Presented at the 1998 APIII Conference Return to 1998 Abstract Index
A DATABASE-DRIVEN, FREE-TEXT ENTRY, INTERNET QUIZZING PROGRAM
Hartford
Hospital
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Hartford, Connecticut
Michael D. Blechner, MD
The MD Interactive system is an experiment in a database approach to computer-based education. The highlight of the system is a database driven, free-text entry, Internet quizzing program. The database is housed in a relational database system and enables each question to be associated with an unlimited number of answers. Answers are contained in a separate table allowing multiple questions to reuse answers. A third table contains explanations which can be assigned to specific instances of an answer. The instance of an answer is labeled as correct or incorrect, thus enabling the system to recognize certain incorrect answers as well as correct answers and provide appropriate feedback. Additional features include:
- a “users” table which tracks individual students on the system enabling, for example, a weekly review of incorrectly answered questions
- predefined synonyms to facilitate free-text entry
- built-in spell checking
- logging of unrecognized user entries, enabling the system administrator to periodically review these answers for possible additions to the synonym table
- a
“media” table containing question and explanation
specific references to images, sounds, animations, etc.,
which the system automatically locates and loads at the
time of presentation
can be called from any web page with option to specify a series of questions to be asked (well-suited for integration into other web based teaching pages).
The system currently uses Microsoft Access 97 and Microsoft Personal Web Server. The web server accesses the database and builds the HTML pages on the fly using Microsoft Active Server Pages. The entire system has been developed and is running on a Pentium MMX 233MHz processor equipped laptop.