Competitions and local events

See also

• Specifications home page

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(We first describe how an anonymous contest is perceived by the user. The differences with restricted and official contests will be discussed after that.)

The home page of the application contains a list of public quizzes. After an anonymous user selects one of these contest they are directed to a web page with a ‘start’ button and some additional information. Pressing the button brings them to the competition proper and makes the clock tick. (During the competition the time that remains is displayed on the screen.)

At the start, the contestant is presented with the first question. Answering a question brings them automatically to the next question. Moreover, at any time they can skip a question or return to an earlier one, change their answers or even remove answers (as wrong answers cost marks while blank answers do not).

There is a button which the user presses to indicate that they are finished. The contest also ends automatically when the time limit expires. In both cases the (anonymous) user then receives their marks, may review their answers and read the corresponding feedback pages.

The official contest runs in much the same way, except that the results (and feedback) are only available when the competition is officially closed (by the organisers). Moreover, the competition can only be taken when it is officially opened by the organisers. Restricted contests function in a similar way, but now the teacher¹ is fully in charge. The teacher decides when the competition can be taken and when marks and feedback will be available.

Teachers organise participation in official and restricted competitions by setting up so-called local events².

• A local event is associated to an official or a restricted contest which provides the corresponding question sets (one for each level and language)
• There may be several local events on separate days, in separate rooms, …
• Classes and individual pupils must be registered for a particular local event to be able to participate in a competition. They can take part in at most one local event for a given competition - although they may be registered for more than one.

The system keeps track of what local event a pupil participated in. It is the local event that determines whether a feedback page can be made available or not. (Except for an anonymous pupil.)

Comments

Instead of organising separate subsequent local events, a school may choose to regard the competition as a single local event and intermittently close and reopen that event.

This is to be discouraged. One disadvantage is that when a local event is reopened, feedback pages are no longer available to the pupils that already participated in that event.

Footnotes