CAPQuiz

Computer adaptive practice activity module for Moodle

Version 5.0

The comment interface which existed in Version 4.1 and 4.2 has been removed. Version 5.0 is otherwise identical to 4.2. You may want to run v4.2 instead.

The reason for removal is that we develop the new QTracker module to provide a complete comment and issue tracker system for questions. This replaces the old CAPQuiz only comment system. We field test the QTracker module in the Autumn of 2020, and hope it will make it into the plugin directory from next year.

What is it?

CAP is short for /Computer Adaptive Practice/, a term coined by Klinkenberg, Straatemeier, and van der Maas (2011). Where most LMS quiz systems give the students a fixed sequence of questions regardless of how well the students answer, a CAP system will estimate student ability based on their answers, and try to find questions at the right level of difficulty.

In CAPQuiz, the proficiency is measured by a rating. Good answers increase the rating, and bad answers decrease it. To increase the rating, students need to give good answers more of than bad ones /over time/. We have used CAPQuiz as a mandatory assignment, where the students have to reach a certain rating in order to be allowed to sit the exam.

Estimating question difficulty is known to be difficult. CAPQuiz automates this process to some extent. The question author must provide an initial estimate, but CAPQuiz improves the estimates based by comparing how the same student answers different questions. Hence the rated question sets will improve over time.

Documentation

Documentation is available here, including installation instructions.

See the migration guide for details on how to update to a newer version of CAPQuiz.

History

The idea of an adaptive learning system at NTNU in Ålesund (then Ålesund University College) was first conceived by Siebe van Albada. His efforts led to a prototype, known as MathGen, written as a standalone server in python.

The first prototype was tested by several lecturers, and was well received by students. There were, however, many problems which we lacked the resources to handle. Most of these problems had already been solved by Moodle and the STACK question type, and it made sense to reimplement the adaptive quiz functionality in Moodle to take advantage of this.

Credits

CAPQuiz includes the work of many contributors.

Project lead: Hans Georg Schaathun:

Developers:

• Aleksander Skrede
• Sebastian S. Gundersen
• André Storhaug

Original idea: Siebe Bruno Van Albada

The first prototype was funded in part by Norgesuniversitetet.

The development of CAPQuiz has been funded in part by internal grants from Ålesund University College and NTNU Toppundervisning at NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology.