MacQTEX: Online self-marking Quizzes, using pdfTEX and exerquiz

The MacQTEX quiz system uses JavaScript [1, 9] embedded within PDF format [4] documents to allow students to do multiple-choice style quizzes. The Internet may be used to supply the quiz document, and to record results. But even when not connected, there is immediate feedback as to how many questions were answered correctly and what are the correct answers, as well as providing worked solutions indicating how the correct answers could be deduced. The highest quality of typesetting is employed in the quizzes by using the TEX typesetting software [7], via the pdfTEX variant [6], to control the generation of the PDF documents [4]. Other software, such as Perl [12] and Mathematica [13], can be used to control the production of unique instances of a particular quiz so that each student gets slightly different questions to answer. PDF Quizzes At Macquarie University the Mathematics Department has been developing a web-based system for producing quizzes which allow students to test their knowledge of mathematical ideas commonly used in courses that we teach. Currently these quizzes are used mainly at the most elementary level, for revision of the basic skills which the students should have acquired from courses at high school. The current version of this quiz facility provides students with a multiple-choice answer quiz, of typically 10–12 questions, as a PDF document [4] downloaded from a web-site (figure 1). This document is an interactive form, controlled using embedded JavaScript [1, 9], which allows a student to read and work with the document, using the Acrobat Reader plug-in [2] to his/her favourite web-browser (figure 2). Figures 2–7 show some views of such a quiz, as it appears to the student before, during and after attempting to answer the questions. 1 This project has received funding via a ‘Targeted Flagship Grant’ from the Center for Flexible Learning, Macquarie University, and the Division of Information and Communication Sciences, Macquarie University as well as an equipment grant from Apple Computer, Australia Pty Ltd, via the Apple Universities Consortium. In this paper we will concentrate mainly on the TEXnical aspects of the MacQTEX quiz system. For other aspects of the full system, such as the rationale for using quizzes at all, and features available to an instructor when preparing a set of quizzes for use by students, figures 13–15 show presentation slides prepared for talks at educational meetings. pdfTEX, exerquiz and JavaScript A quiz document is typeset using pdf-LATEX [6], with the exerquiz [10] macros to handle the embedded JavaScript [1, 9] actions needed to produce appropriate interactivity. In this setting, JavaScript controls • the appearance of check-boxes, as the student selects his/her answers; • counting the number of correct choices selected, and displaying an appropriate message; • showing which of the student’s selections were correct, which were wrong, and which were the correct choices for each question; • resetting the form, for further attempts at the same set of questions. Donald Story [10] has explained some of these methods elsewhere in this volume. 2 . . . using the Marslides package [8]. 168 TUGboat, Volume 22 (2001), No. 3—Proceedings of the 2001 Annual Meeting MacQTEX: Online self-marking Quizzes, using pdfTEX and exerquiz Figure 1: Quiz-site (at http://www.maths.mq.edu.au/~fgriffin/quizzes/MATH130quizzes.html) from which students can download the compulsory quiz documents. Username/password are required for recording accesses and results. Also from this site they may download practice quizzes, devoted to a particular mathematical concept. Guest access is also allowed for all quizzes. MacQTEX self-testing quizzes MATH130 Assumed Knowledge Basic Skills 1 Legend: After marking the quiz, 4 indicates that the student gave the correct response; while 8 indicates incorrect—in this case, the correct answer is marked with a l. Copyright c © 1999 exerquiz (D.P.Story), 2000 MacQTEX Last Revision Date: June 27, 2001 Figure 2: An opening page to a typical quiz. In fact we have added some extra features not found in the released versions of exerquiz. Hence the macro file that we actually use is named exerquizX, 3 Basic Skills 1 Begin Quiz 1. Evaluate 53 − 11 9