One of the most frequently addressed questions we come across is on the topic of importing questions into our Quiz/Test software and Weblearning application.  More often than not, the trouble lies within the formatting for the text file itself.  In this article, I’m going to show you how to properly format your questions and load them into the Import Utility so that they can easily be imported into our software.

Before we get started, it’s important to note that the Import Utility only allows you to import Multiple Choice/Response style questions. Any other types of questions (Fill-in-the-Blank, Essay, Pick List, etc.) will need to be added in manually.

The first step is to launch the Import Utility itself. Depending on the type/version of the software your using the process for doing this may vary. In most cases, you can launch the Import Utility by going to the Questions area of the quiz/test you are currently working on and locating the Import link, bringing up the Import Wizard. On the first step of the Import Wizard, where you would normally select the .txt file you would like to import questions from, there is a link that reads Launch the Import Utility (click here).  In some cases, you can launch the Import Utility by going to the Tools menu at the top and selecting Question Import Utility. In Weblearning, you can launch the import utility by following the instructions in the Import section of the Questions & Slides tab.

This will launch the Import Utlity, which allows you to open the text file containing the questions you would like to import, and format the text file into the proper format for importing.

Each question that you import should follow the 11-line import format. The first line must contain the question text, followed by a Hard Return, then a blank line (if your question or answer text contains line feeds/carriage returns, replace then with the following markup prior to importing:  [br] ). The next 5 lines are answers A-B-C-D-E, each followed by a Hard Return.  If a question has less that 5 answers, enter a blank line (Hard Return) for each missing answer. After the 5 answers, another blank line should follow. Next, the explanation should follow, then followed by a hard return, and then 2 blank lines.

Each question immediately follows the previous question. Here is the format (the prefixed numbers are there for example only):

01: QUESTION 1 TEXT
02:
03: ANSWER A
04: ANSWER B
05: ANSWER C
06: ANSWER D
07: ANSWER E
08:
09: EXPLANATION
10:
11:
12: QUESTION 2 TEXT
13:
14: ANSWER A
15: ANSWER B
16: ANSWER C
17: ANSWER D
18: ANSWER E
19:
20: EXPLANATION
21:
22:

So let’s assume I already have a text file with a few of my questions, answers, and explanations already saved and I would like to import those questions. My text file will more than likely look something like this:

First, I’ll need to open my file using the Import Utilty. To do this,  select File > Open Existing Text File from the top menu and then browse your hard drive until you find the .txt file you would like to import. When I open my text file in the Import Utility for the first time, it’s going to look like this:

As you can see, the questions from my text file do not match the 11-line import format. To verify that the lines are off or to view what types of errors I may have in my text file, I can click the Preview tab at the top to get  a question by question analysis of exactly what (and more importantly how) questions will be imported.

As you can see I have multiple errors in the layout of my .txt file, but just in case if I couldn’t tell immediately, the Import Utility will notify me with a popup alerting me to any glaring errors it might detect.  In my case. here are the errors:

First and foremost, both of my questions are using more than one line, when they should only be using one line.  In my second question, the explanation is also using more than one line when it should be only using one line. Also in the second question, I only have four answers (which is OK) but I have not left a blank line where the 5th answer would normally be. In fact, I’m missing a second blank line after both explanations as well. All of these things together are causing my question errrors.

For instance, the importer is looking for the first choice on my first question on line 5. However, it’s finding the last word of my question instead. After I go back and correct the formatting (moving all question text to one line, making sure I have the proper number of blank lines including blank lines for items I won’t be using, and making sure my explanations are only on one line) my format will look like this:

As you can see I have corrected all my errors, and now the data on the right (in white) lines up correctly with a blue rows to the left.  From this view it looks as though I’ve managed to remove all the errors in formatting. However, just to make certain I’ll click on the Preview tab again to see what errors might be found:

This time around, I did not recieve any popups notifying me of any errors, and I only see one warning sign.  In this case, the warning sign is alerting me that I have not entered any text for the 5th answer of my second question - which I did intentionally so it appears all is well.

