If you are using the PRO or ENTERPRISE editions of our Weblearning System (9.5 or better), we have a desktop software toolkit you can download called Weblearning Tools (at version 1.1 at the time this article was written).

Here is the link: http://www.atrixware.com/site/subsites/weblearning/pages/addons.php

This tool currently consists of three utilities. The one I will discuss here is the PowerPoint to Weblearning Converter ~ an easy-to-use tool that will convert your PowerPoint slides into slides compatible with Weblearning!

When you first run the PowerPoint Convertver, the following screen will appear:

The top section is where you fill out your server and account info ~ once you enter it, you wont need to do it again (unless you have multiple servers and/or accounts).

Next, drag a PowerPoint presentation (file) into the red area indicated below:

Once you have dropped a valid PowerPoint presentation there, it will look like this:

Next, enter in a slide category  in the space provided ~ this will be the category (question grouping) the slides wind up in when they are listed in your Weblearning account. You can always change the category later, but, the image filenames use the category as well, so it’s important to not re-use a category name if you are uploading multiple presentations since the file names may be the same, thereby overwriting previously uploaded presentations.

Now click the CONVERT button. Depending on the size of the PowerPoint presentation, it can take a few seconds, to many minutes, to complete the conversion:

Once done, you will be able to preview the slides, upload them to your account, or start again. For this article, click the UPLOAD button, and then click the BROWSE button:

.. Locate then double-click on the export.zip file, then click the CONTINUE button to complete the upload.

Once the process is complete, you will have a series of slides in your online question/slide bank. Make sure you go to the QUIZZES & MODULES tab (inside your Weblearning account), then CREATE A NEW LEARNING PRESENTATION, and from there you will be able to select the slides you just converted and place them into the new presentation.

I want to mention a few things. First, the converted slides will not contain fly-ins, animations, etc. Also, while the converted slides will look very close to the PowerPoint slides in most cases, they are not an identical match due to the difference between PowerPoint rendering, and Online Browser/HTML rendering.

The benefits however are huge. By doing the conversion, your users will not need to have PowerPoint or the PowerPoint player, nor a Flash plug-in (they will simply need a modern web browser). Also, once in Weblearning format, the presentation can now be paused/resumed, and also tracked in the Weblearning system.

Easy Quiz Maker 9 has changed the way it handles printed quizzes. In previous versions of the software, each time you created a Printed Quiz, you were actually creating a finished document that could be printed or opened in Microsoft Word.  By publishing another Printed Quiz with the same set of questions you could create another quiz based on that same set of questions, but it required knowing exactly which questions from your Question Bank were used when creating that first quiz.  Easy Quiz Maker 9 has made it easy to create new Printed Quizzes based off the same question selection rules used by an existing quiz.

This comes particularly useful if you wanted to create variations on the same quiz. If you’re using Printed Quizzes, chances are you’re delivering your quizzes in a classroom enviroment.  You want each student to have to answer the same exact set of questions, but perhaps you don’t want two students who are sitting next to one-another to have the same exact quiz in the same exact order. That’s where Quiz Variations come into play. You can easily create one, two, or more versions of a Printed Quiz using the same exact questions, however have each version of the quiz present those questions in a different order.

To get started, go into one of your Quiz Projects and then click on the Printed Quizzes tab (this tutorial assumes that you already have a Quiz Project created and have added questions to it). The first thing we’re going to do is create a Printed Quiz that we can consider as a “base” quiz - you can think of the this as the first variation of the quiz. To do this, click the New Print button from the toolbar.

After you’ve clicked the New Print button, you’ll be asked to enter a Short Description (for mine I’m going to put Sample Variation 1).  After you’ve entered the quiz description and clicked the Next button, you’ll be presented with the question selection screen. Here you can choose to select all questions from your question bank, just the currently selected questions, questions based on their question data, or questions based on their category. For my quiz, I’m going to choose to add 5 questions from each of my two categories, and for those questions to appear shuffled in my printed quiz.

Once you’ve finished configuring how I would like to select questions,  click the Publish button to finish creating this new quiz. The new quiz will appear as an icon with the rest of your Printed Quizzes.

