WebRespond: Master File

The master file contains information about the behavior of the quiz or survey as a whole. You may control who has access to your quiz, the questions that appear on the quiz, the colors and font used to display the quiz questions, and the amount of feedback allowed to the student.

The master file uses a tagged information format similar to HTML. Each piece of information must be enclosed within a recognizable tag. If any text lies outside a recognizable tag, it will be ignored. This allows you to make comments within your master file without affecting the readability of the file by WebRespond.

The acceptable format for a tag consists of three parts

Opening - This consists of a left angle bracket, a tag name and a right angle bracket. If you wanted to open a tag called "Title", you would have a tag opening of <Title>.
Message - This consists of a string of text. Depending on the tag, this text may have to conform to a specific value.
Closing - This consists of a left angle bracket, a forward slash, a tag name and a right angle bracket. If you wanted to close a tag called "Title", you would have a tag closing of </Title>.

Putting these three parts together we could set the quiz title to "Sample Quiz #1" by using the tag <Title>Sample Quiz #1</Title>. Notice that the name of the tag's opening must match the name of the tag's closing. Embedding of tags within other tags is not supported at this time. Case is not important when naming a tag (i.e. Title, title, TITLE, ... ); however, the tag's opening and closing names must match exactly (including case).

Tags used by the Master File

The easiest way to set up a master file is to modify the provided template file. The following tags are recognizable in the master file and are listed in order of importance. You may get by with just the <Question> tag, but you will have better control over your quiz if you use some of the other tags.

<Question>question file name</Question> - This tag adds a question to the quiz. The text string between the tag's opening and closing must be the name of a question file. When writing the name of a question file, do not use any whitespace between characters. If your question files are not in the same directory as the quiz web page, you must use the address of the quiz file (both directory and file name) relative to the quiz web page. Currently a maximum of 200 question entries are accepted. Any extra entries are ignored.
<Mode>operation mode</Mode> - This tag determines the level of accessibility the student has in taking the quiz. The text string between the tag's opening and closing must be either review, quiz, or once. If the mode tag is not present, WebRespond will use the review mode.

<Mode>review</Mode> - This mode allows the student to move both forward and backward between the questions of the quiz. Once the quiz is finished and the results emailed to the contact person, the student is allowed to see their final score, review the questions, and see what the correct answers are. This is the default mode of WebRespond.
<Mode>quiz</Mode> - This mode allows the student to move both forward and backward between the questions of the quiz. Once the quiz is finished and the results emailed to the contact person, WebRespond goes to its final screen. There is no opportunity for the student to see their score nor for them to review their answers.
<Mode>once</Mode> - This mode allows the student to only move forward through the quiz. There is no opportunity to return to skipped questions. This mode should only be used if a later question could give away the answer to previous questions. If you use this mode, the student is at risk of not answer a question if it fails to load correctly over the network. Currently there is no way for the instructor to distinguish between a misloaded question and an unanswered question.

<StartDate>Date</StartDate> - This tag sets the first day the quiz may be taken. If this tag is specified, access beyond the Start-Up screen will be denied if viewed beyond this date. Dates should be specified in standard month, day, & year format. (Ex. January 21, 2001 ).
<EndDate>Date</EndDate> - This tag sets the last day the quiz may be taken. If this tag is specified, access beyond the Start-Up screen will be denied if viewed beyond this date. Dates should be specified in standard month, day, & year format. (Ex. January 25, 2002 ).
<Timer>Time</Timer> - This tag allows a time limit to be imposed on the quiz. The time should be specified in terms of minutes and seconds separated by a colon. (Ex. 125:10) If you desire each question to have a fixed time alotted to it, place a 'q' before your specification of the time. (Ex. q1:15) If this option is specified, a timer will be displayed on the question page and will decrement in one second intervals. When the timer goes below one minute, it will change to red to indicate that time is running out. When the timer runs out, it will automatically advance to the option page. If a per question time is imposed, the timer will advance to the next question. For the per question timer option to be affective, it must be implemented along with the <mode>once</mode> option described above. Otherwise, the student will be able to reset the timer by moving back to a previous question.
<LoginField>login option</LoginField> - This tag sets options related to the student's login procedure. Currently two options are available, name and usecase. Since these options are unique, this tag can be specified once for each different option.

