An automatic generator and corrector of multiple choice tests with random answer keys

Abstract

In the 21st century student-teacher communication in high schools has been increasingly computer-mediated. This brings a strong demand for experienced professionals worldwide, preferably graduated in Information Technology. Until the 19th century the opportunity to attend university courses was a privilege of a few undergraduates, so that the student-teacher relationship was highly personalized. In the 20th century the access to universities increased intensively in many countries, which is a very positive fact. However, it seriously compromised the personal student-teacher communication. This article presents an innovative solution to simplify generation and correction of multiple choice questions (MCQ) in which reliance on the results is wanted. With our program we obtain different issues of the same test with non-coinciding answer keys. Therefore, we offer an original, trustworthy and practical way to evaluate learning in courses attended by a large number of students. Our program generates a LATEX file and its compiled PDF file containing the individual exam of each student. The exam consists of a front page followed by a list of MCQ and optionally dissertation questions. The front page can be used as an answer sheet of the MCQ, and it has a layout that includes a header. One can opt for individual exams of which the answer keys to the MCQ is unique to each student. All these options are set in a separate configuration file. Our program uses a folder structure to organize classes of students in CSV files and databank of questions in TXT files. The students have to fill out their answer sheets of the front page, which will already contain both the student's name and her/his id number in case of individual tests. After the exam the test front pages of a class can all be scanned into a single PDF file that our software will read to perform the automatic correction. The final scores are stored in a file that contains each student's ID followed by the paired letters given.answer/answer.key of each single question. This file is in CSV format, which is both universally readable and writable by most spreadsheet programs. Our source codes are written in Python programming language. Our program is freely available on the Internet, where users can download the code in Python together with the folder structure and sample files to generate the exams. It has been intensively used at the Federal University of ABC in Brazil, both in classrooms and for distance learning courses, and also in simulations with 6772 tests with excellent results comparable with commercial products. This paper presents a software generator of MCQ which not only issues different versions of the same test, but also performs a fast correction of them all, and exports the results to a CSV file. Thanks to the facilities offered by automatic correction of MCQ the student-teacher communication can concentrate on the essential demands and become feasible again.