E- TESTING SOFTWARE: HOT POTATOES
The Hot Potatoes suite is a set of six authoring
tools, created by the Research and Development team at the University of
Victoria.
They enable you to create interactive Web-based exercises of
several basic types. The exercises are standard Web pages using XHTML 1.1 code
for display, and JavaScript (ECMAScript) for interactivity.
You don't need to know anything about XHTML or JavaScript to
use the programs.
All you need to do is to enter your data -- texts,
questions, answers etc. -- and the programs will create the Web pages for you.
Then you can post them on your Web site.
The Help file
contains a more detailed list of new features and changes, but these are the
primary differences between version 5.5 and version 6.0:
- Unicode support, so you can create exercises in
virtually any language or in a mixture of languages. Unicode support is
only enabled on Windows 2000 or XP; earlier versions of Windows do not
support it.
Mixed question types in quiz.
- JBC (multiple-choice
- JQuiz( short-answer )
- JMix(Jumbled Sentence)
- JCross( Crossword puzzle)
- JMatch( Matching/Ordering)
- Jclose( Fill up the gap, check,
hint)
Other information
- We can change number of
alternatives
- Different feedback for each alternative
- Items are selected randomly
- Alternatives are presented randomly
- There is no database, only web pages
- Scoring is displayed
- More sophisticated
scoring in JQuiz. Questions
can now be weighted, and individual answers can be given a
"percentage correct" setting.
- Simple output
format. Instead
of the old frames-based format, in which the content of exercise pages was
written from JavaScript, the new XHTML-based pages are simpler and allow
easier editing of the output pages in WYSIWYG editors such as Dream Weaver.
- A timer can
now be placed on exercises, rather than on associated reading texts as in
previous versions.