<LoginField>name</LoginField> - This option forces a login name field to be present on the start-up page. This makes it possible to request a user name without requiring a password. This user name is reported as the student ID when results are sent to the specified email address.
<Loginfield>usecase</LoginField> - This option forces the login name and passwords to be case sensitive. If it is not specified, differences in upper and lower case will not be checked in the name and password fields.

<ReportAddress>email address</ReportAddress> - This tag sets the email destination for the quiz. When a student completes the quiz, an email message is sent to the address specified in the text string. The 'From' portion of the message will include the address of the sending account. The subject line of the message will include the name of the master file, the student name (if passwords are used), the total number of questions and the total number of correct answers chosen by the student. The body of the message will specify which answers were given for each of the questions of the quiz. If this tag is not used, no email will be sent at the end of the quiz.
<EmailHost>email host address</EmailHost> - This option is only applicable when WebRespond is run as an application. Since the security model for an application does not restrict connections to the original server, an alternate server can be selected as the email server. WebRespond does not take Fire Walls into account and, therefore, an alternate server connections must be on the same side of the firewall as the user of WebRespond. The email host address should be a string containing the net address of the hosting computer. (Ex. mail.cedarville.edu)
<CGIGateway>cgi-script address</CGIGateway> - This option allows WebRespond to use a cgi-script gateway in order to send its email message. If this option is used, it will supercede the EmailHost option as well as the default connection to Port 25 of the hosting server. If WebRespond is used as an un-trusted applet, the cgi-script must reside on the server that is hosting the HTML pages calling WebRespond.
<Student>name, password</Student> - This tag adds an entry to the list of students allowed to take the quiz. The first part of the text string between the tag's opening and closing is the student's name followed by a comma. A space is left between the comma and the students password. Neither the student's name nor password should have any white space in it. If this tag is not used, no password will be required to start up this quiz. Also when reporting results to the instructor, no student name will be present in the subject line. Currently a maximum of 200 student password entries are accepted. Any extra entries are ignored. A password must consist of at least one character.
<Title>text of the title</Title> - This tag gives the quiz or survey a name. This name appears in the upper left hand corner of WebRespond while the quiz is being taken. The text string between the tag's opening and closing may consist of any character; however, it is recommended that you stay away from the use of '&', '<', and '>'. If this tag is called multiple times, only the last call to this tag is used by WebRespond.
<QuestionFile>question file listing</QuestionFile> - This tag operates in a similar fashion to the <Question> tag except it gets question file names from a list. This list is contained in a separate file which is specified by the text string between the tag's opening and closing. As with the <Question> tag, each entry in the list will be added to the quiz up to a maximum of 200 quiz questions. When generating a file containing the list, place the name of each question file on a separate line in the file. Each entry in the file listing should follow the same rules as specified in the <Question> tag.
<StudentFile>student file listing</StudentFile> - This tag operates in a similar fashion to the <Student> tag except it gets student's names and passwords from a list. This list is contained in a separate file which is specified by the text string between the tag's opening and closing. As with the <Student> tag, each entry in the list will be added to the quiz up to a maximum of 200 students. When generating a file containing a list, place on each line a student's name followed by a comma, a space and a password. Each entry in the file listing should follow the same rules as specified in the <Student> tag.
<Font>font style, font size</Font> - This tag specifies which font is to be used when displaying a question. The font style must be either SanSerif (Helvetica), Serif (TimesRoman), MonoSpaced (Courier), or Dialog. Immediately after the font style you need to place a comma, a space and a font size. The font size may be any integer value; however, it is recommended that you use a size between 10 and 24. The default value for this tag is <Font>Serif, 20</Font>
<Background>R#, G#, B#</Background> - This tag specifies the background color displayed behind the question. The text string between the tag's opening and closing consist of three numbers separated by a comma and a space. The first number ranges between 0 and 255 and it specifies the amount of red you want in the background. A 0 indicates no red and 255 indicates maximum red. The second number ranges between 0 and 255 and it specifies the amount of green. The last number specifies the amount of blue. The default value for this tag is <Background>255, 255, 255</Background>. Since we are using maximum values for red, green, and blue, the default color is blue.
<TextColor>R#, G#, B#</TextColor> - This tag specifies the color of the text for displaying the question. See the <Background> tag for an explanation of R#, G# and B#. The default value for this tag is <TextColor>0, 0, 0</TextColor>. Since we are using no red, green, or blue, the default color is yellow.
<Image>file name</Image> - This tag specifies the bitmap image to be used for background of the displayed questions in the quiz. The image must be in GIF or JPG format. If using Java 1.3, you should be able to use PNG. The address of the image file should be relative to the web page calling the quiz. If the image file can not be found, the background color as mentioned above will be used.

