WebRespond: Quick Start

When you begin using a new program, you want to know how useful it will be to you. This quick start page will give you the bare bones procedure for putting your own quizzes on the web. Once you understand the basic operation of this program, you can dress up the appearance and functionality of your quizzes by using the templates provided on WebRespond's homepage.

The following procedure assumes you know how to add a link to a web page and to submit your web pages to a network site. If you are not familiar with these two procedures, contact your internet provider or contact your network personel for the appropriate instructions.

1. Write your quiz questions.

Begin by deciding how many questions you want to ask and what type of questions they will be. You can have a maximum of 200 questions and they can consist of any combination of multiple choice and true false. Each question must be in a separate file and they must be in plain text or ASCII format. If you are using a word processor, make sure you save each question file in a plain text format. Each question file must have a unique file name.

a. Multiple Choice

If your question is a multiple choice question, cut and paste the following code into your word processor and replace the bold faced text with your question and its corresponding correct and incorrect answers. Don't worry if your question and answer text is too long. Anything between the opening and closing of a tag is recognized. If you have less than three incorrect answers, delete the lines containing the extra incorrect answers. If you have more incorrect answers, copy additional incorrect answer lines. You can have a maximum of 5 incorrect answers.

<type>multiple choice</type>
<question>Ask your question here.</question>
<correct>Place the correct answer here.</correct>
<incorrect>Place the 1st incorrect answer here.</incorrect>
<incorrect>Place the 2nd incorrect answer here.</incorrect>
<incorrect>Place the 3rd incorrect answer here.</incorrect>

b. True False

If your question is a true false question, cut and paste the following code into your word processor and replace the bold faced text with your true and false answers. If you only have a true or a false answer, delete the line that is not used.

<type>true false</type>
<correct>Place the true answer here.</correct>
<incorrect>Place the false answer here.</incorrect>

c. Short Answer

If your question is a short answer question, cut and paste the following code into your word processor and replace the bold faced text with the acceptable answers for your question. Short answer questions can consist of more than one part. The next part begins with the next label tag. Any additional tags are associated with "label" tag preceeding it.

<type>short answer</type>
<question>Ask your question here.</question>
<label>Place the label for your short answer text field here.</label>
<answer>Place your first acceptable answer here.</answer>
<answer>Place your second acceptable answer here.</answer>

d. Essay

If your question is an essay question, cut and paste the following code into your word processor and replace the bold faced text with the acceptable key words or phrases for your question. Essay questions can be self-graded by comparing the student's entry with all the key words. If all the key words are used by the student, then the question is correct.

<type>essay</type>
<question>Ask your question here.</question>
<answer>Place your first key phrase here.</answer>
<answer>Place your second key phrase here.</answer>

e. Computation

If your question is a computation question, cut and paste the following code into your word processor and replace the bold faced text with the acceptable key words or phrases for your question. Computation questions can be self-graded by comparing the student's entry with the result generated from the combination of the equation and the variables.

<type>computation</type>
<question>Ask your question here.  Use &name; to use the variable 'name' defined below</question>
<variable>Define your variable name here.</variable>
<bounds>Define the bounds of your variable here.</bounds>
<label>Place the label for your answer text field here.</label>
<mode>equation</mode>
<answer>Place an algebraic equation here.  Use &name; to use the variable 'name' defined above</answer>

2. Write the quiz master file.

The master file tells WebRespond the names of your quiz questions. You need to list each file name surrounded by a question tag. Just take the line of code given below and paste it into a word processor document. Replace the bold face type with the full name of your first quiz question. Repeat this procedure for the rest of your questions. Once you have listed all of the file names of your questions, save your master file in plain text or ASCII format. Give your master file a unique file name.

<question>File name of your first question</question>

3. Write the web quiz page.

The web quiz page accesses the program WebRespond. The following code again can be pasted into a word processor document and edited. Replace the bold face type with the name of your master file. Save the file in plain text or ASCII format. When saving this file, use an extension of ".htm" or ".html". This allows your web browser to identify that this is an HTML document. This code can be embedded into a previously existing web document. If that is so, you can skip step 4.

<APPLET ARCHIVE="wrespond.jar"
        CODEBASE="Web Address for the directory of your installation of WebRespond"
        CODE="WebRespond.class"
        WIDTH=500
        HEIGHT=350>
<PARAM NAME="name" VALUE="Your Master File Name">
</APPLET>

4. Link the web quiz page into a network document.

Now edit the web page that will reference your quiz. Add a link which references the web page generated in step 3.

5. Modify the appearance of WebRespond (Registered Version Only)

The appearance of a registered version of WebRespond can be modified by editing the file 'wrlook.txt' and placing it in the same directory as the master file and quiz web page. The most obvious changes involve the introduction page and the closing page. Just open 'wrlook.txt' with any text editor and modify the text between the tags <INTROPAGE>...</INTROPAGE> and <ENDPAGE>...</ENDPAGE>. Make sure you save the file in ASCII format. The directory containing 'wrlook.txt' should also contain the file 'wrlook.ser', which is generated during the registration process.

6. Submit your web pages to the network.

Place all of your quiz question files, master file, and quiz web page into the same directory and submit them to your network. At this point you can go to the web page which calls your quiz page. Clicking on the link to your quiz page should give you a new page which starts up WebRespond. Take your quiz to make sure that the questions are being displayed correctly. If it is not possible to load all of your questions successfully, you need to check your master file and your question files to make sure that all of the names match. If your question files are not in the acceptable format, they may not display correctly. You can look at the Java Console in your web browser for messages which will help to identify the problem. If your web browser is not able to load WebRespond, you will have to check the security options in your web browser.

7. Running quizzes from a local (or non-networked) computer

WebRespond can be run directly off a local computer by installing it on the hard drive. Place the file wrespond.jar, wrlook.ser (registered version), wrlook.txt, your master file, and any question files in the same directory. Run the command
JAVA -JAR WRESPOND.JAR 'name of your master file'.
This also makes it easy to review your masterfile and questions before submitting them to the network. If you want to make the registration active to run on your local computer, just press enter when asked to type in the name of the host computer for WebRespond. These instructions assume that you have either the Java System Development Kit (JSDK) or the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed on your local computer. These can be obtained from Sun Microsystems, Inc Java site JavaSoft. The JRE is 5 MB in size and can be downloaded from the JavaSoft JRE1.3 subdirectory.