Now that we’ve created the first of our quiz variations, it’s now time to create a second quiz that will use the same questions as the first quiz only presented in a different order. Once again I’m going to click on the New Print button in the toolbar to create another Printed Quiz. This time when it asks me for a Short Description I’m going to enter Sample Variation 2, indicating to me this is another variation on the same quiz. After entering my description and clicking the Next button I’ll be brought to the question selection screen once again.

This time however I’m going to select to Use Another Quiz’s Questions and from the dropdown box select the name of the quiz that I would like to draw questions from. When selecting the quiz, you’re given the option to either use exact questions or  use same selection script. If you choose to use the exact questions, you will get exactly the same questions as you used when creating the original quiz. If you choose to use the same selection script, the quiz you are creating here will use the same question selection rules as the first quiz (if I was to choose this here, I would create another quiz that pulls 5 random questions from each of my categories but not necessarily the same questions).

In my case I want to use the same exact questions, so I’m going to select Sample Variation 1 (use exact questions). I’m also going to make sure I leave the Shuffle Question Order box checked to make sure that the question order gets shuffled.  Once you’ve selected how you want this variation to work, click the Publish button to create the new quiz.

Now in my Printed Quizzes tab I’ll see both quizzes I’ve created. Even though they both use the same exact question, the order that those questions are presented are different between the two quizzes. If I wanted to create a third quiz, I’d follow the same steps I used to create the second one. Now when you distribute these quizzes to your students, you can have three different quizzes on the same subject matter - each with there own answer key.

Atrixware’s suite of Weblearing Tools makes it easier for course administrator’s to use Mircrosoft Powerpoint presentations, import questions, and enroll students into the Weblearing system. The Student Mass Enrollment tool makes it easy for administrator’s to enroll any number of students in just a few easy steps. In this article I’m going to discuss how to mass enroll students from a list of students you have in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

To begin, start the Student Mass Enrollment application. The first thing you’ll be prompted to do is enter the Server URL, Login, and Password. For the Server URL, you’ll want to enter the url where you’re Weblearning system resides. In the Login and Password fields you should enter the username and password you use to log into the course administrator account that corresponds with the course you would like to enroll your students into.

You’ll only need to enter this information the first time you run the Student Mass Enrollment tool, from this point forward that information will be saved for you. Once you’ve entered each item, click the Next button to continue. The next screen you’ll see contains some basic instructions for enrolling students via Microsoft Excel along with manually entering and enrolling students.

In this case we want to enroll students that we have in an existing spreadsheet, so click the either the Paste from Excel tab at the top, or the Paste from Excel button located to the left of the instructions for Microsoft Excel.

This will bring you to the Paste from Excel tab.  The first thing you’ll need to do is enter the name of the course you would like to enroll the students into. If you would like to enroll your students into an existing course, you must make sure to type the course name in exactly as it appears in the Weblearning system (the same spacing, capitalization, etc).

You can also enroll your students into a course that does not yet exist (though doing this will add the students, it will not create the course). Once you’ve enrolled the students in the course, you can log into your Weblearning system and create that course as a new course (again, it must be exactly as you entered it in the enrollment application). All of the students you enrolled using the enrollment tool will already be added to that new course.

If you haven’t already done so, you should download the Excel Template by clicking the download button on this screen. When you click the Download Excel Template button, an Internet Explorer window should open presenting you with the option to Open, Save, or Cancel the Excel Template. I would recommend clicking the Save button and saving the template somewhere convenient to access so that you can easily use the template now and in the future.

Once the template has finished downloading, open the template file using Microsoft Excel. You’ll notice that there is a column available for each piece of data that you can use when enrolling students in the Weblearning System. Simply enter your student data in this spreadsheet or copy and paste from another existing spreadsheet into the appropriate columns.

Once you’ve finished entering your student data into the spreadsheet, highlight all of the rows and columns that contain student data, right-click on the selection, and select copy from context menu.

Once you’ve copied your student data from Excel, you can switch back to the Student Mass Enrollment tool and click the Paste from Excel button to start the enrollment process.

