#Crowd Quiz
Crowd Quiz is a system for conducting quizzes in class room situations. It is web-based, utilizing node.js to pass messages between clients and can be hosted wherever node.js and associated components run (e.g., Linux and Windows). Crowd Quiz is liberally licensed free software.
Conducting quizzes with Crowd Quiz
Crowd Quiz distinguishes two roles:
- The Quizmaster (e.g., an instructor) instantiates and conducts the quiz session. Questions are selected by the quizmaster. After some time, the quizmaster will reveal the correct solution for a given quiz question and present a compilation of the answers provided by the quiz participants. The quizmaster conducts the quiz, but will not "play", i.e., he won't submit answers to the system.
- Participants (e.g., students) can each provide one answer to the presented question. During the course of a quiz, all participants are presented the same question selected by the quizmaster. When the correct solution is revealed, each participant will get individual feedback whether the question was answered correctly. Answers selected by participants are delivered anonymously to the quizmaster to assemble a picture on how the class performs.
With these roles, quizzes are conducted in the following way: A quizmaster starts a new quiz (the system supports several concurrent quizzes). Partipants can join the quiz at any time. The quizmaster selects questions, waits for answers provided by participants, and eventually reveals the solution.
Components of Crowd Quiz
The quiz system is comprised of several components that support diverging use cases and roles.
The quiz editor
Before any quizzes can be conducted, a collection of questions ("a quiz") has to be assembled. This is done in the editor, which is available, by default, at http://localhost:3000/editor.
A quiz can contain questions of the following types:
- Users choose between text options: The question is accompanied by predetermined text options that participants can select from. One text option is the correct answer, the remaining options represent incorrect answers. An image can be attached to the question for illustration purposes. The default number of text options is four. By leaving options empty, questions with fewer answering options can be created. When revealing the correct answer, each participant will get individual feedback on whether the correct option was selected. The quizmaster will receive statistics on how often each option was selected by the participants.
- Users mark positions in an image: The question is accompanied by an image. Each participant can mark one position in the image by clicking in that respective spot. When revealing, the quizmaster will receive a display of all positions marked by the participants in the form of a cloud of points.
Images are added to questions by means of "drag'n'drop". The quiz is saved into a local JSON file that contains all questions, options, and images.
The quizmaster view
With the quizmaster view, quizzes can be started and controlled. The contents of the quiz are loaded from a JSON file previously created in the editor. The quizmaster view is available, by default, at http://localhost:3000/quizmaster. When entering the quizmaster view, the system prompts for a name for this quiz instance to differentiate quizzes that are run concurrently.
The quizmaster view closely resembles the view for participants, with following exceptions:
- The quizmaster view includes controls for, e.g., loading a quiz from file, navigating through the sequence of questions, and revealing solutions. The view also indicates how many answers from participants were already received, both in absolute numbers and in a percentage regarding the total number of participants for this quiz.
- The quizmaster cannot submit answers.
If you want to restrict usage of the quizmaster view only to selected users, it is possible to password-protect this view by starting the Crowd Quiz server with respective command line arguments.
The participant view
Participants will use the participant view to join a quiz currently running and submit answers. The participant view is available, by default, at http://localhost:3000/. When entering the participant view, users can select a quiz from a list of currently active quizzes.
Internationalization
The user interface is available in both english and german. The appropriate language will be detected and used automatically depending on the language settings in the users' browser.
Installation
- Install git and node.js. Ensure that both
gitandnpmcan access remote repositories (this should just work fine, but additional configuration may be necessary if web content can only be accessed via a web proxy) - Clone a copy of Crowd Quiz:
git clone https://github.com/maikmerten/crowd-quiz.git - Enter the directory with the Crowd Quiz clone:
cd crowd-quiz - Ensure that all dependencies are installed:
npm install - Start the Crowd Quiz server:
node server