SmartLite Software is based out of Italy, and their documentation and disk are both bilingual. What I was really surprised about was that the English language portion of the software and help was surprisingly well-written. Usually, when something is translated from the native language to English (and not American in this case), grammar- and spell-checking are secondary considerations, at best. This wasn’t the case here.

On the flip side, there wasn’t much to look into to find spelling errors or other translation problems. Hardcopy documentation is nonexistent, and online help is sparse; the company’s  Web site offers little more. On the other hand, there isn’t really much you need documentation for; like I said, the online help is sparse, but it is context sensitive.

When the installation begins, the first thing it asks you is for language selection (so does the  Web site), and then everything else is in the language of your choice. Installation is straightforward and requires the product code on the inside of the CD case (or from SmartLite, if you order it online); the only other option is where the application is installed.

WebQuiz gives you the option for four different types of questions: multiple choice, multiple answer, true/false, and fill in the blank. You’re allowed to mix and match them, making the final quiz as simple or as complicated as you want. You can even add images to the questions. Very nice. It also gives you the opportunity to make two different types of quizzes (all the questions on one long page, or one question per page) and gives several pre-defined formats for each.

The thing I really like about this product is that you can tailor the quiz for more than types of question or questions per page; I like the ability to draw from a pool of questions. The idea is that you can write as many questions as you want, and then present them as a randomly selected subset. I started off writing about forty information security questions, but I set the quiz to display only ten of them at a time, and never the same ten. I also set it to where the answers are presented in a random order; this way, if someone takes the quiz more than once or twice, they still have to be able to answer the question, not just know where the answer is in the set of responses.

Another fine point is the ability to put a response or note as the quiz is evaluated. This comes in handy for showing why an answer is right and the others are wrong, or for expanding the answer for any other reason. As an educator, that is a real plus.

As an educator, though, I found a few real problems. First of all, the responses you write, mentioned in the previous paragraph, are only displayed if you get an answer wrong. This leads into the fact that when you get your final score at the end of the quiz (the evaluation), only the wrong answers are shown; I like the idea of showing the questions and the right answers, too, for reinforcement. If a quiz is long enough, users can forget what the original options were. Along with that, there’s no opportunity to print a copy of the quiz, just the final evaluation, and there’s no way to send that evaluation to those who are supposed to be administering the tests.

On a technical side, the developer is given the opportunity to post the completed quiz to several locations: write to the local hard drive, publish to a personal  Web site, or publish to SmartLite’s  Web site. Since everything is written into a single directory, it’s relatively easy to move things around on a  Web site or write the quiz to a stand-alone CD for distribution. I’m personally uneasy about publishing my quizzes to SmartLite’s site; they advertise as a quiz repository, and I guess that’s okay for some, but it gives others the chance to possibly steal a developer’s work.

When you finish writing your questions, answers, and comments, you simply save everything in a SmartLite-proprietary format, and then press the publish button. It will ask where to put the finished product (see the previous paragraph), and then the final quiz is created for you. The idea is to keep the substance of the quiz in its proprietary format on your local machine; this way, you can add more questions as they come to you and then recreate and republish the quiz.

The contents of the quizzes are quite straightforward. There is an HTML front end that is easily editable to put your own images, logos, etc., and it even comes packaged with a series of buttons for things like forward, back, exit, and the like; if you don’t like the ones WebQuiz produces, simply replace them with your own in the right size and with the right name. The meat of the quiz is stored in a JavaScript file that handles presentation, scoring, and the like; the JavaScript file is what you’ll have to replace if you update your quiz (see the previous paragraph).

Now, I’m not sure where Alamo PC got this product, because I can’t find it in any local store. So far, the only place I found to get the application is from SmartLite itself online. Pricing is available for users and corporations, and there are education discounts, too.
 

With the exception of the one negative paragraph, I would definitely recommend this product to anyone who wants to make  Web-based quizzes. That one paragraph could lead to some comments from those who take the quizzes, though. Be prepared. On the other hand, I’m going to contact SmartLite and see what they can do to incorporate those desired changes.

SmartLite