Feedback on QuizPlugin

We use the wiki for (among other things) cooperative development of internal training courses. One of the things our training people tell us is that "it's good to checkpoint" during the course with quiz questions. So we want a quiz formatter that will let us embed a quiz into the training in the wiki, as we develop it.

The sort of quizzes we need are simple; multiple choice, or questions answerable with a single string. So I have in mind something like the attached [very rough] plugin, which allows the use of %QUIZ tags in a topic. For example,

%QUIZ{"Why is the sea boiling hot?" someof="It isn't;Just because;42" correct="Just because"}%

%QUIZ{"Which of the following are English Counties?" someof="Peckham;Cheshire;Argyll;Wisconsin;Cornwall" correct="Cheshire;Cornwall"}%

%QUIZ{"How long is a yard?" string correct="3.5 pints"}%

which generate

I've also put in a "jump" attribute that lets you name another page or hyperlink to redirect to if the answer is correct. I'd really also like some way of restricting access to the rest of the current page until the quiz is answered correctly, but I haven't worked out all the details yet (need some way of remembering that questions have previously been answered correctly?).

Ideas, suggestions, etc. are more than welcome....

-- CrawfordCurrie - 29 Apr 2002

This is a nice idea and useful. If you require JavaScript you can pop up a small window with the correct answer. This is fast and does not require a round trip to the server.

Small suggestion on the syntax: How about select="..." for the selection? A missing or empty select would default to a text field:

%QUIZ{ "Why is the sea boiling hot?" select="It isn't;Just because;42" correct="Just because" }%

%QUIZ{ "Which of the following are English Counties?" select="Peckham;Cheshire;Argyll;Wisconsin;Cornwall" correct="Cheshire;Cornwall" }%

%QUIZ{ "How long is a yard?" select="" correct="3.5 pints;not metric" }%

Note the two answers for the text field, there are cases that have more then one correct answer.

Better not to use an empty string attribute. This is to make it ortogonal to other plugins, e.g. no surprize for the user. The function TWiki::Func::extractNameValuePair() does not support an attribute without value.

-- PeterThoeny - 30 Apr 2002

I like "select" - I originally started with "oneof" and "manyof" and ended up with "someof" and lost the plot a bit on the way :-). "select" is better.

Not so sure about the empty "select" instead of "string". "select" to me implies multiple choice. It might be better just to forget the attribute altogether and say "if select= isn't present, then it's a string match".

%QUIZ{ "How long is a yard?" correct="3.5 pints;not metric;about 100 feet" }%

Supporting multiple answers is a good idea; anyone got any idea how to do a case-insensitive string comparison in JavaScript?

-- CrawfordCurrie - 01 May 2002

RandyKramer pointed me this way and find the QuizPlugin very interesting and ties in well to some of the ideas discussed at WebTest

-- DennisDaniels - 02 Jun 2002

See also DennisDaniels' page QuizCreator.

-- RandyKramer - 02 Jun 2002

Following interest on IRC, i just (finally) released the plugin, after a spot of modernisation.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 22 Feb 2007

Peters comments moved to Bugs:Item3684

-- CrawfordCurrie - 25 Feb 2007