World of Uncertainty
GCoders undertook the technical development for the largest
funded project for the department of information systems in 2006-2007, the World
of Uncertainty Project.
This project involved the creation of an online quiz with custom Flash controls.
From a technical perspective, a whole range of technologies are employed to
bring this project to life. The front-end is built using ASP .NET 3.5, the Ajax
Control Toolkit with the custom Flash components are written using Action Script 3.0
and communicating with the web page using the ExternalInterface class and
Javascript.
The back-end consists of a SQL server 2005 database hosted on a dedicated server
at QUB using IIS for web hosting. The systems administration and site deployment were
also carried out by GCoders.
A Flash control developed for this project is shown adjacent. By dragging the
probability slider, the volume of each of the two cylinders varies. The rate at
which follows a mathematical formula, in this cas, the Brier equation.
This control is
used as a mechanism for quiz participants to rate how certain they think they
are of gaining a correct answer on a particular question. They gain immediate
feedback on how they will be scored based on the correctness of their answer.
The quiz is timed
and users are given continuous feedback of their results.
A seperate administration site has been built which allows quiz administrators
(the researchers) to create their own multiple choice, binary and image based
questions, and modify all parameters of the quiz.
The study results are stored in a fully relational database and an exporter was
written to allow pertinent data to be exported for analysis in Excel or Matlab.
This project is a collaboration between Queens University, Belfast, Brunel
University and UCL.
Click here for more information regarding the project proposal.