Dividni helps to create individualized assessments. Individualization encourages students to engage in concept-oriented discussions rather than mere exchange of answers. It also enables an instructor to repeat an assessment activity with a different set of questions, thereby reinforcing student learning. In addition, individualization renders any blind copying in an assessment ineffective. Consequently, it is seen as a positive approach to mitigating collusion and plagiarism.

Dividni helps us create

• Individualized online quizzes and examinations delivered via learning management systems such as Canvas and Moodle, digital assessment platforms such as Inspera, and other QTI-compatible education applications.
  
• Individualized online assignments.
• Printable individualized multiple-choice examinations.

  Show Example...

  THE UNIVERSITY OF RIVENDELL SECOND SEMESTER Campus: Hithaeglir DEPARTMENT OF CONTEMPORARY STUDIES Local History (Time Allowed: 40 minutes) Note: Enter your name and student ID on the answer sheet. Student ID and answers need to be bubbled in on the answer sheet. Use a soft pencil only. Fill bubbles completely. Erase cleanly any mistakes. When filling in your student ID, align it either to the left or to the right. Do not add leading zeros. The version code for this question/answer book is 1456. Each question is expected to have exactly 1 (one) correct answer. If you believe that a question has either NO or MULTIPLE correct answers, select the ONE you believe is most likely to be the intended answer. Answer all questions. All questions carry equal marks. There are neither partial marks nor penalties for incorrect answers. Name: ...................................... ID: ...................................... Which of these following were part of Thorin's company? Kili Balin Fili X only Y only Z only None of X, Y, and Z All, or two of X, Y, and Z Who did Sam, Frodo, Pippin and Merry meet at the Prancing Pony on their way to Rivendell carrying the ring? Bilbao Aragorn Gandalf Celebrimbor Lúthien At Prancing Pony, you can buy 4 apples and 9 oranges for 364 Castars; you can also buy 13 apples and 17 oranges for 742 Castars. What is the price of a single apple, expressed in Castars? 37 12 38 10 36

  THE UNIVERSITY OF RIVENDELL SECOND SEMESTER Campus: Hithaeglir DEPARTMENT OF CONTEMPORARY STUDIES Local History (Time Allowed: 40 minutes) Note: Enter your name and student ID on the answer sheet. Student ID and answers need to be bubbled in on the answer sheet. Use a soft pencil only. Fill bubbles completely. Erase cleanly any mistakes. When filling in your student ID, align it either to the left or to the right. Do not add leading zeros. The version code for this question/answer book is 1553. Each question is expected to have exactly 1 (one) correct answer. If you believe that a question has either NO or MULTIPLE correct answers, select the ONE you believe is most likely to be the intended answer. Answer all questions. All questions carry equal marks. There are neither partial marks nor penalties for incorrect answers. Name: ...................................... ID: ...................................... Which of these following were part of Thorin's company? Dori Gróin Ori X and Y only X and Z only Y and Z only All of X, Y, and Z None, or only one of X, Y, and Z Who did Sam, Frodo, Pippin and Merry meet at the Prancing Pony on their way to Rivendell carrying the ring? Thorin Narvi Lúthien Strider Elu Thingol At Prancing Pony, you can buy 3 apples and 9 oranges for 246 Castars; you can also buy 10 apples and 18 oranges for 556 Castars. What is the price of a single apple, expressed in Castars? 18 15 17 16 22

• Printable individualized task sheets that require students to work out and write-down their unique answer.
  

  Show Example...

  Secret Communications Task 2 This secret communication is thought to have used a zigzag cipher (sometimes known as a rail fence cipher). What is shown below is the intercepted ciphertext. What is the plain text corresponding to this? ETNIOEIHYEAENRULGMRTB ✍ This encryption is based on transposing the letters of the plaintext. The plaintext letters, ignoring spaces, are written in a zigzag fashion on horizontal rails. The letters are read out rail by rail to form the ciphertext. For example, ALWAYS BLOW ON THE PIE would be become AYOTILASLWNHPEWBOE after writing it out zigzag and reading it horizontally. The diagram below shows how it is done. A - - - Y - - - O - - - T - - - I - - L - A - S - L - W - N - H - P - E - - W - - - B - - - O - - - E - - - ✍ To crack the ciphertext, you would draw empty zigzag slots in the rail, and fill the slots with the ciphertext. Once filled, you can read the text in a zigzag manner to find the plaintext. Easy, right? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - You would need to know how many slots you need though, before you draw your zigzag slots. For the ciphertext given here, how many slots do you need? Office use only: 00090017

  Secret Communications Task 2 This secret communication is thought to have used a zigzag cipher (sometimes known as a rail fence cipher). What is shown below is the intercepted ciphertext. What is the plain text corresponding to this? MGDELTAYURSRBDYINAAAH ✍ This encryption is based on transposing the letters of the plaintext. The plaintext letters, ignoring spaces, are written in a zigzag fashion on horizontal rails. The letters are read out rail by rail to form the ciphertext. For example, ALWAYS BLOW ON THE PIE would be become AYOTILASLWNHPEWBOE after writing it out zigzag and reading it horizontally. The diagram below shows how it is done. A - - - Y - - - O - - - T - - - I - - L - A - S - L - W - N - H - P - E - - W - - - B - - - O - - - E - - - ✍ To crack the ciphertext, you would draw empty zigzag slots in the rail, and fill the slots with the ciphertext. Once filled, you can read the text in a zigzag manner to find the plaintext. Easy, right? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - You would need to know how many slots you need though, before you draw your zigzag slots. For the ciphertext given here, how many slots do you need? Office use only: 00090114

Trivia: Dividni is individ(ual) spelt backwards.

