Pebbles Classroom Technology Software
Background
This
software is created by the CMU Pebbles project for administering concept tests
in a classroom/lecture environment. Concept tests are typically multiple choice
questions, which are often administered by a lecturer in the middle of a lecture
in order to guage the understanding of the students. This allows some "real-time"
feedback for the instructor, who can then alter his lecture to account for the
pace of the class.
This system was written for the second semester freshman chemistry class at
CMU (Chem 106: Modern Chemistry II). It was first used in the spring semester
of 2000, and once again in 2001. A CMU
technical report was written about the
experiences with the software in the spring 2000 class.
The system anticipates that the teacher will have a laptop computer that they
lecture with, and that the students will each be equipped with a Internet-connected
machine with access to the WWW. We used 802.11b equipped HP Jornada 680 and
720 handheld computers, but any devices that can access the WWW and supports
HTML forms and cookies should be capable of using this system.
The system is not currently being used and the current implementation can
be accessed at http://quiz.cs.cmu.edu/. The administration password is available
on request.
One of the key discoveries of the first classroom experience with the software
was that teachers rarely had time or inclination to author their own tests
using the system. It turned out to be easier to use the system without the
authoring system, by showing handwritten questions on an overhead projector
and asking students to pick the corresponding answer on their handheld. Evidence of this discovery can be found
in most of the script files.
Download
DISCLAIMER: It has been quite awhile since anyone
worked on this code, and the original author has since left CMU. The README
file included
with the download generally describes the files in this archive, but the reader
will need some experience
with perl5
to understand exactly how and what each of these scripts do.
This software is provided AS IS, and is NOT supported by the Pebbles
research group. You are welcome to ask questions about the software, but
we cannot guarantee
a quick or accurate response, especially about implementation details.
Please send us any changes or improvements you make to the software.
Download webserversoftware.zip
Directories
icons: Some images that were used in early example tests to show the
versatility of the test authoring system (see the tech
report). May no longer be needed.
html: The navigation structure used for accessing the tests. These
should be the same files that make up the quiz.cs.cmu.edu
website.
cgi-bin: These are the scripts used for implementing the authoring
system. They will be described in somewhat more detail
below.
Scripts
register.cgi: Creates a cookie that contains the users ID
information, which is used by testconcept.cgi
for recording purposes. (for us, this is the
user's "andrew" login, the general purpose
computing system at CMU)
listregister.cgi: Lists the handhelds that have registered with
the register.cgi script.
conceptscores.cgi: Displays stored data for any concept test.
conceptscoresl.cgi: A shortcut for displaying the stored data for
the "generic" (see the tech report) concept test.
testconcept.cgi: Displays the question for any concept test.
concepttestl.cgi: A shortcut for the testconcept.cgi script,
that displays the question for the "generic"
concept test.
conceptmonitor.cgi: Used for monitoring a test in progress and,
in the new system, for setting the parameters
of the next question (see the tech report).
monitorconcepttest1.cgi: A short for monitoring the "generic" concept
test.
testgen.cgi: Deals with the "standard" test. Not sure
what this was... Perhaps documented in the
technical report.
testsubmit.cgi: Part of the test authoring system...Used for
uploading a test to the server. Currently
unused in the CMU system.
testmonitor.cgi: Monitors the "standard" test. Again, its
unclear if this still works or what it does.
Installation Notes
This software currently runs on an apache server on a Sun
workstation. It should work correctly if installed on any web server
that has CGI and perl support, but there are no guarantees.
The perl scripts rely on several libraries. CGI.pm and its associated
libraries are required. MLDBM.pm is also required for database
storage. I don't know if this has a more common name. An XML parser
module is also used by some of the older scripts, I believe XML.pm.
All of these libraries should be available on www.perl.com.
Questions
This software is provided AS IS, and is NOT supported by the Pebbles
research group. You are welcome to ask questions about the software,
but we cannot guarantee a quick or accurate response, especially about
implementation details.
To ask a question, please contact:
Jeffrey Nichols (jeffreyn+(at)cs(dot)cmu(dot)edu)