The last thing I’ll need to do is denote which answer is actually the correct answer. To mark an answer as correct, I’m going to prefix it with [*]. Once I return to the software and actually import my formatted text file, that’s the prefix I will use to denote the correct answer in the Import Wizard. If my question has more than one correct answer (in the case of a Multiple Response style question), I only need to prefix all of the correct answers with [*]. Once I’ve prefixed my answers, my Import Utility screen will look like this:

Note: This step can be skipped, however if no prefix is found the Import Wizard will automatically use the first answer as the correct answer.

Now that my text file is in the correct format, it’s time to save my text file again so that it may be used by the Import Wizard. To do this,  select File > Save This File to Disk from the menu at the top and select the location and filename where you would like to save your formatted text file.

Once my .txt file is saved, I’m ready to return to the software and follow the steps of the Import Wizard, using my newly formatted text file to easily import questions, answers, and explanations directly into the software.

Once you created an online quiz using either Easy Quiz Maker, Online Quiz Maker, or Flash Quiz Maker, you’ll need to upload the files created to your webserver in order for your students to access your published quiz.

The first step to uploading your files to a web server is to find the files associated with your published quiz in Windows Explorer. To do this:

Using Easy Quiz Maker

Select the Published Quizzes tab and then click on the Web Quizzes tab at the top of the screen.  With the quiz you would like to upload to your web server highlighted, click on Copy to Disk in the Task Panel.

This will bring up the Copy Published Quiz to Disk window, allowing you to select where you would like to copy the files on your hard drive.  I’m going to use an easy to remember location; C:\Quizzes so I can find the files easily using Windows Explorer.

Browse to the folder where you copied the published Quiz files using Windows Explorer.

Using Online Quiz Maker

Select the Published Quizzes tab and then click on the HTML Quizzes tab at the top of the screen.  With the quiz you would like to upload to your web server highlighted, click on Copy to Disk in the Task Panel.

This will bring up the Copy Published Quiz to Disk window, allowing you to select where you would like to copy the files on your hard drive.  I’m going to use an easy to remember location; C:\Quizzes so I can find the files easily using Windows Explorer.

Browse to the folder where you copied the published Quiz files using Windows Explorer.

Using Flash Quiz Maker

Select the Published Quizzes tab and then, with the Quiz you would like to upload to the web highlighted, click the View Files to Distribute link in the Task Panel.  This will open a Windows Explorer window with the files you need to upload to your web server.

Once you have a Windows Explorer window open showing the files from your published quiz, you can upload the files to your web server using FTP.  To do this, open another Windows Explorer window and in the address bar type in ftp://yoursite.com (yoursite.com being the URL to your FTP server).

After you hit the enter key, you should be prompted to enter your username and password (these would be provided to you by your web host). Once you’ve entered your username and password and have logged into the FTP server, you should see a listing of files or folders.

Right click in the explorer window and select New > Folder from the menu and enter a new name for the subfolder you would like to upload your files into (you could upload your files into the root directory, but it is not recommended).

Double click on the folder you just created to open it up and simply drag the published quiz files from the Windows Explorer window of your hard drive over to the the new folder you’ve created on your FTP server.

You and your students should be able to access the quiz by going to http://yoursite.com/folder - with yoursite.com being the URL to your web server and folder as the name of the folder that you created and uploaded your files to in the last step.

Atrixware Quiz Management Service is an easy online solution for emailing, exporting, viewing, and storing online quiz results published from our Quiz Publishing Software.  This article is going to show you how to publish a quiz using Atrixware Online Quiz Maker that utilizes the Quiz Management Service.

To begin, I’m going to start Online Quiz Maker and from the Quiz Development tab I’m going to Create a New Quiz.  This will open the Create New Quiz window where I’m going to select to create a HTML Quiz.

After I’ve click on HTML Quiz, I prompted to an enter a name for my quiz and optionally a summary.  Once I’ve entered my quiz name, I’m going to click the Finish button, which will close out the window and bring me back to the Quiz Development tab.  With my quiz selected,  I’m going to click on publish to HTML Quiz from the Task Panel.

