questions. Easy! Group the sections in a parent section, and time the section.
Linking Questions
Sections can also contain other sections – so you might want to randomly choose one section and not another. Say in a reading comprehension question with five questions on each reading passage – group the comprehension with the questions and then randomly select the section to ask.
Try it out for yourself - download the Question Writer 3 Alpha.
Posted by Alexander on February 25, 2008 | Sections| TrackBack
Question Writer 3 Alpha Version
Question Writer 3 is finally available as a public alpha - download link. What does that mean? Well it's like a beta - an early version of software which hasn't been robustly tested, but a beta contains all the features that are to go in the final version. With an alpha version - there are features still to go in. That said, it's pretty stable, and it's already packed full of new features.
I'll be blogging these in more details over the next few days but here's a list of what's new in the alpha -
New Features -
1. Sections. You can now group questions together and have fine grained control of how questions are selected, randomized and timed.
2. Sequencing Question Type This uses a drag and drop interface to order elements from top to bottom. It can also attempt to score partially correct sequences.
3. Importing Questions Text format or Moodle XML format to use questions created elsewhere.
4. Custom Background - use your own .jpg, .gif or .swf(version 6 or less) as a loader image and background to customize your quizzes.
5. Explanation Question Type allows you to add text or instructions at the start or in the middle of a quiz.
6. Language Switcher - change the interface language between English, German, French, Japanese and Turkish.
Technically, there are a lot of improvements too - behind the scenes all the code has been converted to C# - so no more J# redistributable. You'll see the improvement in the installer straight away and it'll work with any version of .NET 1.1+
If you're an existing Question Writer 2 user, you should be able to use your existing license if you purchased the software in the past year (from February 1st 2007). Your license will continue to work with all Question Writer 3 releases. If you purchased before then, there will be upgrade pricing available. If you're not a QW user yet, you can use this as a 30 day trial version.
Download the latest Alpha and try it out right now.
Posted by Alexander on February 22, 2008 | Question Writer 3 Alpha Version| TrackBack