WhizQuest Author Information

WhizQuest Home Site

WhizQuest author administration is web-based. Below are instructions for requesting to become an author; uploading, previewing, and installing quest files through the Web, setting the options for publishing the response data from your questionnaire, and getting access to the data and summaries of the data for your own use.
Note: WhizQuest is available to Virginia Tech faculty and staff and will be available for trial use by others as our server capacity allows. If there is enough demand outside of Virginia Tech, we will establish a way to license the system, as we have for WhizQuiz

Becoming a WhizQuest Author: As a WhizQuest author, you can upload quest files, preview them, install them, and change publishing options, all on-line through the web. To become an author, fill in the following form and submit. You will then receive notification that you are authorized to install some number of quest files. Alternatively, you may send the information to the WhizQuest administrator by email whizquiz@vt.edu.
Information needed to obtain a login and password:
First name: Last name:
Email address:
Requested Login name:
Requested Password (not your PID password):
Fill out the form and click "Request"

Author Administration

Once you are set up as an author, you will use the author administration area on the web to upload and administer your questionnaires. You create questionnaires using a text editor (any editor that can save a file as plain ASCII text will do), then you upload them to the server through the web. Within the administration area you can also change your password, delete a quiz, view and download results, set options on how and when others can see results, and critique individual responses to open-ended questions.

Loggin in: All administrative functions start by logging in to the server using your login name password (see above for how to get a login and password). Log in by clicking on the "Author Admin" link on the left-hand bar in the WhizQuest homepage, or go directly to the URL:
http://whiz.isis.vt.edu/whizquestcgi/request.cgi
You will be prompted for your login and password:
Once logged in, you will be free to perform any functions described here. However, if you are idle (i.e., don't hit a button) for 30 minutes, your login will expire, and you will have to log in again. Each time you do click on a button, you get another 30 minutes. If your session does expire, you will a screen like the following, and you will have to log in again.

The system will not remember what you were doing, so please be aware of this time limit as you working on things that take time, like critiquing a series of user responses.

Creating a Quest File: See the on-line documentation for how to write an appropriate quest file. You might also want to download one or more of the files used to create the demonstrations on the Demo's page.

Uploading a Quest File: After successfully logging in, you will see the Author Administration window in which you can choose to work with any questionnaire you might have already installed or to upload a new file if you have not filled your quota:

Selecting Browse will bring up a file selection box on your computer. Find the file you have edited and select it. Then submit the file. You will then see the file's code displayed on the screen, and at the bottom, you have the option to Preview the questionnaire, or to Process it (either install it or discard it).
Managing a Questionnaire: Authors can manage their questionnaires and results. You may start either of two ways. You may begin as above by pointing your browser to the URL
http://whiz.isis.vt.edu/whizquestcgi/request.cgi
entering your login and password, and selecting your questionnaire from the list presented.
You may also go more directly to your questionnaire's administration page by using a URL of the form,
http://whiz.isis.vt.edu/whizquestcgi/request.cgi?file=QuestFileName
Again, you will need to enter your login and password. Either of these methods will take you to a screen like the following (this is for our guest author, so you can try this using the login of 'guest' and password 'quest').

There are five options:
- Results (the default) lets you see the responses entered to date for this questionnaire. Specify the results you want displayed using the check boxes. You may view these in tabular form or as text files delimited by the vertical bar character (|), allowing you to copy and upload the data into a spreadsheet. Select either "tables" or "raw log files" using the radio button above the "submit button". Tabular views of open-ended questions also let you enter "Critiques" of user responses (see below).
  NOTE: If you want to specify your own delimiter, you may include a tag like the following into your quest file, <DELIMITER=",;">. The first character ',' becomes the delimiter, and every occurrance of that character in a user's response is replaced with the second character ';'.
- Publish takes you to the page in which you can specify when (if ever) you want the results of the questionnaire to be available to the public (see below)
- View Source displays a text version of your current quest file, dated. This is useful if you want to revise a questionnaire: get the version off the server, and you will be sure you have an up-to-date file with which to work.
- Author Admin This takes you to your author administration area (see above) where you can choose to administer other questionnaires or to upload a new quest file.
- Delete This will delete the quest file and its data. Be sure you have recorded all the log data you need before deleting!
Public View of Results: Authors can decide whether and when users are able to see the results of the survey. For our Guestbook example, the results are always available, but for many surveys, the results should be displayed only after the survey is complete, if at all. Set these options by choosing "publish" from the management menu, and entering information in the form that is returned:
- The first choice is whether or not to publish the results. The default value is "Never". If you set this to "Always" or "Timed", then users will be able to see results at the URL:
  
  http://whiz.isis.vt.edu/whizquestcgi/outquest.cgi?file=QuestFileName
  If you set this to "Timed", then the results will display only between the start and stop dates and times entered on the form. The default is to start on the current day and to have no stop date.
- You may also specify what results are displayed. These are chosen using the check boxes on the form. For the Likert and open-ended questions, it is also possible to choose which specific questions or responses (respectively) are displayed on the public results page (see below).
- Finally, you can decide what information is displayed along with open-ended question responses. All label values that have been designated as logged (i.e., LOG="YES" was specified in the label tag), are listed as options, along with the Date and Time the response was recorded.
Selecting Individual Responses & Critiques: When you publish information, you can choose to include or exclude individual likert questions and responses to individual open-ended questions. This is done after selecting view results in tabular form from the management menu. The Likert results looks like:

and the results for open-ended questions look like:

This tabular view includes a column on the right with one or two check boxes.
- Checking "Publish" allows this question's data or response to appear on the public results page.
- Checking the "Edit" box for open-ended questions brings up a window in which you may enter a critique of the response. Critiques are displayed along with responses in the public results.
  NOTE: Critiques and changing public output settings are disabled in our demo questionnaires.

Whizquest v1.1
Developed at ISIS, Virginia Tech
Send comments to the Developers

First name: Last name: Email address: Requested Login name: Requested Password (not your PID password):
Fill out the form and click "Request"

Information needed to obtain a login and password:

Author Administration