How It All Works

This page gets a little bit more technical and under-the-hood. If you wanted to know what happens when you create a quiz and then users take the test, this is the section for you.

How does a Quiz differ from a Question?

Now that you've successfully installed the module, you need to understand the differences between a Quiz and it's Questions. As you're well aware by now, Drupal creates 'nodes' out of each piece of content that it controls. A Quiz is a node, and so is a Question. Quizzes are made up of Questions, but a Question node 'exists' on its own without a Quiz. This is an important functionality to understand, since users can see individual Questions if they know the correct URL to type in. That doesn't necessarily mean they can answer that question and skew your exam results though. Quite to the contrary, it's the Quiz node that controls the functionality of the test itself. Rest assured that nobody can mess up your Quiz data by trying to submit the same Question over and over without being "in a Quiz".

The control of Information

Features of a Quiz

Quiz nodes are the clearinghouse of information during the taking of a test. A Quiz can:

1. Be graded as either a percentage, or a pass/fail.
2. Keep track of how many times each user has taken the test, and deny any attempts after that limit has been reached.
3. Be always available to users, or only available between certain calendar days.
4. Provide custom-tailored user feedback after each question is answered to enhance the learning experience.
5. Show the correct answer after each question, or wait till the test is over before providing the results.
6. Tabulate the results of the finished test into a pretty graphics-enhanced table.

Random Questions vs. Static Questions

Each quiz has a selected grouping of Questions in it, and those Questions can be either randomly shown during the Quiz, or they can be always present on the Quiz. If a Quizmaster decides to make a test that contains 15 randomly-selected Questions, the users who take that test will each see a slightly different set of Questions, even though they will be graded on their answers relative to a passing percentage grade. Quizzes that use a combination of random and static Questions, or Quizzes comprised only of static Questions will also be graded against a percentage of right vs. wrong answers. This allows tremendous flexibility to a Quizmaster who's just trying to keep people interested in their content.