This will open the Publish a Quiz window.  The first thing I need to do is enter a title for my quiz, and optionally I can change the text I would like to have appear at the top of my quiz and the filename that Online Quiz Maker refers to this quiz by.  For this example, I’m going to leave the Visual and Content settings as is, so after I have entered my quiz title I’m going to click the Publish button.

I’m now presented with the option of having my score results emailed to me.  In order to use the Quiz Management Service, I need to have the results emailed to me (once your Quiz Management Service account is active, you can choose to disable email reports and instead view the results online).  I’m going to click on Yes, I Want the Score Results Emailed Here: and enter my email address in the box below.

I also have the option of asking for certain information from the student when the quiz begins (Email Address, Class Name, Instructor, etc).  It is important to note that only the Student Name and Student Email are stored by the Quiz Management Service.  If I select any of the other options, they will be visible in the email that is sent to me when a student completes my quiz, but they will not be available within the Quiz Management Service.

NOTE: If you choose to not ask a student for their email address, their email will appear in the Quiz Management Service as the student’s name at their ip address. (i.e. student@127.0.0.1).  You can then edit the students email from within the Quiz Management Service.

I can also configure what the student sees upon completing my quiz.  From the Upon Completion, Show..  drop-down box I can select to display a Complete Summary (which would include all the questions, answers, and explanations), Their Score, or simply a Thank You Message.

I’ll click the Ok button and be presented with a confirmation that my quiz has been published and I can view the published quiz now.  Once a student has completed my quiz, I can click on the Quiz Management tab and login to the Quiz Management Service using the email address I chose to have my results sent to.  By default, the username and password for the Quiz Management Service is the email address I entered when publishing my quiz.

NOTE: It is not currently possible to change the Passing Score for your quiz using Online Quiz Maker.  Therefore, by default, any quizzes utilizing the Quiz Management Service will have the passing score for that quiz set to 70 within the Quiz Management Service - this will not affect your quiz itself, but may affect some reporting from within the Quiz Management Service.

Atrixware Online Quiz Maker is designed to enable you to create a variety of Online Quiz types. For this article, I will discuss creating a quiz you can use on your existing SCORM compatible LMS.

To start, fire up Atrixware Online Quiz Maker, and click the Create a New Quiz link. On the first panel, make sure you pick SCORM QUIZ from the available quiz types:

Enter in a name, and click Finish. An icon representing your new SCORM quiz will appear in the list. Go ahead and add a few questions (click the Add Questions link and follow on screen instructions - its very straigntforward).

Once you have entered in your questions, com back to the ‘Your Quizzes’ tab, and click the ‘configure settings‘ link. From this area, you can choose how many questions to show, if you want the questions shuffled, and you can define the passing score.

Once you have done that, go ahead and click Publish > SCORM Quiz:

This will bring up the “Publish to SCORM” wizard.

The ‘General Settings‘ tab lets you configure the Title, SCORM version (1.2, or 1.3/2004), module type (quiz or survey), and the passing score (you can override the default here).

The ‘Functional Settings‘ tab lets you set up the # attempts you want to allow, assign a time limit, configure the question selection rules and order (including randomly selecting questions, and shuffling). Also, you can set up feedback (when to show the feedback, and what should display).

The “Visual Settings” tab lets you configure the overall look and feel of the SCORM Quiz, as well as set up what the response page (after selections are submitted by the student) will contain. If you are good at CSS, you can edit the CSS file as well.

Click OK once you have filled everything out. Once complete, you will be able to access your SCORM Quiz from the Published Quizzes > SCORM Quizzes tab:

There are several useful things you can do here. First, click the link to preview the SCORM Quiz locally (this lets you preview the look & feel, and function of the quiz).

When you are ready to upload the SCORM Quiz to your LMS, follow the instructions in the bottom panel to create the SCO zip file, and then upload the file into your LMS.

