One of the most difficult tasks in education is evaluating what has been learned. In the past, traditional test design has been somewhat time consuming and difficult. MicroTest II is designed to streamline the test design process and offer greater flexibility in the actual test generation. With MicroTest II, instructors can create, refine, update, store and print a variety of tests from their own files or from materials provided by publishers.
This demonstration version is designed to give potential users a feel for the program's features and capabilities. The tutorial give you some hands on experience with the major functions of MicroTest. Although this program is restricted in some aspects most features are operational, please feel free to experiment with features not specifically discussed in this tutorial.
This demo version has the following restrictions:
• Works only with the question bank "About MicroTest" which is included.
• Creation of a New Question Bank in the File Menu has been disabled.
• Limited storage capacity. The following lists these limitations as well as those for the full MicroTest II program and our new release MicroTest III.
Storage Capacity Demo MicroTest II MicroTest III
Number of Files/Question Bank 1 9 9
Number of Chapters 4 50 50
Questions per Chapter 20 200 250
Characters per Question 1024 1024 unlimited
Maximum Questions per test 8 250 250
About this tutorial
This tutorial explains how to use MicroTest II on the Macintosh. It assumes that you have a working knowledge of the Macintosh user interface. If terms such as "mouse", "point", or "click" are unfamiliar to you, please read your Macintosh owner's manual before attempting to use MicroTest II.
Full program features:
• Ability to create an unlimited number of Question Banks containing up to a maximum of 10,000 questions each.
• Question Banks have divisions called chapters; you can have a maximum of 50 chapters each containing up to 200 questions.
• Preformatted screens are provided for easy entry of multiple choice and true false questions. A free format screen allows entry of essay, short answer, fill-in-the-blank and matching questions.
• A test may have a maximum of 250 questions selected in any order from any chapter in the Question Bank.
• Up to 3 different versions of each test may be printed, each with a separate answer key.
• Tests can also be transfered to word processing or page layout programs for further editing.
MicroTest III will include all the above mentioned features plus:
• Create tests with upto 8 separate divisions with their own headings and instruction lines.
• Ability to have MicroTest randomly select questions for your test to your set specifications.
• Ability to include illustrations, various fonts and style features within the body of your questions and instruction lines.
• Preformattted screens for matching and horizontal multiple choice.
____Learning MicroTest II____
This tutorial is designed to introduce you to the basic features of MicroTest II.
• Using a Question Bank will take you through opening a sample Question Bank with MicroTest II and adding questions to a Question Bank.
• Generating a Test will demonstrate how to create a test from the questions in a Question Bank and how to save and print the test.
Using a Question Bank
Before we use a Question Bank it is important to have a clear understanding of the distinction between a Question Bank and Test.
What is a Question Bank? A question bank is a database of questions created for a specific subject. New questions can be entered at any time. This pool of questions is available for creating printed exams. Your Question Bank is designed to be used and added to for many terms of teaching.
How is a Test created? A test is a collection of specific questions selected from your Question Bank. By designing a test you are not removing questions from your Question Bank but rather you are creating an index which MicroTest II uses to identify the questions for printing. You will notice your test files are very small because rather than containing actual test questions they only contain the index.
How does a Question Bank differ from a Test? A test is a subset of the Question Bank. The Question Bank may hold many more questions than those that are selected for a particular test. The Question Bank stores the questions; the test is actually an index that references the questions in the Question Bank.
Now that we have the terms Question Bank and test clarified, we are ready to begin the tutorial.
Opening the Sample Question Bank
The following instructions assume you are not running MicroTest II from a hard disk. If you have installed the program on your hard disk, some of the following may not apply to you.
• Start-up your Macintosh with the MicroTest II System Disk. Double-click on the disk icon entitled "MicroTest II System" to open it. Then double-click on the icon labeled "About MicroTest.1" to open the sample question bank with MicroTest II.
The first screen to appear is the tile window screen showing the three main windows of MicroTest II:
The window on the left is the Table of Contents window. It displays the contents of the sample question bank called "About MicroTest." The window on the top right is the Selected Question window and will be discussed later. The bottom third of the screen contains the Edit Questions window where you can enter, view and edit actual question text. You can make any of these windows the 'active window' by placing your cursor in the window and clicking.
Currently the Table of Contents is the active window. The check mark by the chapter number in the left column indicates Chapter 1 is selected. Because all 3 windows are interrelated the other two tile windows display more information about this selected chapter.
• Point and click the area to the left of Chapter Number 2 in the Table of Contents tile window.
The check mark has moved to the left of Chapter 2 and the other two windows now display information about Chapter 2.
To get a better feel for the relationships between these three screens let's look at the Edit Questions window (bottom third of screen). Currently we see question number 19 displayed. When we choose a new chapter from the Table of Contents the Edit Question window will always display the last question in the chapter. Now look at the Select Question window. The grid contains 19 boxes each representing a question in Chapter 2.
• Use the mouse to point and click in the Select Questions window, it now becomes the active window.
• Now use the mouse to click on the box numbered '5'. If you look at the Edit Questions window question number 5 is displayed in place of question 19. Now click on the button representing question 19.
You can use the interrelationship of these windows to move quickly through your question bank.
Adding Questions to a Question Bank
For this tutorial we will add a multiple choice question to Chapter 2.
• Point and click on the Edit Questions window located on the bottom half of the screen to select it. Click Next to pass the last question in the chapter.
MicroTest II has three different questions types: Free Format, True or False, and Multiple Choice.
• Select Multiple Choice from the Question Type menu.
• Type the question and answer as it appears below. Use the TAB key to move to the next choice. Click Enter when finished typing.
How many question types does MicroTest II have?
one
two
three
none
c (answer)
The question has been added to the question bank and the Select Questions window located on the right side of the screen has added the question box for this new question. In the lower left corner of the question boxes there is a FF, TF, or MC to indicate the question type as free form, true or false, or multiple choice respectively.
Generating a Test
In the above section, we opened a sample question bank called "About MicroTest" and added a question to Chapter 2. Now we want to create a test from this question bank. For this tutorial, we will select three questions, save and print the test.
Creating and Saving a Test
• Select Create Test… from the File menu. Type "Test 1" for the file name. Then click Save.
Next we will select the questions from the question bank for Test 1. To select questions for a test you will use the numbered grid in the Select Questions window in the same way you used it to view the actual text question. The difference is once you have created a test the question boxes you click on in the grid will be highlighted to show you exactly what questions have been selected for your test.
• Click on the column to the left of Chapter 1 in the Table of Contents window to move the check mark to Chapter 1, then...
• Click on the question boxes 1, 2, and 3 in the Select Questions window. The three boxes should now be highlighted.
=
Notice also that the text in the top of the Select Questions and Table of Contents windows change to indicate the make up of your test.
Printing a Test
• Choose Print… from the File menu.
This screen allows you to make choices about the layout of your actual printed test as well as allowing you to select printing of multiple versions of the test to discourage cheating.
Another screen allows you to enter heading lines and instructions to print on your test. For the purpose of this tutorial we will not enter any heading lines and we will accept the choices as they appear on this screen.
• Prepare your printer and click OK to begin printing the test.
This concludes the tutorial for MicroTest II.
• You may choose Quit from the File menu to leave MicroTest or continue to practice with the Sample Question Bank.
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