After you’ve clicked the Paste from Excel button you’ll be brought to the Verify Students screen. Here you can see if there are any errors in the data you’ve entered and verify that all the student information that you’ve entered is going into the appropriate fields. If there any major errors (such as either the username or password field is missing for a student) you’ll be alerted at the top of the verify screen and that student record will be highlighted in red.

If the data matches up, click the Enroll Students button at the end of the student listing. If you need to make changes, click the Go Back button and make any changes you might need following the steps above.

The last screen you’re presented with will notify you if the enrollment was successful or not for each student (If you’re enrolling a large number of students, there may be a delay while the enrollments are processed). For each student that was successfully enrolled a checkmark and blue Success message. For each student that received an error during the enrollment process, a error symbol and a red error message (with a brief explanation of the error) will be displayed.

If you’d like to enroll some more students into this or another course, click the Enroll More Students button at the bottom of the Enrollment Results screen to start the process again.

Atrixware’s suite of Weblearing Tools makes it easier for course administrator’s to use Mircrosoft Powerpoint presentations, import questions, and enroll students into the Weblearing system. The Student Mass Enrollment tool makes it easy for administrator’s to enroll any number of students in just a few easy steps. In this article I’m going to discuss how to mass enroll students by manually entering them into the Student Mass Enrollment tool.

To begin, start the Student Mass Enrollment application. The first thing you’ll be prompted to do is enter the Server URL, Login, and Password. For the Server URL, you’ll want to enter the url where you’re Weblearning system resides. In the Login and Password fields you should enter the username and password you use to log into the course administrator account that corresponds with the course you would like to enroll your students into.

You’ll only need to enter this information the first time you run the Student Mass Enrollment tool, from this point forward that information will be saved for you. Once you’ve entered each item, click the Next button to continue. The next screen you’ll see contains some basic instructions for enrolling students via Microsoft Excel along with manually entering and enrolling students.

In this case we want to enroll students that we’ll enter into the Student Mass Enrollment tool manually, so click the either the Enter Manually tab at the top, or the Manual Entry button located to the left of the instructions for entering a student manually.

This will bring you to the Enter Manually tab.  The first thing you’ll need to do is enter the name of the course you would like to enroll the students into. If you would like to enroll your students into an existing course, you must make sure to type the course name in exactly as it appears in the Weblearning system (the same spacing, capitalization, etc).

You can also enroll your students into a course that does not yet exist (though doing this will add the students, it will not create the course). Once you’ve enrolled the students in the course, you can log into your Weblearning system and create that course as a new course (again, it must be exactly as you entered it in the enrollment application). All of the students you enrolled using the enrollment tool will already be added to that new course.

The next step is to enter the student data for each student that you would like to enroll into the Weblearning system.  The only two required pieces of information are the student’s username and password. Below is a listing of all the available fields:

Username, Password, Email Address, First Name, Last Name, Middle Initial, Start Date, Expiration Date, Address, City, State, Zipcode, Phone Number, Custom 1, Custom 2, Custom 3, Custom 4, Custom 5, Custom 6, Notes

Each student should be entered on one line with each field seperated by a comma. To skip a field, enter another comma without entering any data for that field. Once you’ve entered all the fields you would like to use for a student, press the Enter key to move to the next line and start entering the next student. For example of different ways you can enter data, click the Load Sample Data button at the bottom of the screen and the Students box will be populated with some sample data.

The sample data consist of five different types of student entries that are valid to use when entering students manually.

Line 1: This student will be enrolled with only a username and password (which are the two required fields to enroll any student).

Line 2: This student will be enrolled with a username, password, and email address.

Line 3: This student will be enrolled with a username, password, email address, start date, and expiration date. As you can see we skipped over the first name, last name, and middle initial fields by entering no data for those fields (,,,,).

Line 4 & 5: The last two students illustrate what your manual entries will look like if you choose to enter most or all of the data the can be used by the Student Mass Enrollment tool.

Once you’ve entered all of your students, click the Submit Students button to start the enrollment process.

