Charlie Balch at Arizona Western College has been working on a simple, web-based question system for networked computers and hand held devices.  AskClass.net currently functions as a poll tool, allowing the creation of multiple-choice, single-answer questions that can be used in a variety of educational settings and as a consensus building tool.  It’s still very much under development, so while it’s not possible at the moment to specify a correct answer, this and other functionality may emerge in the future depending on user feedback and viability.  A simple marking system would make this an extremely useful tool for both classroom and remote teaching support.

AskClass is written in ASP with a MS Access backend, although Balch is considering making future versions in PHP or Java with an XML backend to increase portability.  Other applications may be integrated with the tool over time.  This is intended as a learning aid, therefore security and multiple voting are not addressed in this version.

Contact details for requesting source code and suggesting features are available on the site’s FAQ.