Quiz software for Macintosh

Quiz software for Macintosh

by Danny "Real Deal" DuncanHines -
Number of replies: 1
I have recently discovered Respondus, a software that allows you to add and edit questions with several different publishing options. I tried it on a friend's PC, and it was pretty fantastic. Is there something similar for Mac? I've looked around, but there seem to be so many half-way solutions that a forum post seems like a more direct way of getting at an answer.

Here are the features I'm interested in:
  1. Available for Mac
  2. Publish directly to Moodle
  3. Publish to print (via Word, PDF, InDesign, or the like)
  4. Must have integrated equation editing
This variety of software would be extremely efficient when quizzes are published across multiple formats. If you have the same questions in Moodle and on printed worksheets, for example, it makes sense to have a single repository of questions that can be exported to different formats. This way, you don't need to shuffle back and forth between the PDFs and the Moodle bank to make sure they match. Right? Right!

Thanks for any help you can give!
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In reply to Danny "Real Deal" DuncanHines

Re: Quiz software for Macintosh

by Eoin Campbell -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

I have a possible solution which might suit your needs. Recently I released a plug-in for Moodle which imports questions written as tables in a Word file, and converts them into the question database. You can download it from www.moodle2word.net, and it will shortly be available from the Moodle Modules and Plugins database.

As part of the plug-in, I developed Word templates for various versions of Word (including Word 2004 for the Mac), that assist in creating and editing the questions. One feature of the Word template is the ability to re-format the questions for a paper test, by hiding feedback and other marks indicating which is the right answer.

The Moodle plugin supports the import of any images embedded in the Word file. The MathType Equation Editor has the ability to export equations as images, and put placeholders in the Word file (of the form <<EqnXXX.gif>>) where the images should go.

I added a function in my Word templates to replace these placeholders with the images themselves. The overall effect is that MathType equations are replaced with images. Altogether, I think this provides a relatively efficient way of creating and editing questions in Word (suitable for both paper and online use), with equations written using MathType, and importing them into Moodle.

I have created a screencast demonstration of the process on the www.moodle2word.net website which you can look at, although it was done on Windows, not a Mac, but the general operation is almost the same.

There are a number of provisos with this approach:

  • you must use Word 2004 (not Word 2008, as it doesn't support VBA macros);
  • you must use MathType as your equation editor (you can paste TeX equations into MathType);
  • you need to maintain a master Word file containing the questions with equations, then save to a temporary file when you want to substitute equations with images, as this is not a reversible step;
  • your target students must use Internet Explorer version 8 (or Safari, Chrome, Firefox or Opera) to see the equations, they won't display in IE7 or IE6;
  • On Word 2004 for Mac, MathType won’t insert a display equation into a table cell if the table has some merged cells (which the question tables do), so you have to insert the equation outside the table, and then drag it into the cell you want it in.
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