Please repeat the question

[threemonkeys]

Ten years ago, I set the quiz for Conspiracy, the NZ natcon for that year. This year, some of the same crew are back with the natcon for this year - Conspiracy 2. I don't think that they remember that I did the quiz back at the first one, but this time I was asked if I would present the quiz this year. The key word there is "present". Somebody else was going to construct the quiz but wasn't able to deliver it. They just wanted me to run the presentation of the questions, manage the markers etc. I said yes.

Last night, I got the questions. They were not in anything like a ready to present state. Just a list of questions that were not organised into a presentation (the quiz is to be done as a slideshow type presentation). Worse, most of the questions are not usable in their current state - questions too hard, answers too long, questions ambiguous, answers not checked (i.e. wrong), questions requiring vague descriptive answers - all the usual rookie mistakes really.

Q - What to do? A - Moan and complain and then say "leave it to me". I can put a quiz together pretty quickly these days. I even thought about recycling chunks of the one I did for the first Conspiracy. Looking at it however I was surprised by how the years had affected it. All my topical TV/Film questions are now relegated to ancient history and even the book based ones are made harder by temporal distance.

Any volunteers to act as markers/scorers for me?

Comments

[stephanie-pegg.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can help.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Eeeeexcellent. Much obliged - thank you.

[lobelet.livejournal.com]

You and I both know how hard it is to put a good quiz together. And how easy it is to fall into the rookie trap. How do you plan to avoid the embarassment of looking stupid when you present the questions?

If you like, I'm willing to share the embarassment with you...

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

The quiz is done now - complete with visual presentation and answer sheets. I estimate that I only used about 60% of the ones provided to me and many of those got significantly rewritten. I had to come up with a lot of new questions and I recycled a few as well.

Are you volunteering to be a marker? It would certainly even the competition out.

[lobelet.livejournal.com]

Yes -- I'll be a marker.

I hope I don't run out of fingers and toes when I do the arithmetic.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Thank you. We can let Steph do all the adding up. ;-)