About NetQuest

Overview

The NetQuest project is developing TML (Tutorial Markup Language), a superset of HTML, to enable tutors and students to create sets of questions for self or course assessment with automatic marking and user authentication if required. The project aims to provide a large questionset which will act as a central resource, accessible over networks including the World Wide Web, marked up so that the user can request a set of questions on any given topic.

Online presentations

See the CAA 1997 presentation from Paul Browning for an overview of TML and the NetQuest project. See also CHEER Vol. 11, Issue 2. for an article on the use of TML and planned future developments.

Background

Funded by the University of Bristol's Continuing Professional Development Fund and the charity Baby Lifeline, NetQuest is compiling indexed and searchable "questionbanks" in the subject areas (initially) of geoscience, chemistry, medicine, veterinary science and engineering. These will be complemented by "assessmentware", software which will allow students (for self-assessment) and tutors to grade automatically the tests they have requested. The next stage will be the completion of the NT server version which will allow delivery over an intranet.

Acknowledgements

We are deeply indebted to the following people:

• Neil Holtz from the University of Carleton, Canada for the original work on which TML is based.
• Joel Crisp for further development and extension of the TML language and software during his employment at the University of Bristol (1994-1997)
• Andrew Rennie, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Bristol, for porting the TML software to the Windows NT and producing installation and user documentation.
• Hélène Missou, for her work on presenting TML question content with Javascript/ECMAScript and on a survey of related technologies.

Further information

This Web site contains information on the TML language specification itself, as well as freely downloadable software, example tutorials running from the ILRT server and links to related projects. The NetQuest project is based at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol.