Wikisoba project/Quizipedia

This page is kept as an archival reference.If you want to raise a point about it, please start a discussion thread on the community forum.

The development of this idea saw some discussion at the Future of Education Workshop: 21 - 22nd June at the Barbican Centre in London.

This is a proposal for a GIFT syntax repository, to be hosted by WMUK. GIFT syntax is used by the Wikisoba tool, and the repository would be to collect quizzes in one place, give basic security by placing the GIFT pages in private user spaces. Quizipedia is just a working title, as of right now. WikiQuizzes is probably to be preferred.

Setup

Plan A Quizipedia would consist of a MediaWiki site configured to allow ordinary account holders access to private user space. By configuration of MediaWiki, it should be possible to allow the user space of account holder A to be read and edited only by A and admins. The Wikisoba tool would be given access to an admin account.

This is now probably not what will be implemented. An early design decision is in the offing, to place a cut-out between the wiki and the tool, which is presumably going to be hosted on Labs (wherever the wiki is hosted):

Plan B GIFT code from the wiki will be copied across to another repository, to which the tool has access (via URLs that need not make any sense for any other user). This means the tool running in a browser will not directly be tracking the wiki pages.

Purposes

The extended GIFT syntax would allow for easy writing of “quizzes”, i.e. navigable series of displayed wiki page sections and questions. Typical uses:

• Comprehension tests (alternate pages and questions based on them)
• Picture tests (alternate images and questions on them)
• Translation/comprehension tests (alternate pages and questions, in two different languages)
• Pure quizzes (just question pages).

At this point giving scores and/or badges is not contemplated: see the overall Wikimodule plan for more on features that could be added.