What Does AppletQuiz Do?

Teachers can use AppletQuiz' basic features to - simply and easily - present interactive quizzes on their web pages.

Teachers familiar with AppletQuiz can use its advanced features to add hints and explanations, images and graphics, randomized numeric values, and customized text and colors to their quizzes.

The applet below runs an annotated version of the quiz on the "What is AppletQuiz" page. Comments have been added in blue to point out some of the features of the AppletQuiz applet.

You need a Java-enabled browser to take this quiz.

AppletQuiz Basic Features:

For the teacher:
- Supports:
  - True/False Questions
  - Multiple-Choice Questions
  - Short-Answer Questions
- Question types can be freely mixed within a quiz.
- The teacher can easily direct the applet to:
  - display questions in the order they were typed, or
  - randomly scramble the question order
- The teacher can easily direct the applet to:
  - display multiple-choice answer choices in the order they were typed, or
  - randomly scramble the multiple-choice answer choices.
- Requires minimum special formatting for question files.
- Question files can be produced automatically by the MicroTest test-generator program.
- Embeds in any web page using a simple applet tag.
- Quiz window title is easily customizable.
- Uses simple, teacher-produced text files for quizzes.
- Question files are kept on the teacher's web server, so they may be edited by the teacher at any time.
For the student:
- Presents a simple, consistent, click-the-answer interface to the student.
- Students may use mouse or keyboard input.
- Students are given a summary of their performance after the quiz is completed.
- Students may repeat the quiz as often as they like.
- Students may skip questions if they choose.
- Students may quit the quiz at any time.

AppletQuiz Advanced Features:

Students can request teacher-supplied Hints and Explanations by clicking a button.
Hints and Explanation windows may be individually sized to accomodate graphics, etc.
Hints and Explanations may link to other Web pages.
Images (.GIF or .JPEG formats are supported) can be embedded anywhere in the questions, answer choices, hints, and explanations.
Numeric values in questions can be randomized so that the same question will use different numbers each time it displays.
Formatting options for images includes centering, and text wrapping.
The default font for the quiz can be specified as an applet parameter..
The default text size for the quiz can be specified as an applet parameter.
The default text color for the quiz can be specified as an applet parameter.
You can adjust the quiz window size.
You can specify the quiz window's starting position.
Text color within questions and choices can be specified to highlight text.
Text can be boldface, italic, or underlined in questions, answer choices, hints, and explanations.
Text size can be adjusted to highlight text.
Superscripts (exponents) and subscripts are supported.

On the down side, AppletQuiz is a very large applet, and so it loads slowly. The archived "zip" file helps somewhat, but the applet still takes a while to load, particularly on a slow connection.

The good news is that once AppletQuiz loads for your first quiz, it remains resident for any other quizzes you place in your web pages, so the long wait for loading only happens once per session.

last update April 10, 1999 by JL Stanbrough (jstanbro@venus.net)