Installation

Dividni can be installed on almost all platforms including Windows, MacOS and Linux. The prerequisite is .NET (long term support). Download and extract Dividni from this zip archive. The archive contains a set of commandline tools to create various individualized assessment types (quizzes, printable multiple-choice examinations, tasksheets, and online assignments) as well as tools to mark student submissions.

Installation-Free Dividni

Individualized online quizzes can be created installation-free using our online application: dividni.online.

Additional Software

To convert HTML to PDF, you may use ChromiumHtmlToPdf.

Architecture

The primary architectural style is to form questions as a C# class adhering to a given contract. These questions can then be exported to LMS (such as Canvas and Moodle) or online examination platforms (such as Inspera). The framework supports QTI (for Canvas, Sakai, and Inspera) and XML (for Moodle). Additionally, if the questions are of MCQ type, they can be printed out as a printed examination.

The second style is based on writing an HTML template and a number of associated macros. This style is useful for printed task sheets (as well as printed examinations that need certain advanced features). The macros are functions that an instructor will have to define in C#. The C# questions created for the first architectural style can be reused as macros. The framework has a macro processor that takes as its input an HTML template and a library consisting of the instructor-defined macros, and outputs HTML assessment scripts where the macros have been substituted by the result of executing the macros.

Papers

There are some academic papers on the use and value of the framework.

1. Personalized assessment as a means to mitigate plagiarism — available at IEEE Transactions on Education. An authors' version of this paper is available to download here.
2. Cheat-resistant multiple-choice examinations using personalization — available at Computers & Education.
3. Contract Cheating in Computer Science: A Case Study — available at IEEE Xplore (an authors' version of this paper is available to download here); and a follow-on paper: Contract Cheating — Dead or Reborn? — available at IEEE Xplore (an authors' version of this paper is available to download here).
4. Repeat individualized assessment using isomorphic questions: a novel approach to increase peer discussion and learning — available at International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education.

Paper-based Assessments

Paper-based MCQ examinations are created using the tool McqTestGen. A tutorial guide to creating such examinations are here.

Task Sheets

The source code for a sample individualized task sheet is here. Once you have built QHelperArithmeticTask.dll, you'd run TestGen on the task sheet template. For example: TestGen -lib QHelperArithmeticTask.dll -start 42 -paper 1 Arithmetic.template.html Help is available using TestGen -help.

LMS Integration

Dividni can create question banks with individualized question variants for importing to learning management systems (LMS) such as Canvas LMS. Questions designed for use with TestGen can be turned into question banks containing individualized question variants. The command-line tool QtiGen generates a QTI ZIP file containing these question banks. The ZIP file can then be imported into LMS. For example, the following command generates a QTI ZIP file called myQti.zip containing two question banks, each with 200 variants of the questions specified in the two supplied C# files.
QtiGen -variants 200 -id myQti -qtiVersion 2.1 CsharpTemplate03.cs CsharpTemplate02.cs

QtiGen can also be used to create short answer and numerical questions. These questions are automatically marked by LMS systems, just like the multiple-choice questions. However, these questions do not have any answers to show. This means that the instructor only needs to supply the correct answers, and does not design any distractors.

QtiGen supports QTI versions 1.2 and 2.1.

Moodle LMS does not support QTI. To create individualized questions for Moodle, Dividni has a tool called MoodleGen. This creates question banks in the Moodle XML format which can be readily imported to Moodle and Moodle-based platforms such as CodeRunner. For example, the following command generates two Moodle question banks containing 200 variants of the questions in the two C# files CsharpTemplate03.cs and CsharpTemplate02.cs:
MoodleGen -variants 200 -bank myBank CsharpTemplate03.cs CsharpTemplate02.cs

Sakai LMS supports QTI with some quirks. To generate Sakai-compatible question banks, one will need to use a tool called SakaiQtiGen. For example, the following command generates two Sakai question banks containing 200 variants of the questions in the two C# files CsharpTemplate03.cs and CsharpTemplate02.cs:
SakaiQtiGen -variants 200 -bank myBank CsharpTemplate03.cs CsharpTemplate02.cs

The tools QtiGen and MoodleGen accept HTML files as parameters in addition to C# files. The content of HTML files are converted to informative descriptions in a separate question bank. Cover pages, academic integrity statements, and appendices are examples of where such descriptive text might find use.

While multiple-choice questions work best for printed exam scripts, short answer questions work best for online quizzes, as these are well-supported by LMS and are auto-marked.

Short-answer questions offer two main advantages:

1. An instructor does not provide distractors (i.e., incorrect answer choices) as in the multiple-choice questions. This saves time.
2. A student not familiar with the topic has far less probability to score in a short-answer question than in a multiple-choice question.

There are two common types of short-answer questions used by LMS.

1. Numerical Questions. Here the answer is numerical. The instructor is expected to provide a range within which the student-supplied answer is deemed correct. The upper and lower bounds of the range could be the same.
2. Short-text Questions. Here the answer is a short text. The instructor is expected to provide at least one correct answer, but could provide multiple. For instance, a question asking the first name of Bond might provide the answers: James, Jimmy, Jimmie, and Jim. Note that not all LMS are case-sensitive when it comes to marking short-text questions. So please design questions taking this into account.

A step-by-step guide for importing quizzes into Canvas LMS is here.

Self-Hosted Online Assessments

Online assignments currently work with Shibboleth's single sign-on to automatically pick a student's ID. The ID is then used to randomize the questions in the assignment.

Documentation on online assessment is here.