Tracking Student Self-test Activity
While the Self-tests module is a good storage place for them, you can post Hot Potatoes quizzes to any Manhattan message within any module. However, as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the Self-tests module has a hidden feature that allows you to track student use of your Hot Potatoes quizzes.
Each Hot Potatoes program has an output option that was intended to enable the results of a quiz to be emailed back to the instructor. This option is located under the 'CGI' tab on the Configure Output screen. First, select Configure Output from the Options menu:
Then click on the 'CGI' tab and put a check in the box that reads "Submit results through CGI to an email address":
If you click on the Information button, you'll learn the original purpose of this feature. Quoting directly from that Information file:
The CGI functionality allows you to send the score of a quiz to a PERL CGI script called FormMail.pl. FormMail will then take that information and send it on to you in an email. If you set this up properly, then when your student first loads the page, he or she will be asked to enter a name or other type of identification (such as a student number). As soon as the exercise is complete, the student's name or ID, the title of the exercise, the score, and the start and end times will be sent off to the CGI script on your server, and the script will send you an email containing this information.
Manhattan's Self-tests module was designed to work with Hot Potatoes' CGI feature. (CGI, by the way stands for Common Gateway Interface. It's a set of rules programmers follow to write form-based programs that run on web servers). All you need to do is put a check in the "Submit results through CGI to an email address" box found within the Configure Output screen, and then have Hot Potatoes output the quiz as usual. However, please note the following.
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Do not check the "Create a separate linked file containing the JavaScript code" option found under the "Other" of the Configure Output dialog! If you do, Manhattan will not be able to record students' quiz scores. |
Testing on your own computer
When you test a CGI-enabled quiz on your own computer, the quiz will open with a dialog box like the one shown below. Once you enter something in the box and click OK, you'll be able to take the quiz.
The quiz behaves normally until after you choose the correct answer for each of the questions. The moment you answer all of the questions correctly, you'll see the alert box shown below, or some other similar error message.
It doesn't work correctly because you don't have the FormMail.pl program installed on a web server as described in the Hot Potatoes Help file. This is normal behavior when you are testing a CGI-enabled Hot Potato that is stored on your own computer!
CGI-enabled Hot Potatoes within the Self-tests module.
If you attach a CGI-enabled Hot Potatoes quiz to any module other than the Self-tests module, it will behave pretty much the same as when you test it on your own computer. As described above, the user will first get a prompt asking them to enter their name. They won't be able to take the quiz until they enter something in the text box. The quiz will then behave normally, until they finally get all of the answers correct. When this occurs, they'll see some error message saying the server cannot be found.
Attaching the same CGI-enabled quiz to the Self- tests module (either as a file or as a web site) activates the module' s hidden feature. Now when you first open the quiz, the "enter your name" dialog box is replaced with this alert box:
Clicking the Cancel button will return them to the message they were reading. Students can only take the quiz if they click OK.
As indicated in the dialog box above, the moment the student answers all of the questions correctly, the quiz will end and the scorewill be recorded. This does NOT mean that the student has to get all of the answers correct on the first try. Hot Potatoes is a tool for learning; it is not a test creation program. A student taking a Hot Potatoes quiz can try all the answers in a multiple-choice quiz, for example. If the person creating the quiz has been diligent in writing good feedback responses, the student selecting the wrong answers can learn quite a bit in the process. When the student finally manages to get all of the answers correct, she'll see a dialog box that looks like this:
Notice that the Self-tests module has stored the name of the quiz, the time the quiz was taken, the score, and the amount of time it took to complete the quiz. The window in the previous figure also tells the student how she can view a history of this particular quiz - by clicking on the Info button while reading the message containing the quiz.
Viewing Quiz Histories
As covered in Did you get my message?, you can find out when others have read the messages you sent in any Manhattan module by clicking on the Info button that's available while reading the message.
You can also get the same information by clicking on the '?' next to the subject in the list of messages that appears when you first enter a module. When a Self-tests message contains a CGI-enabled Hot Potato quiz, the Info command will also show a history of every time that quiz was taken, including the scores and the elapsed time.
Students can see their own history of each quiz they completed. As the teacher, you can see (again, by clicking on the Info button) the history of all of the students in the class.
Also note that the Hot Potatoes records are also available to the teacher within the Event Calendar and Event List available under the Statistics menu (see Event Calendar and Event List). Unlike other messages, where only the first access by a student is recorded, the information for CGI-enabled Hot Potatoes is recorded every time a student completes a quiz.
