WhizQuiz© Documentation -3-

WhizQuiz© 2 Documentation

3. Working with a Quiz Log File

WhizQuiz© can generate a log file that records information including the quiz-taker's overall quiz grade and their answer choice for each quiz question. A quiz author can control what quiz attempts get logged. S/he may require that the quiz password be entered before the quiz attempt will be logged (see the QUIZPASS tag). S/he can also set the log threshold, the minimum overall quiz grade that must be attained before the quiz attempt will be logged (see the LTHRESHOLD tag). Authors may add elements to the logged information by including LABEL tags in their quiz.

Quiz authors can obtain the log of quiz-takers' grades several ways:

WhizQuiz© automatically E-mails the log file whenever the number of entries reaches 100 or the number specified by the author (see the MAXLOGSIZE tag). The log is sent to the author's E-mail address or one specified by the LOGEMAIL tag. After WhizQuiz© mails a log, the log is archived for a short time, and WhizQuiz© starts a new one.
At any time, the quiz author can force the log to be mailed immediately through an option in the Quiz Administration Area.
If the author updates or deletes the quiz before the MAXLOGSIZE number of attempts is reached, the log is mailed.
A quiz author can also view the present log on the web through an option in the Author Administration Area.

The information collected in the log is comma-delimited and arranged as follows:

quiz-taker name, overall quiz grade, date and time of attempt, hostname of taker's computer, labels that were logged, and taker's answers

Here's an example log:

John Doe, 67, Wed Oct 21 14:32:04 1998, hostname.edu, 123456789, section#2, Economics, T, F,,, t, *, A,, b, A,, C,, c1.5, i20,, c99,, c58,

The log is arranged with a place for every question that was in the quiz file. If the author chooses to only display a subset of the questions, then those questions not displayed are noted by the blank fields in the log. Questions (displayed) that the quiz-taker did not answer are marked by an asterisk (*) and are counted as wrong. True/False answers are noted by a T or F with a capital letter signifying that the taker got the question right and a lower-case signifying that they got it wrong. Multiple-choice answers are noted by the letter corresponding to the answer choice and case is also used to signify correct and incorrect. Numeric answers are displayed as numbers with out any symbols (decimal points are the one exception). Correct numeric answers are noted by placing a "c" before the answer and incorrect answers with an "i".

Since the log is delivered as the body of an E-mail message, it is a simple process to copy the log and to paste it into a blank plain text file. Import this text file into your favorite spreadsheet application such as Excel using a comma-delimited filter. From there you can average grades, note questions that may have been too hard or too easy, etc.

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