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February 2024 newsletter: multiple choice for all quizzes, Dashboard improvements and more!

Hello, everybody! The last newsletter was pretty long, so I’m going to try to keep this one more to the point. In this newsletter, I’ve included the following important updates about PhysQuiz.net:

  • *NEW* Multiple choice questions on all quizzes!
  • New Dashboard Results features
  • Lots of bug fixes and other improvements

*NEW* Multiple choice questions on all quizzes!

At long last, I’ve added multiple choice questions to all of the quizzes on PhysQuiz.net! Some of the quizzes already had multiple choice, but I’ve always wanted to add this feature to every quiz because I feel it lowers the barrier to learning just a bit, especially when students are just starting out on a topic and aren’t sure what a correct answer might look like.

To generate multiple choice questions on any quiz, simply select the “Multiple Choice” option when you generate a quiz or create an assignment:

 

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks testing out multiple choice questions on all of the quizzes, but like all new features, I recommend trying it out with a test account or a small group of your students first. If you come across any bugs or poor quality options, please let me know if you find any. I hope the new multiple choice feature is useful for you and your students!


New Dashboard results ease-of-use features

One of my big goals for PhysQuiz.net was to make life easier for my fellow Physics teachers by automating generation and grading of assignments. While the Dashboard has definitely helped with collecting scores from automatically graded assignments, the Results page has always been a little clunky and cumbersome to use. This sort of thing drives me nuts when I use other LMS’s, so I made some efficiency improvements to the Dashboard.

First, there were some serious issues with how the filter menus looked, so I made those a little more compact and modern. I also changed their behavior so that they should work much faster now. Also, if you click on a student result and return to the Results page, you won’t lose your filter settings like before, which should reduce the number of times you have to click.

Next, I added a “Save and Display Next” button when you’re viewing an individual student result and want to move on to the next one without going back to the Results page:

Finally, to make the Results page load faster, I added shortlinks above the table of student  scores if there are more than 500 results to display:

Thanks so much to Jennifer and Andrew for reaching with ideas on how to improve the Dashboard! Suggestions like theirs have helped me significantly improve PhysQuiz.net since it launched, so please keep giving me feedback and ideas.


Lots of bug fixes & new features

Trying to improve the Results page on the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard introduced several new bugs and revealed some others that were already there, so I apologize if you stumbled across any of those. Here’s a list of all the updates since the last newsletter:

Dashboard – these features and bug fixes also apply to ChemQuiz.net

  • new feature: added a “Save & Display Next” button which saves updates to that student result and then loads the next student (thanks, Jennifer!)
  • new feature: added individual page links to the top of the Results page when more than 500 results would be displayed
  • new feature: added an expiring progress alert for students at top of Dashboard
  • improvement: automatically whitelist the teacher’s IP address and so that the site security software doesn’t block their school (thanks, Debbie!)
  • bug fix: error was displaying after clearing notification at top of Dashboard
  • bug fix: most recent result for each student was not showing up due to an extra while loop (thanks, Kharma!)
  • bug fix: after updating a result, return the teacher to where they came from (gradebook or results, including filters) (thanks again, Jennifer!)
  • bug fix: filter menu on the Results page was preventing teachers from directly changing from one class to another (thanks, Andrew!)
  • bug fix: archived assignments weren’t hidden on the Results page (thanks again, Andrew!)
  • bug fix: creating a class from CSV input wouldn’t generate a join code for that class (thanks, Walt!)
  • bug fix: school student IDs weren’t showing up on the Students page (thanks again, Walt!)
  • bug fix: copying a school to PhysQuiz.net wasn’t creating the proper results table in the database (thanks again, Walt!)
  • bug fix: incorrect student answer overrides were doubling up on some lines (thanks, Jason!)

All Quizzes

  • new feature: added option for multiple choice questions to 23 quizzes (8 quizzes already had MC)
  • bug fix: prompt to take an assignment was incorrectly including assignments from a different teacher than their own (thanks, Lauren & Maggie!)

Gas Laws Quiz

  • bug fix: gas names weren’t displaying properly

Nuclear Reactions Quiz

  • bug fix: word problems were not displaying element names

Other improvements

  • improvement: purchased three additional CPUs for the web server to help the site run faster

I keep track of every issue or suggestion that’s sent in, but some bugs take a while to track down and fix, and new features can be challenging to add, so I appreciate your patience and understanding. PhysQuiz.net has improved significantly thanks to all the teachers and students who have sent in reports, so please keep sending them in!


Site licenses for the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard

Site licenses for the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard allow teachers to create assignments for their students and track their progress. Thanks so much to the many schools, colleges, universities and tutors who have renewed or purchased a site license for this school year! Site licenses are how I pay for web hosting and site security as well as the software I use to write and maintain the quizzes, and it keeps the website ad-free.

If you’d like to purchase a 12-month PhysQuiz.net site license or renew your existing license, you can pay in one of the following ways:

    • credit card through Square (the most popular option)
    • school purchase order (contact me for a sales quote – I’m also happy to fill out any paperwork required by your institution or state, and I’ve already completed student privacy paperwork for states such as CA, IL, WI, and the six state MA-ME-NH-NY-RI-VT Student Data Privacy Consortium)

Additional schools in the same district can purchase an add-on license for 50% off at just US$35 per school. If you also teach chemistry or you have a colleague who does, you can bundle a site license for the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard for just US$35 more! Please contact me if you have any questions about how to purchase a site license.

Finally, if you teach in a high poverty public school or district (at least 50% of your students on free/reduced lunch or designated “economically disadvantaged”), please send me a link to the supporting documentation and you’ll get a free site license for the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard forever (ChemQuiz.net, too!). I want PhysQuiz.net to continue to be a useful resource for as many students as possible.


Help me share PhysQuiz.net with the world!

If you like using PhysQuiz.net, there are three quick and easy things that you can do to help me promote the site!

  • Add your school to the list of supporters on the About page! Simply go to the PhysQuiz.net Dashboard, click on “Your Info” in the top menu bar, activate the box next to “Display School on PhysQuiz.net“, and click the “Update Your Info” button.
  • Tell another Physics teacher about PhysQuiz.net and encourage them to try out the Dashboard!
  • Follow @PhysQuizDotNet on X (formerly Twitter) and share my updates with your fellow Physics teachers!

A few weeks ago, I saw this post about a great bulletin board display for Black History Month called “Celebrating African-American champions of Science & Engineering“. Unfortunately, I don’t know who created this excellent resource, but I thought I’d share it in case you were looking for something to hang up in your classroom! Our science department put this up in our hallway display case at the start of the month and we had a lot of fun doing it.

Once again, thank you for your continued support of PhysQuiz.net! I hope that the year has started well for you and that you’re able to make it through these next few months until Spring (in North America, at least!). Please feel free to reach out to me via the Contact form or at chris@physquiz.net if you have any questions or concerns. Take care!

-Chris