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1991-12-18
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A. Distribution (CAT0301)
1. If you downloaded CAT0301 from an electronic bulletin board,
you must UUDECODE it. After uudecoding (if necessary) you
should have a .ZIP file. Use PKUNZIP to extract the files
contained in the archive
2. So, besides UUDECODE, you need to have PKUNZIP. Both of
these are available from SIMTEL.
3. After running PKUNZIP, you will have created the following
files:
a) CAT0301.EXE
b) UUDEC.COM (A UUdecode program for decoding gradebooks)
c) a set of .QSX files which contain questions suitable for
cloning.
B. Using CAT0301
1. CAT0301 is used to create examinations, conduct examinations
and examine the student grade files. A teacher creates and
tests questions inside the CAT0301 environment, and then
transfers the CAT0301 program and suitable questions to a
student diskette for use in an examination.
2. CAT0301 is password protected, so that the student can not
exit the test except by actually quitting. The Original
Password is "PASSWORD" without the quotation marks (see
below about changing passwords). Note, however, that the
files CAT0301 uses are simple uuencoded files (i.e., they
have been only trivially encrypted). Therefore, students
should not be allowed to handle their disks alone, as they
will quickly learn how to uudecode them and peek in the
files and discover not only the questions, but the answers.
3. To create a question from scratch, F10 gets you to the menu,
pull down the File menu, and choose DOSShell. CAT0301 will
ask you for a password, enter "PASSWORD" (no quotation
marks). Once in the DOSShell you can call any ASCII editor
you like to edit a file, giving it an extension of .QSN in
accord with all other questions currently on the diskette!
You can not use WordStar, WordPerfect, etc., i.e., you must
use an ASCII file editor. Suitable ones are EDLIN and EDIT
(which come with DOS, EDIT is new to DOS 5.0). Word
processor editors which insert hidden control characters in
their files are not acceptable to CAT0301, which requires a
pure ASCII .QSN file.
4. Later, when you exit CAT0301 (Alt-X will do it), the .QSN
files will be encoded back into .QSX files (including any
you may have created). CAT0301 automatically decodes all
.QSX files on the default drive into .QSN files at startup.
If you use a name other than .QSN when creating a question,
the computer will not see it when you go to load it (using
F2 for New Question)!
5. When you type "EXIT" (no quotation marks) from the DOS
prompt while in the DOSShell, you will return to CAT0301.
Choosing F2 (New Question) you can now bring up the question
you just created, and "test" it.
If your question does not appear on the menu, return to
the DOSShell and check that it has an extension of .QSN. If
not, rename it appropriately.
If you "solve" your own test question, it will be
renamed to .DON while CAT0301 is running, but when you exit
CAT0301, it will be first renamed to .QSN and then encoded
to .QSX. You can, in the DOSShell, rename it from .DON to
.QSN to re-activate the question.
6. To change passwords, enter the current password with a slash
and the new password appended (with no spaces), e.g.,
PASSWORD/NEWKEY
and verify NEWKEY at the prompt. From that time forth,
"newkey" will be the password until you type something like:
newkey/nextkey
which would now change the password to nextkey.
If the password has been forgotten, persons adept at
reading hex dumps of the CAT0301.EXE file can discover the
password. Otherwise, you should erase all old copies of
CAT0301 and start over from the original distribution, whose
password is "PASSWORD". Note that passwords are 8 or less
characters, case insensitive.
C. *.QSN files
1. .QSN files are ASCII files.
2. .QSN files are always terminated with a line which reads
"END OF QUESTION" without the quotation marks.
a) They always consist of an identifier terminating with a
colon. There will be more fields after the colon.
3. In the following list of legal commands, blanks are squeezed
automatically from "i:", "r:", "a:", and "e1:" entries,
i.e., formulii which contain blanks in the .QSN file will
have them removed before processing.
