MCQFM

1
MCQFM

• Multiple Choice Five Methods

2
Origins

• TML (Tutorial Markup Language) project led by the
  University of Bristol (1997/8) http//www.ilrt.bri
  s.ac.uk/netquest/about/lang/
• Had an idea for a language which would describe
  tutorials mixtures of content and questions
  essentially
• Neat Javascript engine for questions
• http//web.archive.org/web/19980611031649/http//w
  ww.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/ethm/jscripts/js-intro.htm

3
Missous Javascript

• Superb documentation but very much a technical
  understanding required.

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Multiple Choice Question

• 1. Multiple Choice Question
• You need the following parameters for this
  question type
• a question
• a list of possible choices and the state of each
  of them
• the feedback to display when the Mark Answer
  button is clicked
• a link which has to be a valid URL
• score1 which is the maximum score
• score2 which is the score if the answer is
  correct after a second attempt
• idx which is the question index (starts at 1 and
  then has to be incremented by 1 when adding a new
  question on the same web page)

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Parameters
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HTML

• 1. What is Tintin's dog name in the
  English albums?
• 
  
• value"0"Milou
• value"1"Snowy
• value"0"Struppi
• value"0"Spokie
• value"0"Melok
• 
  
• value"Tintin's dog is called Snowy in the
  english and american versions. He is called
  Milou in French, Struppi in German,
  Spokie in Afrikaans and Melok in
  Russian."
• value"http//www.tintin.be/Personnages/tableau_2.
  htm"
• Answer " onclick"mccheck(this.form)"

7
Euromet Project

• Very old EU FP5 project to teach meteorology over
  the internet
• Used a system of macros to enforce stylistic
  commonality across teaching modules
• In addition to the above general design
  requirements, EuroMET developed page-formatting
  macros to ensure that each module conformed to a
  common style. For example, the macros insert
  headers and footers, standard graphic icons, etc.
  The software used to effect the replacements is a
  PERL 5 script called esr2htm derived by EuroMET
  from a similar tool freely available from
  WebTechs Corporation. This script automatically
  replaces any macro names it finds within the
  source files with a corresponding block of HTML
• (http//www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/wollongong
  98/asc98-pdf/wrightwrightbell0027.pdf)

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Using Macros for Formatting

• See http//page.mi.fu-berlin.de/lernmat/oldbin/to
  olkit/fdt-full.html

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Question Generator

• Would generate a javascript based multiple choice
  page, from a simple text representation of the
  question, which would be preprocessed to have
  macros added, and these in turn would be expanded
  to have the javascript
• http//homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/comqsjb/quiz.ht
  m

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The Value of Simple Text input

• Grabbing a quiz or some questions from somewhere
  else
• Easily obtain questions sourced from colleagues

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The limitations of simple text input

• Sophisticated options such as negative marking of
  particular distractors, branching within
  questions are almost impossible to represent
  without losing the immediate meaningfulness of
  the question
• Similar example in Wikimedia a very expressive
  pseudo-tagging notation

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Existing Code

• cgi_quiz_cruncher.pl
• Perl script which reads input sent by a form over
  the web
• Two parameters the text to be converted, and
  the output format currently either html or qml
• quizCruncher.pm
• Perl module which surrounds the submitted text
  with Macros in order to be sent to the macro
  preprocessor
• macroCruncher.pm
• Perl module which just expands macros within a
  body of text

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Example

• ---MCQ---
• What is the capital of the United States?Its
  Washington2
• New York
• Los Angeles
• _at_Washington
• ---ORDER---
• Put the players together with their nationality
• Venus Williams_at_American
• Martina Hingis_at_Swiss
• Anna Kournikova_at_Russian
• ---CLOZE---
• Fill in the blanks here
• The quick brown _at_fox_at_ jumped over the _at_lazy_at_ dog.

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Q1 Becomes

• _JSMCQ
• _MCQB(1,What is the capital of the United
  States?)
• _MCQA(New York,0,0)
• _MCQA(Los Angeles,0,1)
• _MCQA(Washington,1,2)
• _MCQE(1,Its Washington,2)
• _QMMCQOUTCOME_(0,Answer 0,0)
• _QMMCQOUTCOME_(1,Answer 1,0)
• _QMMCQOUTCOME_(2,Answer 2,1)

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Q2 Becomes

• _ORDERB(Put the players together with their
  nationality)
• _ORDERA("American" "Russian" "Swiss",Venus
  Williams,0)
• _ORDERA("American" "Russian" "Swiss",Martina
  Hingis,1)
• _ORDERA("American" "Russian" "Swiss",Anna
  Kournikova,2)
• _ORDEROUTCOME("0" MATCHES "American",0)
• _ORDEROUTCOME("0" MATCHES "Swiss",0)
• _ORDEROUTCOME("0" MATCHES "Russian",0)

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Q3 Becomes

• _CLOZEB(Fill in the blanks here)
• _CTB_ The quick brown _CTE_ _CTFIELD_(0,5)_CTB_
  jumped over the _CTE_ _CTFIELD_(1,6) _CTB_
  dog._CTE_
• _CTOUTCOME_("0" MATCHES NOCASE "fox" AND "1"
  MATCHES NOCASE lazy" right,1)
• _CTOUTCOME_(OTHER,wrong,0)
• _CLOZEE

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HTML (Q1)

• nbsp1. What is the
  capital of the United States?
• New
  York
• Los
  Angeles
• value"1"Washington
• onClick"mccheck(document.question_1)"
  
  
• onClick"lmccheck(document.question_1)"
• 
  Your score for this question
• is size"3" value onChange"checkScore(this.form)".
• nbspnbspnbsp You needed type"text" name"vattempt" size"3" value
• onChange"checkScore(this.form)"
  attempt(s)

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QML

• Questionmarks proprietary language
• Simpler than QTI does not intend a question as
  being anything more than one interaction

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QML (Q1)

• e_United_Stat" TYPE"text/html"
• 1 What is the capital of the United
  States?
• New
  York
• Los
  Angeles
• Washington
• TYPE"text/plain"
• TYPE"text/plain"
• TYPE"text/plain"

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Bringing the Question Generator Up to Date

• Currently text?macros ?HTML/QML
• Proposed
• TEXT?BQL?HTML/QTI/QML
• And also
• QTI ?BQL ?TEXT
• QML?BQL ?TEXT

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BQL

• Basic Question Language
• A very reduced subset of QTI type functionality
  with still an emphasis on expressivity of notation

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E.G as BQL

• What is the capital of the USA
• New York
• No that is the financial
  capital
• Los Angeles
• No that is the entertainment
  capital
• Washington DC
• Yes, this is the political
  capital

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XSLT

• Then run transformations over the BQL to generate
• XHTML
• QML
• QTI
• And other transformations to turn back
• QTI
• QML
• To QTEXT

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Current Progress

• Establishing a schema for BQL
• Had some problems in getting R2Q2 to actually
  display user generated content rather than the
  content already packaged with the system

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This Works
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At first we didnt understand
Xml file inside the content package
Physical location of the content package on the
hard disk
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Now We Do!

• Help we might like
• 1) How to produce a simple consuming application
  for R2Q2 such that our generated qti gets
  immediately passed to R2Q2 and returns the
  requisite html that may be marked!
• 2) How to get such a web service working
  inside another web application such that
  interrogation functionality can be built in

28
Smirkboard

• http//smirkboard.herts.ac.uk8080/smirkboard2
• to work a bit like
• http//smirkboard.herts.ac.uk/multimedia