[pmwiki-users] Zap quiz

The Editor editor at fast.st
Thu Nov 16 11:48:03 CST 2006


Crisses, you are a jewel.  You basically laid out a plan for a whole
ZAPquiz processing module.  I never thought of preloading the weights
into the quiz values. You could have a field called quiztotal and
quizgrade (plus quiz1,quiz2, etc).  The first is the total points.
The second returns a grade based on some parameter:  %, lettergrade,
letter+,-, raw points, etc. Would probably need some way to retrieve
points from mutiple grades and come up with a grand total.  Maybe a
pagelist?

Ahhh, ideas are coming now!  Thanks bunches! My ultimate goal for my
FAST site is actually an online training school--so this is a huge
help! See more notes below for anyone who wants input on the future
development of ZAPquiz...

On 11/15/06, Crisses <crisses at kinhost.org> wrote:
> Quizzes (as in for a school) are probably beyond ZAP.  Unless you
> make ZAP more complex.
>
> A simple quiz would be:
> Question
> A. choice a
> B. choice b
> C. choice c
> ...
> Select: radio buttons for A-?
>
> and the question would have a specific score/weight to it:  20pts.

Easy, you set the value of the right answer equal to 20, or 20|answer
if you want to store the answers also. Otherwise it's 0|answer.

> But, there are other types of quizzes and to out-do Moodle you'd need
> to allow points assigned to the ANSWERS.  What if it's:
>
> Question (choose as many as apply):
> A. choice a (0 pts)
> B. choice b (5 pts)
> C. choice c (5 pts)
> (checkboxes)
> where people could just choose ALL the answers and get full credit
> for the question.

Do same thing, with a check that if a CSV response (from an array),
you get all the point values.

> or
>
> *=required
> Question (choose as many as apply):
> A. choice a
> B. choice b (*)
> C. choice c  (*)
> (checkboxes)
> where you ONLY get your 20 pts for the question if you answer ONLY
> ALL required answers.

OK, this is harder.  But you could use ZAP's built in conditionals to
handle this one easy enough.

> Then there's quizzes where the wrong answers are PENALIZED.
>
> Question:
> A. choice a (-1 pts)
> B. choice b (5 pts)
> C. choice c (-1 pts)
> radio buttons

No problem here.  Just do the same as above, with negative numbers.

> I could go on & on, but until you look through all the plug-ins for
> Moodle, which has a very VERY strong user community in the education
> field, you might not realize the types of exams being given that
> would need to be supported.

Well, I may not be able to outmoodle moodle on quizzes, but moodle has
some other very serious limitations, in my opinion.  I looked at it
extensively but found it buggy, unstable, and frustratingly limited in
it's layout options, etc.  My Moodle site never looked very stable and
I finally gave up as much as I liked the interface and ease of use and
went to drupal instead.  In all these areas, PmWik is hands down
superior.  And with a *basic* quiz module you could accomplish the
tasks of *most* educators I suspect reasonably well.

> I would like to create educational modules in PmWiki, but I do have a
> great deal of respect for Moodle.  For a CMS-like program, it's FAR
> easier to use than most.  There are extensive functional extensions
> to the program, and many times my lifespan manhours of thought and
> testing have gone into it.  I think Moodle succeeds in its mission,
> where I think that most CMS programs fail miserably, so I'm more
> concerned with covering CMS functionality in PmWiki than online
> school functionality.

Actually, I think with ZAP, PmWiki is now quite competent in the area
of CMS's, and your database recipe should do something similar for
those who don't require flat files.  Moodle *was* easy to use, but I'm
hoping PmWiki/ZAP can be just as easy (cut and paste and/or tweak a
snippet) and far more flexible and stable. And with the new ZAPchat
(and ZAPmail) most of the really neat things about moodle (instant
messaging, chat, forums, mail to classes, etc) should all be pretty
doable in ZAP.  I should go back and check moodle again to see exactly
what we might want to replicate.

> I really think that sector is very VERY well
> covered, where shopping carts and CMSes are really limiting and
> difficult to use, overcomplicate their duties, and turn people off.

Yes but shopping carts are a problem whether moodle or pmwiki.  And
I'm not sure about the limitations you are talking about with CMS's.
At least in PmWiki, if you don't mind getting your hands a bit dirty
with the code, you can do some really awesome things.  When ZAP is
done you should only have to tweak one local config file one time, and
not touch it again.

> I'm in New York, for example, and I have a customer in New York --
> I'm installing Zen Cart.  Zen Cart doesn't have functionality to
> cover the New York State sales tax system (unfortunately it's a very
> complicated sales tax system in New York! --> people are taxed in the
> region of DELIVERY within the state, and there are 80 tax zones in
> the state, which do NOT respect zip code boundaries).  I have to
> either find someone who has created a plug-in that allows it, or
> build one myself.  Very frustrating.  Unfortunately I don't have the
> time to build the shopping cart system in PmWiki to do what I need
> AND deal with the NYS sales tax issues at the same time -- so I have
> to pick my battle. (and no, ZAP's shopping cart system isn't flexible
> enough (yet) for what I would need for my client -- such as color
> choices, or would you like earrings with that necklace?).

Actually, ZAP is not intended for that kind of scale problem, and it
probably won't happen any time soon.  Sorry...   If I can make it more
modular so you can plug into it at some point in the process or
another, I'd be happy to do that.  I still have notes from your
earlier post requesting some improvements to ZAPcart.  Most of those
should come in time...

> I'm hoping to make a NYS Sales Tax calculator then figure out how to
> have ZenCart use it.  This way the same plug-in could be used for a
> PmWiki shopping cart's NYS Sales Tax calculator.  Thankfully, it can
> probably be done if the user is given the choice to select their tax
> zone -- in which case the tax fraud for mis-reporting the tax zone is
> in the customer's hands.  California has a similar problem, as does
> Ohio.  I don't know if any foreign countries have tax calculated on
> the delivery address rather than the business address.
>
> Bleh.

Agreed.  Who came up with this government we have today?

Cheers,
Caveman




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