If you are a Test Pro Developer user, and have moved to either Easy Quiz Maker, or Online Quiz Maker, you will be able to migrate your tests so they will work inside of your Quiz Maker software.To prepare your tests for migration, first open up Test Pro Developer, and log in to your Developer profile. Go to the ‘Tests in Development’ area, and for each test, click Tools > Change Access Rights:

Make sure that ‘Shared Access‘ is selected for each one.

Next, you close out Test Pro Developer, and locate the shortcut icon. Right-Click on the shortcut, and choose PROPERTIES, and then click FIND TARGET in the dialog box (on Windows Vista, you can just Right-Click and choose OPEN FILE LOCATION). This will take you to the root install path of Test Pro Developer. Locate and double-click on the PROFILES folder, and then Right-Click on the folder for your profile, and choose COPY.

Now, locate the shortcut icon for your Quiz Maker software, Right-Click on it, and choose PROPERTIES and then FIND TARGET (or in Vista, choose OPEN FILE LOCATION). You are now in the root installation path for your Quiz Maker software. Locate and double-click on the PROFILES folder, and then choose EDIT > PASTE. This will paste the Test Pro Developer profile folder here.

Now you can start up your Quiz Maker software. On the main screen, Right-Click on any blank area, and choose IMPORT > FROM DEVELOPER 8 PROFILE:

On the Import window, click the Developer 8 Profile, and all shared tests will be shown. Simply click on each one, and click IMPORT.

Note that this process works on both Easy Quiz Maker as well as on Online Quiz Maker.

If you are using Atrixware Online Quiz Maker to create PHP Server Quizzes, you already know that Online Quiz Maker creates a fully functional admin panel for you to add students and view score logs. In this article, I will go over some tips and information not mentioned in the manual regarding making PHP Server Quizzes.

First, on the ‘score reports‘ tab, click on any column header to sort by that column. For example, click the login column header to sort by login.

To filter by a value in a column, click on the value. For example, to only show results for the login ‘ant’ (in example), click on ‘ant’. Of course, you can pick any data inside any column (with the exception of the summary report column).

Speaking of the summary report column, notice there is an HTML link there? Click on it, and you will see the complete summary report for that score record.

Notice how various columns show in the report, even if you do not check the box to collect the data? There is a way to get rid of them if you don’t need them - although this needs to be done during the publishing phase. Inside Online Quiz Maker, in the Database Setup tab, click the Data Relationships tab, then uncheck the boxes for each item you do not want stored in the database. There is more you can do in this section, but that’s for another article.

When you publish a PHP Server Quiz, one of the options you have is to limit each student to accessing a quiz just once. However, there may be times you will want to re-allow a student to access a quiz. To do this, from inside the ‘add/remove students’ tab, click the reset link next to the student. Note that this will reset the student for ALL quizzes linked to this database - which is what I will show you how to do next.

When you publish each PHP Server Quiz, you fill out the database to use. The database you use tracks student logins, and score results. So, if you point multiple quizzes to the same database, any student you add to a quiz (that points to that same database) will have access to all quizzes (assuming you provide them with the url/link to the login page). In addition, the ‘score report‘ tab from any of the admin panels will show score results for all quizzes (of course you can filter the list to show only a single quiz by clicking on the quiz name as described above).

If this is not your desired result - and you want each quiz to have its own student access list and/or score reports, simply point each quiz to a different database.

There are a bunch more things you can do with PHP Server Quizzes that I have not mentioned here - but I will be back with another article to discuss the rest.

In this article, I will show you how to make a web quiz with Easy Quiz Maker.

Note that if you are using Online Quiz Maker, the process is nearly identical, although you will have more options that will be shown in some screen captures below. Also, in Online Quiz Maker, simply change the ‘Web Quiz‘ style mentioned in the tutorial for ‘HTML Quiz‘ when following the instructions in the tutorial.

