SOIT Design
and development by Tim Snyder and Mike Okane
(formery of College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, North Carolina State University.)
Additional code by Wesley
Alan Wright
Academic Computing Services, University of Vermont
Note that this tool is not designed to provide a secure testing environment, and should not be used for formal testing.
To generate a test using the SOITgenerator, you simply create three files which can be accessed via the web. You can use your public_html directory on zoo or your own server to deliver these files. The tree files needed are:
The HTML form may look scary at first glance, but you only have to make a few minor modifications to this file. Here's how the form looks:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> UVM, BIO 010: Test Example </TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>BIO 010: Test Example</H1>
<FORM METHOD="POST"
ACTION="https://scripts.uvm.edu/cgi-bin/soit/soit_test.pl">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="test"
VALUE="https://www.uvm.edu/~waw/archives/soit/q1.txt">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="answers"
VALUE="https://www.uvm.edu/~waw/archives/soit/a1.txt">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="email" VALUE="">
<INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Click here to start the test">
</FORM>
</BODY>
<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="https://scripts.uvm.edu/cgi-bin/soit/soit_test.pl">
http://www.uvm.edu/~youraccount/agi041/test.txt
http://www.uvm.edu/~youraccount/agi041/answers.txt
The question and answer files can have any file names.
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="email" VALUE="Pat.Professor@uvm.edu">
Think about whether you need a response, and if so, what e-mail address to use - test reports can generate a large number of e-mail messages in the case of large classes.
If you provide an E-mail address in your HTML form, each student that takes the test will be asked to supply his or her own e-mail address, and will also have an opportunity to type their own comments. These along with the test results will be passed to whatever e-mail address that you specified in the form. Here is an example of an e-mail message describing the student's test results and including the student's comments:
Subject: Results from ALS 010: Test Example From: mike_okane@ncsu.edu To: mike_okane@ncsu.edu Status: RO mike_okane@ncsu.edu took your test entitled "ALS 010: Test Example" They got a 3 out of 6 (50.0%) The user was logged in on s57001.cals.ncsu.edu ## Points Answer User's Answer -- ------ ------ ------------- 01 1 1 1 02 1 3 3 03 0 3 2 04 1 2 2 05 0 1 3 06 0 2 4 Total: 3 (50.0%) Their comments about the test were: I cannot remember ever before taking a test that was this exciting! No, not even those calculus tests ;) Signed, Simple Online Interactive Test Generator (created by Tim_Snyder@ncsu.edu & Mike_Okane@ncsu.edu)
The questions file is a text file, and can have any name, as long as this name (and the correct URL) is specified in the HTML form.
The questions file must contain: the title of the test, the test questions and a list of possible answers for each question.
The first line of the questions file MUST contain the title of the test ONLY. After the first line, the file will contain a series of questions, where each question is followed by a list of possible answers (multiple choice format).
Questions may not include a newline character - that is the question may be so long that it wraps across a number of lines, but you must not press the Enter key until the entire question has been typed. This is like typing a paragraph with a word-processor. The paragraph may wrap over many lines, but does not include line breaks.
Possible answers to each question come after the question itself. Each possible answer must start on a separate line, and each must be prefaced by at least one blank space on the line (in another words, answers cannot begin in the leftmost column - this is what distinguishes them from questions). A tab key is a simple way to begin each answer. Each answer can only take up a single line.
Here is an example of a very simple two-question test:
This is the title of the test
1. This is question number 1
True
False
2. Questions number two begins here. It is going to be a long question.
Will it be displayed properly.
No way
Maybe, who can say?
Yes, it will be OK since it contains no hard returns
The question numbers are optional to give you as much flexibilty as possible with your test design.
The answers file is a simple text file, which can have any name, as long as this name and the correct file path are specified in the HTML form. The answers file contains a line for each question, and each line simply contains the number of the correct answer. For example here are the answers to our simple two question quiz:
You can embed HTML tags into your questions and answers. For example, the test example includes links to Web pages and video files, inline images and other HTML tags. The example below shows three questions from this file :
3. What is this image?
<img src="http://www.uvm.edu/~myaccount/tick.gif">
Black-legged or Deer Tick
Lone Star Tick
American Dog Tick
4. Which of the following Deer Ticks is an <b>engorged nymph</b>?
A <img src="http://www.uvm.edu/~myaccount/cals/template/i-scap-l.gif">
B <img src="www.uvm.edu/~myaccount/template/i-scap-e.gif">
5. Watch <a href="http://www.uvm.edu/~myaccount/i-scap-f.mpg">this movie</a>.
What did you see?
A female Deer Tick
A male Deer Tick
A larval Deer Tick
Note that you cannot use relative addresses in any URL's, since these will be relative to the location of the perl script and not your own files.
Note also that you cannot begin the text on any line with an HTML tag (this explains the use of the a, b, c before each answer to the second question).
Last modified February 17 2006 02:12 PM