Developing our own mock exams

[rasheed SM]

Hello All,

We have many free mock exams provided by our community. Most of them are in the form of HTML or other, where we cannot simulate them in a real time simulator. This will help us in practicing in realtime with exam duration.

There is a thread going on SCBCD, for developing our own simulator. There is an open source project JPilotExam (www.jpilotexam.org or sourceforge.net/projects/jpilotexam ) An open source simulator.

The main advantage of this simulator is we can prepare our mock exams for it. It is very easy to write the exam for this simulator. AS it is in XML format. I tried to convert Marcus Green exam 10 questions. It is working good.

I got an idea to convert the available free mock exams (required we will take permission from the authors) in to JPilotExam simulator exams for realtime simulation. We will retain the author information, as there is a section provided in the mock exam xml document.

We need to listout the available mock exams nad convert them, just copy and paste into xml format given by jpilotexam. the exam for simulator is ready.

This is very useful to practice the exams, than just reading it.

Any one intreated in contributing your valuable time to the community?


Is there any way to keep all these mock exams somewhere in javaranch?.

Any ideas are highly appreciated....

-rasheed
SCJP,SCWCD

[Varun Khanna]

Originally posted by rasheed SM:

Is there any way to keep all these mock exams somewhere in javaranch?.

There are some resources right here

[Chris Cheng]

Hi Rasheed,

Simulator is cool. I used it (JPilotTest) for SCWCD long back from yahoo.

Good idea of converting available exams to XML (JPilotExam format). I strongly beleave that, simulating exam question benifits more than just reading it. Already we have good exams in html. we just have to put some effort to make it XML to use with JPilotExam simulator.

The main advantage is we can learn maininting the time with simulator. I would have scored more if i did with simulator.

Do we need to have permission from the authors even though we retain their deatils inthe exam author details.

I will also contribute some time. Do you have any plans?


-- Chris

[Barry Gaunt]

Do we need to have permission from the authors even though we retain their deatils inthe exam author details.

Yes! Authors place copyright on their materials. Material on this site is also copyrighted (See bottom of this page.)

[amit taneja]

so what if they are copywritted....
hey rasheed....and all ranchers can take permission from them (authors)
by sending them email and after getting permission ..also stating that thier copywrites will not be distrubed ..and thier name and source of question will be mentioned ...
Infact you can also name that particular question ( taken from particular) website...with that name...
like for DAN exams...

you can make "DAN exam simulator" and reserve copywrite of DAN and also maintain honesty...

with that lots of exam will be in the simulator form and big % will increase in the no. of ppl attempting it as compare to present mock takers
because everybody used to take more and more exams in the real environment.

I hope original writters of exam will allow this..espectially if they have make their exam voluntary and for serving others...
knowing that thier copywrite will not disturbed...

but we ppl have to make the simular with honesty i.e according to the promise made to the authors...

Good luck

[Marcus Green]

It is very important that you obtain permission before reproducing mock exams. My own exams represent hundreds of hours of work spread over several years. One of the reasons I am extremly reluctant to allow reproduction is that over time there is a steady stream of updates. For example the three html exams based at

http://www.jchq.net/mockexams/exam1.htm
http://www.jchq.net/mockexams/exam2.htm
http://www.jchq.net/mockexams/exam3.htm

Are aimed at the JDK 1.2 version of the exam. If you attempt some of the questions using JDK 1.5 some of the answers appear to be incorrect due to the subtle side effect of autoboxing introduced in JDK1.5. Because I created these questions and monitor the copious feedback I get I can answer questions about issues like this whereas someone who simply reproduces them is unlikely to have this inside knowledge.

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Hi Rasheed,

Originally posted by rasheed SM:
I got an idea to convert the available free mock exams (required we will take permission from the authors)...

I am very glad that you requiring of yourself that you get permission from the original authors before proceeding with this.

In some cases you will find that authors of exam simulation questions will not want you to copy/convert/use their questions - and you must respect that. Marcus' comments are just one example where there are very ligitimate reasons why an author would not want to have their questions used.

