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Illinois Valley Community College

Instructions for Creating Test Pilot™ Online Assessments

Important: The instructions below were updated on March 20, 2001, and reflect changes to the original instructions that are now necessary for Test Pilot™ to work properly.

Below are step-by-step instructions for creating online assessments in Test Pilot™. The instructions below do not include all of the options in Test Pilot™ but should allow you to create Test Pilot™ assessments and to put those assessments online successfully. You might want to print these instructions and to use them as you are creating your first few assessments. Pay special attention to instructions marked with Important: if your Test Pilot™ assessment does not work correctly, the problem most likely involves one of the steps marked with Important.

Very Important: Before you can put Test Pilot™ assessments online, the college's Webmaster must create a folder in your FrontPage web for the assessments. Most likely, this folder will be named "tests." Contact the college's Webmaster if you need this folder created in your FrontPage web.

To Create and Post an Assessment with Test Pilot™ (Version 2)

  1. Load Test Pilot™
    • Double-click the Test Pilot™ icon or choose Test Pilot™ from the Start menu.
    • Click "Begin."
          
  2. Create your questions by choosing "Question Designing"
    • Click "Question Designing."
    • Click "Text and Style" and click "New Question" to create a new question.
    • Under "Text and Style," write your question and choose the question type (true/false, etc.).
    • Click "Response Handling" to fill in the answers and the points.
    • To create a new question, return to "Text and Style" and click "New Question."
  1. Select the questions to be included in your assessment by choosing "Question Selection"
    • Click "Question Selection."
    • Under "Pick and Group," click to put an "X" in the "Omit" column for questions you do not want included in the assessment, or
    • Under "Group Selection," click to put an "X" in the box next to the group or groups of questions you want to include in the assessment. Make sure to click "enable group selection" if you want to choose your questions as a group.
    • If you want Test Pilot™ to randomly choose a set number of questions from a larger group of questions, click "Random Selection," click "Use Random Picks," and indicate the number of questions you want randomly chosen from a group or groups.
    • If you want Test Pilot™ to automatically choose questions containing certain key words, click "Keyword Selection," click "enable selection by keyword," and type the key word or words into the box.

    • Important: Double check all "Question Selection" settings for your assessment. You have several ways to select questions, and it may take a while to figure out how one setting can override another. For example, if "omit" is marked for an individual question, that question will not be included even if you mark the group in which the question appears to be included. If "enable keyword selection" is marked but no keywords are typed into the box, Test Pilot™ will include all of your questions in the assessment.

