Enhancing learning via assessments unique to every student
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
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Trivia: Dividni is individ(ual) spelt backwards.
Dividni can be installed on almost all platforms. The prerequisite is .NET core which is multi-platform. Download and extract Dividni from this zip archive: Dividni-v25.05.17.zip. 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.
If you are after a version of Dividni for .NET framework 4.8, please use DividniSetup-v21.07.15.msi. This lacks a number of features the current Dividni has.
Individualized online quizzes can be created installation-free using our online application: dividni.online.
To convert HTML to PDF, you may use
ChromiumHtmlToPdf
or wkhtmltopdf
; to merge all PDFs into a single one, you may use pdftk
.
These are freely available.
Useful tips on the installation and/or use of the other software is available here.
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.
There are some academic papers on the use and value of the framework.
Paper-based MCQ examinations are created using the tool McqTestGen
.
A tutorial guide to creating such examinations are here.
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
.
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:
There are two common types of short-answer questions used by LMS.
A step-by-step guide for importing quizzes into Canvas LMS is here.
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.