In other cases, you may find that the original author no longer has any interest in the upkeep of the questions, and you will have to decide whether you are willing to take on ownership of the questions.

And you could find responses from authors will vary anywhere between these two positions.

Originally posted by rasheed SM:
Is there any way to keep all these mock exams somewhere in javaranch?.

What would you be looking at storing - multiple XML files or something else?

As Barry mentioned, material stored on this site is copyrighted by the owner of this site. This may have ramifications when talking to the original authors about who owns copyright on the new formats.

Good luck with your project.

Originally posted by Chris Cheng:
Do we need to have permission from the authors even though we retain their deatils inthe exam author details.

Absolutely.

If you were only publishing small extracts of published text you might be able to get away with listing the author/source/copyright holder in the bibliography.

But what is being proposed here is to take somebody's complete mock exam.

In such a case you have no choice but to get the authors and/or copyright holders written permission to use their work.

Regards, Andrew
[ June 02, 2005: Message edited by: Andrew Monkhouse ]

[William Brogden]

Mock exams for my books and the ones I coauthored with Marcus represent an enormous amount of work - especially in removing ambiguity from questions. Early mock exams in study guides were notorious for inaccuracy so we put a lot of effort into cleaning up the questions. This included my mock exam applet that has been used by tens of thousands of people.

Furthermore, since this was all done as "work for hire", the copyrights are owned by various publishers. The publishers have been ok with me exposing a limited sample of questions on various web sites.

Feel free to write your own questions, but be sure to include a mechanism by which users can argue with your interpretation - you will be surprised at how hard it is to write good questions.
Bill

[Mujibur Rahman]

Hi Rasheed,

First I will thank for you idea and willing to convert the mock exams. This is our idea to convert the mock exams provided in html or text format to XML (JPilotExam doc format) to simulator with the JPE Simulator. Couple of guys are started preparing questions from the discussions in various groups mainly from javaranch. We will provide these exams under "GNU Free Documentation License".

And we are also planning to write request mails to the authors of mock exams to give permission in converting their exam in to XML format, by retaining all their copyrights.

The main advantage for this is, all the available exams will be in one format to use with one simulator which is a open source project.

Almost two years back, I converted Eduro Cobians mock exam into JPilotTest (http://geocities.com/rahmanjava) by taking his permission. And also the questions posted in javaranch. The idea of this project started there only from the requests and sugessions given by the community. I desided to release the code of the simulator as open source so that any one can use it.
It will be great helpful for the community to have many mock exams under one format and those can be used for a simulator to selftest.

We are hoping that authors will give us permission, as we are a group of people spending our valuable time to help the community in certification exams.

JPilotExam Project not only provides exam simulator, but also an exam builder and have many more features which will help the aspirant to get good score. Please have a look at the project and provide your comments and sugessions.

I fully agree with all you people and we will host only those exams for downloads from sourceforge.net that are having authors permission (As you can see for Eudoro Cobian SCWCD and JavaRanch SCBCD exams contains the information).

We got a suggesion from one author, to include a tag in the XML that contains the copyright details other than the author information and descriptions. And for including questions from multiple authors, the explanation of the question will contain the deatils of the author. We are including these.

Our team is working hard in bringing this useful project to the community. We request the ranchers, authors and the community to extend the helping hand in making this useful project a success.

We sincerely invite your valuable contributions, comments, wise suggestions in making of this useful project a success.

Rasheed - We are discussing this offline upto now. I created a mailing list
[e-mail] for the mock exam discussion. Join us there.

S.M.Rahman
[e-mail]
JPilotExam Project
http://sourceforge.net/projects/jpilotexam
www.jpilotexam.org

[Chris Cheng]

This can be going to be a very useful project. This is a open source project for developing exam tools for better preparation. But need good stuff to simulate.

The authors can utilize this tools for their mock exams. They can concentrate on the content. Prove the mock exams in JPilotExam (XML) format fo the users from your websites (or give permission to download from sourceforge.net). And needed add your copyright to the exam docs. As doc version is displayed, we can track the modifications from the author.

chris cheng