  1. Select the "Look and Feel" of your assessment
    • Click "Look and Feel."
    • Under "Headers and Footers," type the headers for your assessment, the instructions, and the footer.
    • Under "Color and Style," click your choices for "Question Presentation Options" (Because pressing [Enter] can cause an assessment to be submitted in Internet Explorer, you should mark "Issue Submission Warning.") Important: You must provide a new header, instructions, and footer for each new assessment that you create. Just delete the old and type in the new.
    • Under "Color and Style," you can choose the fonts and colors, or you can leave these options blank to use the default settings (white background, black fonts).
  1. Select the "Security Controls" for your assessment
    • Click "Security Controls."
    • Under "Global Information," supply a title for your assessment. The name you type after "Prepared by" will appear at the bottom of the assessment. Remember your owner ID and password you type for "Owner Information": you will need this information to access the results of the assessments.
    • Under "User List," click "Enable these Restrictions" if you want to restrict access to the assessment. You should click "Enable these Restrictions" if you plan to record the grades your students earn on the assessment.
    • Follow the steps below to password protect your assessment:
      • Click "Enable these Restrictions," but do not click "Read from Filename." (Important: We have had trouble with Test Pilot™ not working properly when passwords are saved in a separate "lookaside" file that you would include if "Read from Filename" were marked.)  
      • Open a word processor and create and save a text (TXT) file for your list of student names and passwords.
      • In the word-processing file, type a student password, a comma, and the student name for each student in the class. Example: 123456789,Joe Smith. 
        • Make sure not to include a space before or after the comma, and type only one student password and name on each line.
        • You might use the social security number as the password.
        • Important: A student would use only everything before the comma as his or her password (123456789 in the example above). In the list of scores that you access, though, the student's name will appear next to the score.  
        • If you want to enter the assessment as a student once the assessment is online, you should create a password for yourself or for a student who does not exist.
      • Once you have created the list of student names and passwords, copy and paste the list into the "Login,Name" box in Test Pilot™  (on the "User List" screen, under "Security Controls").
      • Save and close the word-processing file, remembering where you saved it. In the future, when you create another assessment for the same class, you simply can open the word-processing file and copy and paste the passwords and names into Test Pilot™.
    • Under "Time Limit," click "enable these restrictions" if you want to limit the time a student can take the assessment (a countdown timer will be included on the screen) or if you want to limit when the assessment will be available. Read the warnings about setting time limits carefully: If an end time is set, students will not be able to submit the assessment after that time. 
    • Under "Attempt Limits," click "enable these restrictions" if you want to limit the number of times a student can request an assessment or the number of times an assessment can be submitted. If you plan to record grades for the assessment, make sure to click "enable the restrictions" and type "1" in "Limit Submission Attempts to." A zero in a box indicates an unlimited number of times a student can access the assessment or submit responses. Important: If a start time is set with only one request allowed, a student unsuccessfully attempting to access the assessment before the start time will have used his or her one attempt and will not be able to access the assessment after the start time.  

    • You probably would not want to mark any of the boxes under "Computer List."

  1. Select what you want Test Pilot™ to do with submissions by choosing "Submission Handling"
    • Click "Submission Handling."
    • Under "Scoring, "choose your "Score Return Options." You can set Test Pilot™ to show a student only his or her score immediately after the student takes the assessment. Or you can have Test Pilot™ show the student's score along with the student's responses and the correct responses.
    • Under "Feedback," choose the feedback you want to provide students, including a general message and any specific messages based upon the student's performance on the assessment. You can leave this area blank.
    • Under "Recall," select the recall options for your assessment. If you click "allow users to recall their own responses," make sure to set the time after the end time for the assessment. Marking "allow users to recall their own responses" allows students to see their responses and the correct responses, even if you marked only "return score to user" and not "return correct answers" under the "Score Return Options." 

    • Important: The "Submission Handling" options are particularly important if you do not want the correct answers to your assessment revealed immediately after each student takes the assessment.

