ocPortal Tutorial: Quizzes

Written by Chris Graham, ocProducts

Adding a quiz

There are three kinds of quiz:

surveys, which simply collect results (there are no correct answers)
tests, which people may pass or fail
competitions, which have results and possibly, a winner

All quizzes consist of a series of questions.

Quizzes are a very powerful tool for you to bring a level of interactive community that few other websites have, or for which other websites rely on the services of external websites for.

Table of contents

ocPortal Tutorial: Quizzes

Competitive/game quizzes

Competitions are entered by members and marked; winners may then be chosen from the Admin Zone.

Example:

The website of a computer games studio could run a competition asking questions about their latest game. The top entrant would win a tour of the games studio headquarters, and three runner ups could win a copy of any game of their choice from their back catalogue.

Tests

Tests are marked as they're completed, and the results sent to the staff e-mail address.

Example:

The Mensa website could run a quiz to help determine if candidates have a high enough IQ to join Mensa. The quizzes would be automatically marked and the result given to both the visitor and the Mensa staff.

Surveys

Survey results are collected and available from the Admin Zone. As survey results are stored in the database, experts may use SQL to make statistical calculations on data.

Example:

A teen community could make a survey to find out teen attitudes on various social issues, to help them write a report to the government lobbying for changes to policy.

Time limits

You can set time limits, and also how frequently quizzes can be reattempted.

Note that if you change the time limit whilst someone is using the quiz then the limit will not properly be reflected for them unless they refresh their browser. Specifically:

If the limit is lengthened, Javascript would not know and give an error too early.
If the limit is shortened, Javascript would not know and give no error when it should have – but a server-side error would be given when submitting.

Adding to menus

To add your quiz to a menu, use the Site Tree tool within the menu editor. You will find your quiz is available as a link underneath the Site\Quiz module.