Great potential but yet far from professional

This plug-in has lots of potential. I was looking for a plug-in that I could use in a serious test environment. But as it is now Quiz Master Next has a lot of issues that make it far from usable in a serious environment. I’ll give you a list with the main issues here:

– There are hardly any overruling master settings. Almost all settings are done per quiz/test. For example all messages, e-mail templates, certificate design, timer settings et cetera have to be done per test. It is great that you can do this per test but master templates are compulsory for consistent workflow, lay-out and settings for each test. You can however duplicate a test with or without its questions so you’d have the same settings. But making overall changes to all tests in one go (like providing a longer time for the tests) have to be done manually for each and every test again.

– Quiz Master Next doesn’t take a logged in user into account. Instead a testee has to fill in his or her details before or after the test. In my opinion QMN should have the option to grab the details of the logged in user and use those in the variables for its e-mails and messages. This makes sure that QMN works properly in a WordPress environment that makes use of user registration and anywhere the testee is addressed it will show the correct name, e-mail, etc.

– One of the biggest flaws is that when the timer ends in a multiple-choice test the test is on lock down so the testee can’t fill in any answers and continue with the test. This is fine as there’s a time dedicated for the test, but if the testee hasn’t filled in all questions he or she can’t submit the test as mc-questions require an answer. As soon as you click the submit button the questions that are not answered are highlighted stating you need to fill in these questions. Since the timer has run out and the answers are locked you can’t submit your test nor finish it and you are totally stuck. This has proven very frustrating for testees that only had to fill in 1 or 2 questions and had the timer run out on them. Of course when the timer runs out the test should automatically be submitted.

– You can create messages with html in the settings of a test. These are shown at the beginning and end of the test for instance to create instructions for the testee. Unfortunately the timer starts as soon as the test is loaded. So the time that the testee needs to read the instructions is time lost that can’t be used on doing the test/quiz. The timer starts instantly when the test is loaded.

– When a testee closes the test/quiz page in the browser, the timer will pause. The next time the testee opens the test page again the timer continues where it left off. This is of course not very handy in a serious test/examination environment. One could spend time looking up the answer for a question in the browser and then continue the test without having lost any time on your timer. To be fair, when closing the window the answers are gone but the timer pauses. A testee could write down answers of the finished questions, close the test, take all the time he or she needs to find the answers to other questions, come back to the test and fill them all in again. Again to be fair you can shuffle answers and questions each time a test is loaded but still it’s a loophole. The timer should continue and when a testee comes back should say the test is invalid or the time has run out.

– There’s no way to copy one or all questions from one test to another.

– There’s no overview display for all the questions during the test. The testee will have a hard time finding a question that he or she skipped (especially in page mode). A nice floating frame (iFrame) overview at the top of the test should show all question numbers. Each and every question number could have something like a radio button indicating whether the question is answered or not. Clicking on the Question number could take the testee to the question so he or she can fill in the answer. This floating frame could also hold the timer so these are neatly together and always in view.

– You have the freedom to write html in every question and answer. This is a fantastic option in itself. But if you want to produce professional looking tests quickly, it is rather tedious to have to do this via html. Especially if you want to implement screenshots or photos into your questions. These are shown with a limited size and there’s no popup function readily available to see the details in the image. You could of course implement something like prettyphoto or fancybox via html inside the question, but for a consistent look you’d then have to copy this html code for each and every question that has an image. Changing the look/code in one question has to be done manually in all other questions to keep consistency. I’d like to see an interface that easily alows you to add a photo to a question. One that uses a master template with its own stylesheet. this alows you to show questions with photos (or videos) in a consistent manner. A premade option for a lightbox function, like fancybox or prettyphoto, would allow the testee to see the details of the image in a larger view.

There are more issues with QMN but these are the most important ones. To be honest, the developer is truly listening to his customers and he’s delivering regular updates. So hopefully these features get added soon. As it is now QMN is a nice plug-in for simple questionaires but far from usable in a serious test environment. Even so it is still one of the best quiz plug-ins around as I have tested other plug-ins and they don’t even come close to the options available in QMN. As it happens there just isn’t a real professional test plug-in yet for WordPress as far as I can tell. If there is, please let me know as I could really use one.