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                    CREATING EXAMS OR QUIZES

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  It  is  really  quite  easy  to  create an exam or quiz for the 
students.  Moreover, you may use two different means of  entering
items.   Items  may  be prepared using your own word processor or
text editor or they may be entered from the keyboard.

  The  next screens explain how to enter exam items using each of
these two methods.

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ENTERING ITEMS FROM THE KEYBOARD 

  If you choose to enter items from the keyboard when creating  a
new  exam  or  quiz, you need only enter the items exactly as you 
want them to appear on screen for the students.  DO NOT USE  ITEM
NUMBERS FOR EXAM OR QUIZ ITEMS.

  When  you  choose  the keyboard entry option for creating a new 
quiz, the program will provide you with explicit instructions  as
to how to proceed.

  Once you have entered and retained an item, you must then enter
the exact answer for the item.

  You may enter as many items as you wish for any quiz.

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ENTERING ITEMS FROM A DISK FILE

  If  you choose to create a new exam or quiz using a text editor 
or word processor, you need only enter the items exactly  as  you
want  them to appear on screen for the students.  DO NOT USE ITEM
NUMBERS FOR EXAM OR QUIZ ITEMS. 

  Suppose, for example, that you wish to create the  fourth  quiz
and  you  want  to  store the items on a diskette in a file named 
QUIZ-4.TXT.  You need only create the QUIZ-4.TXT file using  your
word processor and then enter your items and the answers to them.

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STRUCTURING YOUR QUIZ DATA FILE

  When  creating  your  quiz-item  data  file,  you  must use the
following simple rules.

  1.  No line of a quiz item may exceed 65 characters.

  2.  No quiz item may contain more than 17 lines.

  3.  You must indicate the end of an item by placing an * in the
      first column of the line following the item.  

  4.  The line following the * must contain the exact answer  for
      the item.

  You may enter as many items as you wish for any quiz.

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  Once you have created a quiz-item data file, you may enter your 
quiz items as a new exam or quiz.  When you select  that  option,
the program will instruct you as to how to proceed.


EXAMPLES FOR QUIZ-ITEM DATA FILES 

  The next screen provides an example of how you would  structure
three items for your quiz-item data file.

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 Gravity causes objects to rise.
 *
 F
 Which of the following statements is more often correct?

   a  Horses are faster than Zebras
   b  Airplanes are faster than automobiles
   c  Uncles are taller than aunts
   d  None of the above

 (Press a lower case letter)
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 b
 A  great many different philosophers of science claim that there
 are four, and only four, ways of "knowing".
 *
 T

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TYPES OF EXAM ITEMS YOU MAY WRITE 

  The only real restriction on the types of items  that  you  may
write  is  the  format  and  length  of the item.  Each item must 
consist of 17 or fewer lines, and each item MUST be  followed  by
an exact answer to the item.

  Given this degree of flexibility in writing exam or quiz items, 
you can see that a wide variety of items may  be  used  by  ICES.
The  following screens illustrate some of the types of items that
you can create.

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TRUE-FALSE ITEMS 

  The arithmetic mean marks the 50th percentile of a
  distribution.

       T   F

  The median is computed as the sum of values divided by the
  number of values.

       T  F

  The variance of a sample is the arithmetic mean of the
  values of x = (X-M)^2 where M is the mean and X represents
  raw scores. 

       T  F

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MULTIPLE CHOICE ITEMS

  For a rectilinear distribution the mean and median are:

    a  Slightly different
    b  Exactly the same
    c  Considerably different
    d  Always equal to zero

  For a normal distribution the mean and median are:

    a  Slightly different
    b  Exactly the same
    c  Considerably different
    d  Always equal to zero

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NUMBER PROBLEMS

  Compute the mean of the following values and enter your answer
  to three decimal positions.

    12 43 56 83 11 24

  A history class obtains a mean quiz grade of 72 with a
  standard deviation of 11.  Tom has a score of 83.
  Assume that the class scores are normally distributed.
  What percent of the class obtained a quiz grade lower
  than Tom's?  (To one decimal, please.)

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EXACT ANSWERS ARE REQUIRED

  You must indicate to the students that exact answers are always 
required.  Thus, if you write a 'true-false'  item  and  indicate
that  the  response  options are 'T' and 'F', you should tell the 
students to enter the choices as shown.   In  this  example,  you
should make sure the correct answer is an upper case T or F since
that is what you showed for the item.

  For number problems, you must also indicate the exact precision 
that is required.  Thus, if you have entered the  correct  answer
to  three  decimal positions, you must tell the students to do so
as well.  

  The reason for this is simple.  ICES does a LITERAL  comparison
between  the  correct  answer  as you specified it and the answer 
that is provided by the students.  The item  will  be  scored  as
'correct'  only  when  the  match  between  your  answer  and the
student's is exact.

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ADMINISTERING THE EXAMS

  Once  you  have  created  an  exam  or quiz, you must make some
choices as to how ICES will administer it to the students.  Those 
choices  are  specified  by  choosing  the  'Exam  Administration
Criteria' option in the 'Setup' menu.

  By  choosing  that  option  you may then indicate the number of 
times that you will permit any student to take any specific  exam
or quiz.  You may also indicate the number of items that you wish
to be included in each of the administered exams.

  If  you  have  a generous nature, you may allow the students to
take the quizes as many times as they wish.  If you prefer a more 
stringent testing environment, you may wish to allow students  to
take each quiz only once or twice.  The choice is yours.

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EXAM CREATION BY ICES 

  ICES tries desperately to present each student  with  a  random
selection  of  items  from  those  which  you  have written for a
particular exam or quiz.  If it is permitted to do that, students
will then find it difficult to share information about the 'right 
answers' for any quiz.  However, if you want ICES to do all  that
for you, it needs your help.  In short, you must write more items
than you want presented for each exam or quiz.

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  If  you  write N number of items for any quiz and then indicate 
that you want N or more items to be presented, then ICES  has  no
choice  but  to present all of your items to the students.  Thus, 
for example, if you have written 10 items  for  a  quiz  and  you
indicate  that you want 10 items (or more) to be presented to the 
students, ICES will present all 10 of your quiz  items  to  every
student. 

  On  the  other hand, if you write, say, 30 items for a quiz and 
indicate you want each quiz to present 10 items, then  ICES  will
randomly  select  10  of  your  30  items for presentation to the
students. 

  The more items you create for any quiz, the more unique will be
each quiz that is presented to the students.

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STUDENT ACCESS TO EXAMS AND QUIZES

  An  additional  feature of ICES is that you may control student 
access to the exams or quizes.  The system allows you to  use  an
'exam  access  password' as a means of controlling student access
to the exams or quizes.  You must specify that access password at
the time you create the student passwords for your course. 

  If you use an * as the exam access password, students may  then
take  any  quiz at any time they wish and you will have no chance
to supervise the administration of the exams or quizes. 

  If you use any other exam access password,  the  students  will
not  be  able  to take an exam or quiz until you or your teaching 
assistant first  enters  the  access  password.   By  using  this
feature  of  ICES you retain the ability to supervise the testing
environment.

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Instructions to be added later

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