I’m looking for advice on creating multiple choice tests.
The big picture plan would involve a question bank that would have a few hundred questions and answers divided into categories. Depending on how things were covered and emphasized I could then copy/paste say 50 of these questions into another document and abracadabra I have a sufficiently new text that’s personalized to that class.
I’ve tried just using Word but it seems to mess with the formatting. Each question has a number 1, 2, 3, 4… and the answer groups are lettered a), b), c)… I’m fairly good with Word but my knowledge is not deep so when I copy/paste this gets all screwed up.
I’ve tried a Word “template” but that was even worse, as near as I could tell you had to copy/paste each question and possible answer individually into little predesigned boxes. 50 questions with 4 possible answers each would be a lot of clicking.
So my questions are:
Is Word the best place to do this or are their other programs designed for this? If I do use Word should I set the questions and answers up in tables? To keep the formatting and the auto-numbering consistent when copying from one doc to another would I want to have all the questions one “style” like Heading 1 and the possible answers a different “style”?
you have to decide on your key. and then the question and possible answers would just be data columns.
off hand Subject, Chapter Question number, seems like a possible key. But I don’t know what the OP’s needs are.
to create a test your query would ask for the chapter(s) and how many questions are needed. You might have 75 questions. Randomly pick 20 from the chapters you want for a test.
create a Excel spreadsheet first. column headers will be your data field names.
enter some test information into the spreadsheet. Not too much, this is just to test the design.
go into Access and build the database by importing the table. you can specify which columns are your keys.
try it out. run a query. You may need to adjust your design. Add a key, etc. Make certain its randomly choosing questions for the chapters you specify.
after you get it working you can enter all your test questions and the multiple answers. Don’t forget an answer key column that indicates the correct response. I prefer working in Excel and updating my spreadsheet there. Then import it back into Access.
Some people prefer updating the table in Access. Which ever you find easier is the best approach.
I could setup a test database in a couple hours. But it would be in Excel and Access 2003. I don’t use the newer versions.
I hate that damn ribbon and other crap Microsoft added to later versions of Office.
Normally I use Crystal Reports for my queries. Its what we use at work to write Payroll and HR reports. I have written Access queries but its been a few years. I primarily use Access to create a simple database.
Other Dopers here may be more help with the newer versions of Access.
What and where are you teaching? Over the last decade I taught (high school science, USA), I always had CDs that came with the textbooks that had test generators on them. I could mix up the questions by order of the questions, order of the answers, or both. I could use the book’s questions or my own, or do a mix.
Examview is probably the most widely used program for this. It’s designed to do this and exactly this and while it’s far from elegant, it’s easy to use. You can create a test bank, and then pull from it randomly, or by hand. It’ll make as many versions as you want. Everyone uses it because the major textbooks come with banks.
You can build your database of questions in Excel, then use the Word Mail merge feature to generate the test. And the answer sheet. I don’t know about randomly picking questions, but you could use the mail merge ‘edit recipients’ feature to manually pick which questions you want to include.