I'm involved in a project that will result in material being delivered
online via the web or in a stand-alone mode. While the content part looks
to be fairly straightforward, leveraging the testing system to support both
delivery modes looks like it is going to be interesting. I don't have full
specifications written yet, but in the short and sweet the system needs to
be able, from a central test/question bank to:
1) Generate stand-alone questions/tests in HyperCard/SuperCard that can be
shipped out on disk or delivered on a LAN.
2) Act as a CGI program to generate questions/tests for web delivery
(preferably generating HTML code on the fly).
3) Receive responses from either format, score the test, keep item analysis
data, and provide student feedback.
Of course, I'll need to develop easy to use user interfaces for
manipulating the test bank and data, but the main structure is the most
important thing at the moment.
I know there are some real hard spots in this, especially with things like
presenting questions and receiving responses over the web with any kind of
control, but I've seen some pretty interesting things done on some of the
"shopping" sites with keeping track of choices you've made. I also know
this is not something I'm going to write over a weekend, I have comitted to
a fairly long-term investment in development of this system.
I'd appreciate any references to web sites, research articles, or any other
resources that could be applied to this project, especially the web based
testing side of things (I've done a good deal of work on stand-alone/LAN
based test delivery some of which I think I can apply to this). Thanks in
advance for any help.
-- Bruce Carter, Instructional Software Designer (208)385-1851@voice Boise State University, Boise, ID 83725 (208)385-1856@fax http://mentor.idbsu.edu/BruceCarter/home.html bcarter@mentor.idbsu.edu