Question

I am preparing a Test or Quiz in Django. The quiz needs to be completed in certain time frame. Say 30 minutes for 40 questions.I can always initiate a clock at start of the test, and then calculate time by the time the Quiz is completed. However it’s likely that during the attempt, there may be issues such as internet connection drops, or system crashes/power outages etc.

I need a strategy to figure out when such an accident happened, and stop the clock, then let the user take the test again from where it stopped, and start the clock again.

What is the right strategy? Any help including sample code/examples/ideas are most welcome

Answer 1

Your strategy should depend on importance of the test and ability to retake whole test.

1. Is test/quiz for fun or competence/knowledge checking?
2. Are you dealing with logged users?
3. Are tests generated randomly from large poll of available questions?

these are the questions you need to answer yourself first.

Remember that:

• malicious user CAN simulate connection outage / power failure,
• only clock you can trust is one on server side,
• everything on browser side can be manipulated (think firebug/console js injection)

My approach would be:

1. Inform users that TIME is important factor and connection issues may not be taken into account when grade will be given…,
2. Serve only one question, wait for answer, serve another one,
3. Whole test time should be calculated as SUM of each answer time:
   • save each “question send” / “answer received” timestamps and calculate answer time from it,
   • time between questions wouldn’t count,
   • you’d get extra scope on which questions was harder / took longer to answer.
4. Add some kind of heartbeat to your question page (like ajax request every X seconds), when heartbeat stops you can (depending on options you have):
   1. invalidate question and notify user via dialog that he has connection issues and have to refresh to get new question instead if you have larger poll of questions to use,
   2. pause time on server side (and for example dim question page so user cannot answer until his connection is restored) IMO only for games/fun quiz/tests
   3. save information on server side on each interruption which would later ease decision to allow retake whole test e.g. he was fine until 20th question and then on 3-4 easy questions in a row he was dropping…