Thread:Project:Support desk/Open source exam and quiz banks: An idea for a new wiki/reply (2)

Thanks for responding. Let me give you two explanations and ask you a question:

The explanations:

1. I chose a program that randomly selects from the quizbank because that was easier to write. It works OK for the time being.

2. The "secret" question bank I refer to are those proprietary banks that professors keep on their hard drives. These questions will always play a role in grade assessment.

My question is about "secret" exams from a "public" (open source) question bank that need to be rendered by first uploading to Wikiversity, and then printing out as a pdf file. At the moment this is a "public" act that anybody can see.

I don't need to do this now, but someday a larger open source organization (such as openStax College) might want to create tests "off-wiki", meaning that it is not necessary to go through Wikiversity or Wikipedia to render the wikitext into a pdf file. The solution would be to maintain a wikitext server with access that is by invitation only. I need to know if this feasible.

I have noticed that two by-invitation-only wikis are at UC Davis with Chemwiki and the OpenStax College textbooks (affiliated with Rice University). These environments are much different than wikimedia "wikitext" syntax, using mathjax for equations, for example.

Someday (maybe in a decade or so) I would like to see it possible for professors to render exams in wikitext in a way that nobody can see it until the day of the test. The wikitext would be created on personal computers, and ultimately rendered as pdf for paper-copy printout. If such "private" rendering of wikitext is feasible, I will continue to write exam questions on Wikiversity with the understanding that the technology will eventually catch up.

On the other hand, if Wikimedia is adamantly against supporting any wiki that permits "secret" or "private" rendering of wikitext, and if a private server cannot be created that renders equivalent Wikipedia-style wikitext, then I need to think about working with the syntax used by OpenStax College or Chemwiki. I have contacted both organizations, and they are both giving me moral support. But neither organization seems to have the resources to create the software I hope will happen sometime in the future.

Let me put the question simply with a hypothetical scenario: Suppose I were not an individual, but a consortium of dozens of professors who need a way to render wikitext in a fashion that nobody can see it until the day of the test. Would Wikimedia (or somebody else) be able to provide that support?

I believe the answer is yes.