  1. Save your Test Pilot™ assessment file by selecting "Export for Web Server"
    • Click "Export for Web Server."
    • You will see a reminder about how to save your file. Click "Ok."
    • When the "Save" box appears on your screen, click on "Save in" to indicate where you want to save the file. You can save the file anywhere, but make sure to remember where you save it.
    • Under "Save as Type," make sure you see "Tab-Separated Text" (TAB)." The computer should choose this file type by default.
    • Type a file name for your assessment, considering the following:
      • Important: File names must end in .tp2
      • Important: you must put quotation marks around the entire file name. Example: "myquiz.tp2"
      • You should use only characters allowed in file names and URLs. For example, do not include a space in the file name.
      • Try to keep the file name short. Whatever name you choose will comprise the end of an already long URL (see below).
      • After naming your quiz, choose "Save." You will need to import this file into your FrontPage web, so remember where you save the file.
  1. Put your assessment online by importing it into a folder in your FrontPage web
    • Enter your FrontPage web.
    • Important: You must import the Test Pilot™ file into a folder created by the Webmaster for your Test Pilot™ assessments. Contact the Webmaster if you need to have this folder created in your FrontPage web.  
    • Pull down the "View" menu.
    • Click "folders."
    • On the left side of the screen, locate and double-click on the correct folder for your Test Pilot™ assessments. Most likely, this folder is named "tests." (If this is the first Test Pilot™ assessment you have imported into FrontPage, the right side of the screen should indicate that no files are available. If you have imported other Test Pilot™ assessments into FrontPage, you should see those files listed on the right side of the screen. Important: Make sure to choose the correct folder for your Test Pilot™ assessment.)
    • Choose "Import."
    • Select "File."
    • Locate your Test Pilot™ assessment file and select it to import the file into FrontPage.
    • Click "Ok" to import the file.
    • Your assessment is now online and ready for your students!
  1. Locate your assessment online and access owner information
    • The URL for your Test Pilot™ assessment will follow the naming convention below:
      http://www.ivcc.edu/servlet/TestPilot2/nameofyourFrontPageweb/nameofyourTest Pilot™folder/assessmentname.tp2
      • For example, if I created an assessment and named it "myquiz.tp2," then the URL would be http://www.ivcc.edu/servlet/TestPilot2/rambo/tests/myquiz.tp2
    • In a web browser, enter the URL for your assessment.
    • Once you arrive at the URL, you will see a login screen.
    • If you set up a password for yourself, you can enter the assessment as a student by entering your password.
    • Important: To access owner information for the assessment (grades, etc.), access the URL for your assessment in a web browser and, in the login box, enter your owner ID, a comma, and your password. The owner ID and the password are what you entered as you were creating the assessment (under "Global Information" for "Security Controls").
    • Click some of the options on the owner screen to see the different ways that Test Pilot™ organizes the assessment results for you. Note that you will be able to access assessment results only after someone has submitted responses for the assessment.
  1. In FrontPage, link your Test Pilot™ assessment to one of your web pages
    • Because the URLs for Test Pilot™ assessments tend to be long, you should link each assessment to one of your web pages for easy access.
    • Important: Do not link the Test Pilot™ file as you would link your other web pages. Do not locate the file in your list of FrontPage files and link to it. Such an approach will not take into account "servlet/TestPilot2," which must appear in the URL of each Test Pilot™ assessment. You should instead
      • Use a web browser to locate the login page for your assessment.
      • Highlight the URL and press [Control C] to copy it.
      • Return to FrontPage and follow the instructions below.
    • In FrontPage, open the web page in which you want the link to your assessment to appear.
    • If you want the URL itself to appear on the page, simply place the cursor where you want the link to appear and press [Control V] to paste it, or
    • If you want a title to appear as the hyperlink to the assessment, type the words that you want to use for the hyperlink (For example, Chapter 1 Quiz.).
    • Highlight the words and click on the hyperlink icon.
    • Delete whatever is in the URL box and, with the cursor in the URL box, press [Control V] to paste the URL of the Test Pilot™ assessment.
    • Click "Ok."
    • Save the changes to the web page and use a web browser to make sure that the newly add link works correctly.
  1. Miscellaneous Notes
    • You will have a different owner information page for each assessment you create. Just enter an assessment at the login screen that your students would use for a particular assessment and you will see the results only for that specific assessment.
    • Important: At the owner information page, be careful when clicking on any of the options that involve the deletion of assessment results. You will not receive a warning that the results will be deleted. Just one click will delete some or all of your assessment data.
    • If a student enters an incorrect login ID, a new screen appears asking both for the title of the assessment and the login ID. Most likely, the student will not know what to type for the assessment title (which is the file name you have given to the assessment). If students run into this problem, tell them to click "Back" on a web browser once or twice until they see the login screen that requires only the login ID.
    • In Test Pilot™, make sure to check the "Enable" box in those places where you have marked any options. If you have marked the options, such as restricting access, but have not checked "Enable these Restrictions," Test Pilot™ will ignore the options you have marked.

For your convenience, here is a link to Mental Health InfoSource. Seriously, folks, give Test Pilot™ a chance. There is a lot to learn, but you should start feeling comfortable with the program after a little practice.

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Illinois Valley Community College

This page was last updated on June 01, 2006. Copyright Randy Rambo, 2001.