After you’ve clicked the Submit Students button you’ll be brought to the Verify Students screen. Here you can see if there are any errors in the data you’ve entered and verify that all the student information that you’ve entered is going into the appropriate fields. If there any major errors (such as either the username or password field is missing for a student) you’ll be alerted at the top of the verify screen and that student record will be highlighted in red.

If the data matches up, click the Enroll Students button at the end of the student listing. If you need to make changes, click the Go Back button and go back to the Enter Manually tab to edit your students. All the information you entered before will still be there for you to edit and align the student data the way you would like it.

The last screen you’re presented with will notify you if the enrollment was successful or not for each student (If you’re enrolling a large number of students, there may be a delay while the enrollments are processed). For each student that was successfully enrolled a checkmark and blue Success message. For each student that received an error during the enrollment process, a error symbol and a red error message (with a brief explanation of the error) will be displayed.

If you’d like to enroll some more students into this or another course, click the Enroll More Students button at the bottom of the Enrollment Results screen to start the process again.

Easy Quiz Maker 9 has added a new level of tagging and sorting both your printed and web quizzes to make organizing your quiz projects that much easier. There are five different color tags available to use - Blue, Green, Red, White (the default), and Yellow.

To get started using the color tagging feature, we’ll assume you already have a quiz project set up and have a created a few Printed Quizzes.  To tag a quiz as a certain color, click on the icon for the quiz you would like to tag (highlighting it), then click on the Set Color icon for the toolbar at the top. When you click on the Set Color, you’ll be presented with the 5 different color options available to you. Simply select on of those colors from the list.

By selecting Red from the list above, this will tag my quiz as red. Once I’ve tagged my quiz as a certain color, the icon of that quiz will change to reflect the color that it has been tagged. Assuming that I go through and tag a few other of my quizzes different colors, my Printed Quiz screen might look something like this:

As you can see from the picture above, I’ve tagged two of my quizzes red, one of my quizzes yellow, one of my quizzes blue, and left the quiz as the default white.  Now that I have my quizzes tagged in the appropriate colors, I can easily filter the quizzes displayed to me using the color options to the right of the Listing Filter.  This can become particularly useful if you have many quizzes that you needed to easily sort. In my case, I might have decided that red quizzes are on the subject of history, while yellow quizzes are on the subject on math.

If I only wanted to display history quizzes (in my case red quizzes) - I’d simply uncheck the boxes next to each of the colors that I did not want to display, while leaving the color(s) I want to display checked.

This tells Easy Quiz Maker to only display quizzes that have been tagged red, so my Printed Quiz screen will now only display 2 results so that it looks like this:

I can also set it to display multiple quiz colors at the same time. For instance, if I wanted to display history and math quizzes (red and yellow), I would check the boxes next to both red and yellow at the top while leaving the other colors unchecked.

This would change my display to show both the red and yellow tagged quizzes, making it look like this:

Color Tagging can be used on both Printed and Web quizzes.

Easy Quiz Maker 9 makes it very easy to email a quiz to a recipient (or multiple recipients).

First, a checklist of what you will need

1. Easy Quiz Maker 9
2. Microsoft Outlook (2000 or better)

Assuming you have already created a web quiz inside of Easy Quiz Maker, the next step is to highlight the web quiz you want to email, and then click the EMAIL button on the ribbon toolbar (shown below):

This will bring up the email form:

You will notice that I ..

1. entered multiple recipients in the ‘to’ field — which can be done by using a semicolon in between each recipient.
2. I Blind Carbon-Copied (BCC) myself so I will receive the same email.
3. I changed the default email message (which by the way, now becomes the default message until I change it again).

Here is the email I received:

As you can see, the quiz is sent as an attachment (quiz.htm).

Now, when sending a quiz via email, there are a few things worth knowing:

1. The emailed quiz cannot contain any images ~ it it does, the images do not get sent with the quiz
2. The recipient must be able to receive attachments

If you are wondering if you can collect the responses/scores of the quiz, the answer is YES, as long as you have configured the quiz to use the Atrixware QMS to receive the student responses.