For those accustomed to using Windows 3.1, the most impressive aspect of Question Designer for Windows is ease of use. The pull-down menus allow the user to build customized, online examinations, surveys, and tutorials by clicking on a series of choices. The application makes full use of all the visual resources inherent in Windows - an infinite variety of fonts, text styles and sizes, and color.

A variety of question types are available as well, including multiple choice, "hot spot" (where the user answers a question by clicking on an appropriate area of the screen), numeric, short answer, and multiple response. Each question created or the entire test can be tried out immediately to ensure the intended result. Questions may be answered randomly or in strict order according to the author's preference. the author can also set the program to select questions from question libraries in a random fashion, so that each time a test is administered, the test-taker essentially gets a different test. Furthermore, the order in which the randomized questions are presented can be shuffled for each test-taker. These features make the possibility of test-takers sharing information with others less of a concern. Question Designer also lets the user import questions from existing item banks, although the items must be converted to a text (ASCII) format before importing.

Of particular interest to nursing educators is Question Designer's ability to create case study or "patient scenario" questions of considerable length. Question Designer for Windows allows the creation of case study questions as long as 5,000 characters.

A style library is available from which to choose an extensive number of templates and screen layouts for creating new questions. However, these templates cannot be selected for existing test items that the user may wish to import into Question Designer. Therefore, the user must set screen attributes such as text size, position of text boxes, borders, etc., for each imported question singly, which is rather time-consuming. However, once the user begins to set these screen attributes by pointing and clicking with the mouse, it becomes a matter of simple repetition from screen to screen. This inconvenience is a small price to pay for this user-friendly, versatile test-authoring program.

Reviewed by Robert C. Cummings ,

March/April 1996