Shadows In Motion

a deep thoughts & spiritual musings Blog

AJAX has quickly improved the web with its many popular desktop user interfaces.  This is a very exciting time to be a part of the Internet as we get to watch it evolve before our very eyes and it’s a treat to get to sample some of these technologies as they emerge.

My previous Web 2.0 preview was of Zoho Writer, a web based word processor very similar to Writely.  Today I’m bringing you a peek of another service from the Zoho team called Zoho Challenge.  This impressive system allows one to create online tests, but wait, it’s really more interesting than it may seem from that short description.

Where do I start?  Well, by saying that if someone hasn’t done this yet already then they’re going to be slapping their foreheads and asking, “Why didn’t I think of this!?”

Zoho Challenge is in beta.  So I’ll say from the start that there were some expected bugs.  Still, the system seemed to work despite the few problems that I encountered - such as an error box being presented but the data still being saved.

With that “this is beta” disclaimer, let’s get into the actual service.

What Zoho Challenge allows you to do, in a nut shell:

1. Eastily create multiple exams - exams can either be timed or have no time limit
2. Categorize exam questions in a way very similar to tagging
3. Easily add candidates (testers)
4. … Candidate creation includes a calendar to schedule their test, up to years ahead of time
5. Peek in on candidates performance if they’re currently logged in
6. Quickly & easily see who has passed and who has not
7. View a clearly presented “report card” (my term) for a person’s complete test details
8. View a pie & bar graph to compare overall results of your tests
9. …more…

…and it’s all within a friendly AJAX interface.

When you first login to create exams you’re presented with some example questions and a message that you can change your ID.  Your ID is the equivalent of your username.  As a tester, mine looked something similar to iQEgFo so I took the opportunity to change it to Mysk.

After that was done, here is what the initial screen looked like to me:

Remember, this is logged in as the “teacher”, so it’s okay that the answer is pointed out in those questions.

From here I was able to edit, duplicate or delete the questions by way of the standard icons to the right of the questions.  I took the liberty of duplicating the first question and was pleased to see its duplicate instantly present.

The text that you see in the screen cap, “Yet to be added to question papers”, is a useful line that tells you how many exams the question appears on.  This, along with the categorizing (aka “tagging”) of questions, is very handy because every question that you create is added to a “question bank”.  That tool allows you to quickly add existing questions to new exams.  See Screen Shot.

Clicking on “Add New Question” produces the same fields as the “Add to question paper” button that you’ll see later.  There’s no reloading here, though; the page smoothly scrolls down in a way very similar to Winamp’s drawer animation behavior.  When you’re done it scrolls back up.  The animation speed, in my opinion, seems to be right on.  In none of my test questions did I feel annoyed at having to wait for the animation.

The fields for creating a new question

A point of small interest is that you do not have to designate which answer is the correct response.  Whether this was a bug or not I don’t know but I can see where some exams would want questions with no “wrong” answer.