Oa.Sys: First Contact

AcroTeX Oa.Sys (pronounced "oasis") is an online testing system that I began developing for my own classes back in 2003 at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mathematics, the University of Akron. You can test the system by logging,

Oa.Sys login page

Note: Adobe keeps ratcheting up the security. If you are having problems with the Oa.Sys, such as not being able to take a quiz, or to view a solution, then you probably have Acrobat/Reader 9.3.2. See below for a fix to the problem.

The demo page is Math 101, for the username/password use either the ones given on one of my other pages, or use guest/guest.

SWF Demo Page: I plan to create a series of Flash videos to demonstrate the Oa.Sys. Go to the Oa.Sys Video Page.

Oa.Sys is a PDF based, desktop system.

• PDF based: The quizzes are generated from a LaTeX source using AeB and a special package called taoas. Each quiz has three versions, the quiz itself, the quiz with solutions (screen-size), the quiz with solutions (paper-size). The three versions can be built using my AeB Builder, available from AcroTeX.Net.
• Desktop System: The system was designed to be a desktop system, that is, the instructor creates and publishes his/her own quizzes. The instructor authors the quizzes using AeB and taoas, and build the quizzes using AeB Builder.

Oa.Sys provides for quiz management.

• There is a publish date: the quiz cannot be seen or taken before a specific date and time.
• There is a expiration date: the quiz canot be seen or take after a specific date and time.
• There is a view date: after the view date, the student is allowed to view the quiz. The quiz is populated by the students responses, and marked up to indicated which responses are correct and which are incorrect, the number of points award for each problem appears in the margins. There are two quizzes with solutions available: (1) a screen size quiz with solutions linked to the questions, the solutions appear at the end of the file; (2) a paper size quiz with solutions after each question, suitable for printing.
• When viewing the solutions to the quizzes, each student sees only his/her quizzes.

Oa.Sys is a Window-based system, the server-side script is written usin ASP classic with VBScript. my AeB Builder requires a windows platform, though the building of the quizzes does not require AeB Builder, any LaTeX system can be used to build the quizzes.

If you have any comments, either email me at dpstory at uakron dot edu, or, you can use my AeB Blog Comment Page, a PDF document, naturally.

Dr. D. P. Story, dpstory at uakron dot edu
April 13, 2010

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If you are having problems viewing the quizzes due to security measures, you might try trusting the web site that is serving up the quizzes. Open Acrobat/Reader and go to the Preferences dialog box (Edit > Preferences or Ctrl+K). In the Preferences dialog box, select Security (Enhanced) from the list of categories in the left-panel. You will see the dialog box depicted below.

Shown in green is the category you should select, Security (Enhanced). The item Enable Enhanced Security, shown in blue, is checked by default. You can clear this checkbox or leave it checked. Most importantly, click on the button Add Host, and type www.math.cs.uakron.edu into the response box that appears. Confirm the input by pressing the OK button; if all goes well you'll see the URL www.math.cs.uakron.edu appear in the text box, as shown in red. Exit the Preferences dialog box by pressing OK at the lower right corner of the Preferences dialog box. Now the use of Oa.Sys should go smoothly. Go back to the top of the page to follow the link to the login page, try again, please.