The following tags have no immediate use; however, they may be used to document various aspects of the master file.

<Name>name of the master file</Name> - This tag specifies the name of the master file. The text string between the tag's opening and closing should match the name of the master file exactly. Although, a consistency check between the value of the <Name> tag and the master file name is not performed, it may be enforced in future versions of WebRespond.
<Author>name of the master file's author</Author> - This tag specifies the author's name for this particular master file. The text string between the tag's opening and closing may consist of any characters. It is recommended that you stay away from '&', '<', and '>'. This tag is provided to designate ownership of this quiz.
<Date>master file creation date</Date> - This tag specified the date on which the master file was written. The text string between the tag's opening and closing may consist of any characters. It is recommended that you stay away from '&', '<', and '>'. This tag is provided to document when this file was created.
<Comment>documentation comments</Comment> - This tag allows the writer to include comments in a formal fashion. Comments may be added between tags and not affect the operation of WebRespond; however, comments sprinkled through the file in this fashion will not be supported by auxillary programs which may only recognize formal comments. It is recommended that you stay away from '&', '<', and '>'.

Example: Master File

A sample master file is included so you may become familiar with the look of the file. Also an image of WebRespond in operation is given so you may see the connection between the specified tags and the appearance of the quiz.

<comment>A sample quiz for illustrating WebRespond</comment>
<name>sample.q1</name>                  *** name matches the file name
<title>Sample Quiz #1</title>           *** name of the quiz
<author>Steven Gollmer</author>         *** name of the author
<date>September 17, 1997</date>         *** date the quiz was written
<student>joseph, h219</student>         *** first student allowed into the quiz
<student>debbie, x41</student>          *** second student allowed into the quiz
<question>history.m1</question>         *** begin with a history multiple choice (mc)
<question>literat.s1</question>         *** next use a literature short answer (sa)
<question>commun.t1</question>          *** communications (tf)
<question>physed.e1</question>          *** physical education essay question (es)
<question>eengin.m1</question>          *** electrical engineering (mc)
<question>busstat.t1</question>         *** business statistics (tf)
<question>nursing.s1</question>         *** nursing (sa)
<question>psych.e1</question>           *** psychology (es)
<question>bibleot.m1</question>         *** Old Testament Bible (mc)
<question>biology.m1</question>         *** biology (mc)
<question>music.m1</question>           *** music (mc)
<question>educate.t1</question>         *** education (tf)
<mode>review</mode>                     *** review mode (student can check their score

<comment><reportaddress>gollmers@cedarville.edu</reportaddress></comment>
                                        *** the report address has been commented out

<background>245, 245, 148</background>       *** make the background dark blue
<textcolor>0, 0, 192</textcolor>     *** make the text pale yellow
<font>Serif, 18</font>             *** use a 18 point Times Roman font
<image>paper2.gif</image>               *** load in a background image for a question

The image included below was taken while the master file given above was in operation. Notice that the title appears in the upper left hand corner. From the information given at the upper right hand corner we are looking at the ninth question which is an Old Testament Bible question. The background color of the question is dark blue and the text color is pale yellow. If you are familiar with fonts, you will recognize the Times Roman font and the 18 point type is easily readable.