4. The legal prompts are:
a) c:comment, i.e., c: is the identifier, and whatever follows
the colon is ignored. This allows you to comment up
questions for future reference.
b) p:n i.e., p: is the identifier for places, and governs the
number of places after the decimal point that you want
decimal numbers to show. i.e., p:3 would display 4.001234 as
4.001 (default = 2).
c) t:n i.e. t: is the identifier for tolerance. When answers
are submitted to the computer by the student, they must
agree to 0.001 if n is 3, 0.0001 if n is 4, etc.. (default
n=3). If the agreement is within 2*tolerance, the computer
will warn the student once that the accuracy of the student
answer is suspect, and perhaps with more care the student
has the correct answer.
d) q: i.e., q: is the question identifier, and consists of text
for questions. You can have more than one line of q:. Keep
them short, less than 80 chars, as otherwise the student
will have to scoll the window to see the entire question.
Any variable present in the question ($distance.) will be
changed into its "value" as determined by the variable
fields i: and r: (below).
e) i: and r: are identifiers for variables which must appear
before everything but p: identifiers. These (i: and r:) have
two fields separated by a colon. The first has a unique
identifier, I have used $time., $distance., $atomic_weight.
etc., and the second has a formula for determining what the
numerical values of this variable should be. Although not
mandatory, it is important to use a unique starting and a
unique ending symbol, i.e., dollar sign and period, to
delineate the beginning and the end of variables. Otherwise,
strange substitutions may take place. Examples of
determining formulii are:
1) 100
2) 200+4*RANDOM [this will vary from 200 to 204 depending on
the random number generated when the test started]
3) (4*random)+(2) [2<->6]
4) 6.023-0.1*random [6.023<->6.123]
f) i: and r: identifiers appear as
1) i:$value.:400*random + 300
2) r:$speed.:50.1
3) r:$distance.:0.003
4) i:$time.:14
g) v: is the single variable designator. v:x declares x as the
variable you wish the student to use. NOTE- your question's
text better tell the student what the operative variable is,
as all other characters will be rejected by the computer.
h) e1: and e21: are error identifiers (e1:) and error response
identifiers (e21:). e1: has one field, a formula. Only
variables which have been previously defined are useable.
You have as many paired error responses as you like.
Watching student's work the problems will suggest extra
responses. Examples:
1) e1:$distance.*$time.
2) e1:($x.*$x. + $y.*$y. + $z.*$z.)
i) e2n: error response field is the response the teacher wishes
to give upon receipt of the incorrect answer given in e1:.
An example might be:
e21:Did you forget to divide by 2?
e22:After all, there are two people in the room!
Notice that up to 8 lines of text can be displayed, although
this is rather wordy for an error response.
j) a:is an answer identifier, giving a formula which is taken
to be the right answer. An example:
a:$distance./$time.
NOTICE that CAT0301 does not implement formula answers, only
numerical answers, and further, that numbers of the form
x.yE-zz are not accepted. Make your answers come out with
reasonable sized numbers.
k) h:is the help identifier, used if the student hits the F1
button. There may be more than one of these. Their order is
the order they will show on the screen. Example:
h:Distance divided by time is rate.
h:Therefore, multiply the appropriate items to get the
h:correct answer.
The default is no help what so ever.
NOTICE, the help box is 7 lines long.
D. Overview of conducting an examination.
1. Using a clean disk in the A: drive,
a) copy CAT0301.EXE and CAT0301.OVR to the A: drive,
b) copy all the questions for the test (*.QSX) to the A: drive.
They will be renamed to .QSN questions so that the student
can see them on his question load menu. They will be renamed
to .DON when the student has completed them. Then, at the
end of the exam, they will be renamed to .QSN and encoded to
.QSX.
E. To look at the results of examinations.
1. As the student works, his(her) gradebook is maintained in a
file which has the name {last name}.GD$. This file is a true
grade book file, which may be manipulated into a class
register, etc. using any word processor which manipulates
ASCII text files. At the end of the examination, the
gradebook is encoded into .GDX. To view the gradebook, you
can either uudecode it using uudec (enclosed in the
distribution) or run your own copy of CAT0301 with the
student's diskette, drop down to the DOS shell, and edit the
student's .GD$ file using any convenient text editor.
2. The gradebook file contains every answer given by the
student, as well as every comment, and every request for
help. As a result, you can use this file to create
appropriate help responses, once you have ascertained what
errors students are making. Noting the error, and then
interogating the student should lead to understanding of the
nature of the error, and the appropriate response text.