There are many options and settings during the process, so to keep this article size within reason, I will be creating a web quiz that does the following:

• Collects the student’s name and email address
• Shows the student a complete report at the end (question summary, score, etc.)
• Emails me the result as a complete report exportable to Excel

In this example, I will be using the ‘Sample WEB Quiz‘ that is included with the Easy Quiz Maker installation (you can use your own quiz, however).

Fire up Easy Quiz Maker, select a quiz, and then click Publish > Web Quiz from the task panel:

Like I mentioned, there are various settings you can configure on the web quiz, but for this article, I will be simply entering the quiz title ‘Sample WEB Quiz’ and clicking the PUBISH button:

Now, tick the ‘Yes I want the score results emailed” option, and enter in your email address. Also, I have checked the “Email Address” checkbox (the Name checkbox is always checked) in order to ask the student for their name and email address. I have also left the ‘complete summary‘ option at default (so student will see their full results upon completion of the quiz).

Click OK, then proceed to the published quiz (which is in PUBLISHED QUIZZES > WEB QUIZZES). The web quiz will be previewed along the bottom. You can take the quiz right there, but instead, so you can see exactly what your student will see, click the “Open with Web Browser” option.

If it opens in Internet Explorer, make sure you click the security bar along the top, and choose ‘allow blocked content‘. Note that this security bar will not appear when students access the quiz from a web server.

You will notice the quiz (which is very plain for this example - like I mentioned, I did not apply any styles or colors/etc, to the visual output in order to keep this article at a reasonable length) asks for the student name and email address. I will fill everything out and submit my responses (wearing my ’student’ hat), and as you can see, a summary appears (just as I setup):

Ok, now let’s put our ‘teacher‘ hat back on. When s student completes the quiz, the report gets emailed to you (or, to the email address you told it to). So, here is what I received from the quiz completion in my email:

Note the “View Results as Excel Spreadsheet” button. When I click on it, I am given the option to download the Excel document. To get the document, right-click on the link, and select ‘Save Target As ..”, and save it into a folder that you can easily access.

In my example, I created a folder named ‘quiz scores‘ inside of ‘my documents’.

When all of the students have completed the quiz, download the Excel Score Document for each student, making sure you place them into the same folder. Then, you can merge them all together using the Easy Quiz Maker Excel Merge Tool:

Browse to the folder that contains all of the Excel Score Documents, and then click MERGE:

Once you open the spreadsheet, you can perform quite a bit of analysis on the data by clicking DATA > FILTER > AUTOFILTER.

*** UPDATE ***

Online Quiz Maker is Now Available

For more information, click here.

*** UPDATE ***

~

With Easy Quiz Maker now available (our first product in the ‘Quiz Maker’ series), our newest product, almost ready for release, is Online Quiz Maker.

Online Quiz Maker is the next step up from Easy Quiz Maker. Online Quiz Maker is designed to appeal to the same audience as our Test Pro Developer PROFESSIONAL edition - those needing to create Online Quizzes (like HTML, ASP, PHP or SCORM).

Quiz Maker Software

The main goal of Quiz Maker series is ease of use. While Online Quiz Maker shares many of the same features of Test Pro Developer PROFESSIONAL (plus a few extras, and minus a few rarely used), actually using those features in Online Quiz Maker should be significantly easier.

The main features of Online Quiz Maker are to be able to quickly and easily create quizzes you can use online — including ASP and PHP Server Quizzes, SCORM/LMS compatible quizzes, and HTML quizzes (surveys as well).

Here is a screen shot of the Online Quiz Maker main interface where you can create and work with quizzes (notice the similarity to Easy Quiz Maker).

Try Online Quiz Maker

Online Quiz Maker is in its final beta stage now, and therefore, we are offering it as a public beta. This means you can get an early preview of the software right now. The remaining tasks (for us) are to finalize bug testing, and finalize the PDF and Online Documentation.

Download Quiz Maker

To download the Online Quiz Maker beta (the download is under 6MB), simply click here.

Note that Online Quiz Maker requires Windows XP SP2 (or later), or Windows Vista.

Click here to download Atrixware Online Quiz Maker

and Click here to download the PDF Documentation