Technology Tips & Tutorials

Respondus 3.5: How to retrieve question sets / quiz keys from WebCT
February 28, 2008

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Respondus can be used to retrieve question sets by category, or by quiz, from WebCT. The data is retrieved and stored in a Respondus-formatted file. From there it can be previewed, printed, or saved to a word processing file.

To retrieve questions:

1. Start Respondus. It will open to a page with several tabs.
   
   
2. The "Start" tab should display be default but if it doesn't, click the "Start" tab.
   
   
3. On the Start page make sure that the "Current personality" is equal to  "WebCT 6 / Vista 4" .
   
   
4. Click the "Retrieval & Reports" tabs.
   
   
5. Click side bar button labeled "Retrieve Questions."
   • It is important to do this BEFORE selecting the class account you want to connect with.
     
6. In section 1, set Vista Server to "WebCT GOLD" (or whatever you named the ISU WebCT Server).
• If you don't have the ISU WebCT server identified in Respondus, you'll have to set it up as follows:
  • Set Vista Server to "- add new server - ".
  • Try using the preconfigured server set-up to connect to WebCT.
  • If you decide to manually establish the connection, you'll need to copy the URL from the homepage of one of your WebCT courses into box 2.
    When you click Extract in box 3 it will should say:     https://webct.its.iastate.edu
    Institution = IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY
    Description = WebCT GOLD
    User name = your netID
    
• Respondus will then connect with WebCT and determine which  accounts you have access to, as well as the assessments and question categories that exist within each account.
  
7. In section 2, pull down the "Group or Section" menu and select the class account from which you wish to retrieve information (leave the Template pull down blank).
• Make sure that you have selected the WebCT "section" account, and not a WebCT "course" account. Teaching happens at the section level. Course accounts are listed first. There is a "-- Courses --" and a "-- Section --" label in the list of accounts.
8. In section 3, use the radio buttons to indicate whether you want to retrieve a category of questions or a specific assessment then pull down the corresponding list of choices and select the one you want.
   
   
9. In section 4, enter a file name for the retrieved data.
   
   
10. In section 5, click the "Retrieve" button. When the download is finished, the Status field will display "Completed".

Working with the retrieved data:

1. Click the "Preview & Publish" tab.
   
   
2. Click the sidebar button labeled "Print Options."
   
   
3. In section 1, use radio buttons to indicate which information should be saved to either a word file or printed (exam without answers; exam key, i.e. questions plus answers; or just the answer key without questions).
   
   
4. In section 2, specify any text that should appear in header area of file/printout.
• Adding the name of the course and the question category or quiz tends to be very helpful!
  
  
5. Preview the file then print or save it. Can save in word DOC, RTF or plain TXT format.