[Building Sakai] [Using Sakai] Help with importing exams

[Earle Nietzel]

Hello Marshall,

Here are some ideas.

If you can get assessments in Respondus format and they don't import into
Sakai you can edit the Respondus files removing the unnecessary parts (via a
script) and you will generally get it to work. Generally only a small
fraction of whats in those files is required.

You could go the Word 2 QTI (or text) way which sounds like you already have
a working script doing this.
I beleive you should be using the newline '\n' as the line terminator. If
your on windows it will always most certainly add a carriage return '\r' as
well, so be careful.

Regardless of the way you want to do it you can then import it using the UI
or through a webservice (you will need to ask your admins for the latter).

Earle


On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 11:34 AM, Marshall Feldman <marsh at uri.edu> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> As the new academic year looms, I am completely frustrated in getting a
> textbook question bank into Sakai. I am hoping someone on this list can
> give me some help.
>
> As background, my university is running Sakai 2.7. The textbook question
> bank comes from Pearson Publishing. Pearson provides it along with a
> software application called Testgen. Pearson also provides the question
> bank in Word files, one per chapter. I'm working on a Mac (Lion) with
> Windows installed via Boot Camp, as well as virtual machines under
> VirtualBox and individual Windows programs (notably Respondus) running
> as Mac applications via Wine. I'm also quite comfortable with the
> underlying Unix system and Unix shells.
>
> Initially, I tried a three-prong approach. I first tried to see if I
> could get Testgen to export into a format that Sakai could import.
> Alternatively, I tried to get Testgen to export into format that
> Respondus could import. Although I've never imported Respondus output
> into Sakai, other people here seem to have had luck. Unfortunately, I
> was unable to get Respondus to import any of Testgen's export formats.
>
> Second, I asked Pearson for help. Testgen can export non-text exam files
> only in formats native to Blackboard's products, but Pearson says it
> will help faculty members convert its test banks to other learning
> systems. I asked Pearson for such help, over six months went by, and
> Pearson finally got back to me saying, "Testgen does not support Sakai,"
> which of course was why I asked for help in the first place.
>
> Third, I asked our local support staff for help. Some time later a
> support person said he'd managed to do it, with some intermediate
> editing. Because I was afraid intermediate editing would be error-prone
> and time-consuming. Because this textbook is updated every few years, I
> really wanted an automated process. So I held off on trying this
> solution. When Pearson finally got back to me, I tried this alternative
> but could not get it to work. It turned out the support person had
> confused Respondus with Testgen. In other words, he can get Respondus to
> export in a format suitable for our version of Sakai, but Testgen still
> cannot export to it, even with Respondus as an intermediary.
>
> So now I tried a different approach. I exported one of the Word files
> into a text format. The file has a format Sakai cannot understand, so  I
> wrote a Perl script to reformat the file. Following the advice of our
> local Sakai support, I then tried creating an exam "using markup text"
> and cutting and pasting the reformatted file into the exam.
>
> This almost works, but Sakai seems to treat newline characters as the
> end of an answer choice. So if a question has one or more answers of
> several lines, Sakai accepts only the first line. I modified my Perl
> script to delete all but the last line terminator in each answer choice.
> But when I display the file in a text editor in order to cut and paste,
> the editor reinserts line terminators so the text will display well
> within the window.
>
> The fact that neither Pearson's Word files nor Sakai's markup text
> option are virtually undocumented does not help. (When will software
> providers learn that examples are not same as precise, technical
> documentation explaining all rules and options?)
>
> At this point, I'm about ready to scream. Because Pearson was getting
> back to me and I counted on at least one of these approaches working, I
> did not consider using another textbook. Unfortunately, Pearson's is by
> far the best for my purposes. Now it's too late to change books even if
> I wanted to.
>
> Some of you answered an earlier post regarding importing directly from
> Testgen or Respondus, but it seems this requires Sakai 2.8. None of the
> suggestions worked here.
>
> I am hoping one of you smart folks can help me. Please!
>
> Thanks.
>
>        Marsh Feldman
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