Hi,
I'm programming an extension to the Quiz-Module so it is possible to create offline quizzes, scan them (with an external program) and import the results in moodle again. Then, here at my university, we are planning to use one moodle server for the whole university and the publishing of question categories for all the courses is not interesting for us because some of the students of one course can be teachers at another institute and could get the questions before the test. So I think it would be interesting to link a question category to a course category.
Where can should I begin? I think the offline quiz would be the best because noone is developping something similar. Am I right? Who should I contact to get some help? I've already read the developper documentation for the quiz module.
Thx in advance.
Nico
Nicolas, if I understand your post correctly, then you are proposing two things:
1) a way to develop quiz questions off-line and to import them into Moodle.
2) allow a teacher to publish a question category not to all other courses but only to those in a particular category.
Many teachers are already doing something similar to 1), I believe, there are posts about that in this forum. There is, as far as I know, no code yet to do 2). If you want to implement that I could certainly point you in the right direction. But perhaps rather than extending this concept of published question categories what you really want to do is develop a Moodle question repository.
You can contact me on Skype if you want to talk through some details.
1) a way to develop quiz questions off-line and to import them into Moodle.
2) allow a teacher to publish a question category not to all other courses but only to those in a particular category.
Many teachers are already doing something similar to 1), I believe, there are posts about that in this forum. There is, as far as I know, no code yet to do 2). If you want to implement that I could certainly point you in the right direction. But perhaps rather than extending this concept of published question categories what you really want to do is develop a Moodle question repository.
You can contact me on Skype if you want to talk through some details.
Hi Gustav,
I meant something else for the 1. point: I want to create a possibility to print exam on papers and let the students answer on the answer sheet. Then those sheets will be scanned and with an OCR/evaluation program those sheets will be transformed into electronic data that can be imported into Moodle (The import function has to be developed as well). I hope it does not exist right now. This is a special need of my university beacause we do not have enough money to have rooms equiped with 2 or 300 computers. So for courses with 800 students, it is not possible to offer an online exam.
What would also be interesting is to limit the access to a quiz to a special room, using IP-Address or something similar.
The 2. point ist right. I read something about the separation of questions and tests, maybe it would be a better solution. Do you mean this with question repository? The second problem of my idea is that if a course is being deleted, the questions of this course will also be deleted.
So tell me where you think I should begin. Right now, I'm studying the source code to find out, where I have to change things.
Thx for your help.
Nico
PS: I don't think I'm good enough in english to skype with you and my skype does not work well under linux, I don't know why.
I meant something else for the 1. point: I want to create a possibility to print exam on papers and let the students answer on the answer sheet. Then those sheets will be scanned and with an OCR/evaluation program those sheets will be transformed into electronic data that can be imported into Moodle (The import function has to be developed as well). I hope it does not exist right now. This is a special need of my university beacause we do not have enough money to have rooms equiped with 2 or 300 computers. So for courses with 800 students, it is not possible to offer an online exam.
What would also be interesting is to limit the access to a quiz to a special room, using IP-Address or something similar.
The 2. point ist right. I read something about the separation of questions and tests, maybe it would be a better solution. Do you mean this with question repository? The second problem of my idea is that if a course is being deleted, the questions of this course will also be deleted.
So tell me where you think I should begin. Right now, I'm studying the source code to find out, where I have to change things.
Thx for your help.
Nico
PS: I don't think I'm good enough in english to skype with you and my skype does not work well under linux, I don't know why.
The ability to run off-line quizzes and to scan in the answers via an OCR scanner would be useful also to us here in York and probably at many other universities who need to run quizzes for large numbers of students.
As an easy route into understanding how the quiz module functions I recommend looking at the code of the questiondemo module that you can find at http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/moodle/contrib/questiondemo. It strips off all the complication in the quiz module and allows you to see the essential bits. The interesting code is view.php. It shows you which functions need to be called. You can then dive into the core quiz module code to look at these functions.
Whenever you understand something about the quiz module code, please try to improve its developer documentation at http://docs.moodle.org/en/Quiz_developer_docs
Any further discussion we should conduct in the quiz module forum.
As an easy route into understanding how the quiz module functions I recommend looking at the code of the questiondemo module that you can find at http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/moodle/contrib/questiondemo. It strips off all the complication in the quiz module and allows you to see the essential bits. The interesting code is view.php. It shows you which functions need to be called. You can then dive into the core quiz module code to look at these functions.
Whenever you understand something about the quiz module code, please try to improve its developer documentation at http://docs.moodle.org/en/Quiz_developer_docs
Any further discussion we should conduct in the quiz module forum.
Hi,
A) it is easy to make a printable version of quiz - just print it
(if usually Youy split quizes to several pages, some option, like "4print", might help, which would say to put all questions on one page)
B) probably OCR software to deal with scanned quizes/questionnaires is available somewhere - but as I imagine it should be trained for each quiz, as there is usually some graphical noise... Some layout elements probably should be optimized, for OCR to locate the anwers more efficiently/clearly
And then "chose the answer.." question types are ok, but open questions (like short answer) probably won't do without human seconcheck by human.
if there's a lack of PC's, there are several alternatives:
C) buy just terminals (no need for much CPU, hdd and software)
D) organize students to take exams group by group.. (if questions are randomized, no big worry that they will cheat..)
A) it is easy to make a printable version of quiz - just print it
B) probably OCR software to deal with scanned quizes/questionnaires is available somewhere - but as I imagine it should be trained for each quiz, as there is usually some graphical noise... Some layout elements probably should be optimized, for OCR to locate the anwers more efficiently/clearly
And then "chose the answer.." question types are ok, but open questions (like short answer) probably won't do without human seconcheck by human.
if there's a lack of PC's, there are several alternatives:
C) buy just terminals (no need for much CPU, hdd and software)
D) organize students to take exams group by group.. (if questions are randomized, no big worry that they will cheat..)
Hi Jurgis,
Yes I know it is not difficult to print the exams. The biggest problem ist B): How can I use the OCR software so it can recognize more than just MC and True-False answers. If I only have MC and TF-Answers it is easy, you just print a standardized answer sheet, so it is always the same for all and really easy to recognize for the OCR.
C) is maybe a solution but then, we need more rooms where we have the computers...
D) is not possible, I think, because we have too many students. We have about 15000 students and lets says a third have MC-exams so 5000. The exam time is during the last 2 weeks of the semester and 1 students will attend 3 or 4 courses with online exam. I can't believe it can work in 2 weeks...
Thx for the response.
Nico
Yes I know it is not difficult to print the exams. The biggest problem ist B): How can I use the OCR software so it can recognize more than just MC and True-False answers. If I only have MC and TF-Answers it is easy, you just print a standardized answer sheet, so it is always the same for all and really easy to recognize for the OCR.
C) is maybe a solution but then, we need more rooms where we have the computers...
D) is not possible, I think, because we have too many students. We have about 15000 students and lets says a third have MC-exams so 5000. The exam time is during the last 2 weeks of the semester and 1 students will attend 3 or 4 courses with online exam. I can't believe it can work in 2 weeks...
Thx for the response.
Nico
check out http://ldp.library.jhu.edu/projects/gamera/
or http://gamera.sf.net - I think it may help (though mainly choice questions, open answers - must deal with handwritten character recognition - or maybe you can ask to write in capital letters..)
or http://gamera.sf.net - I think it may help (though mainly choice questions, open answers - must deal with handwritten character recognition - or maybe you can ask to write in capital letters..)