Aptitude Test Contest - Phase 1

The task in this contest is to create a set of three Quizzes that can be used to test a person's knowledge of the English Language, their Mathematical Ability and their capacity for Spatial & Logical Thinking. For more general details, see the original contest announcement.

Contest Outline

Phase 1 Timeline

Phase 1 will last for 3 weeks, ending on 2021-02-08 at 23:50:00 (Dubai time, check local time here).

In this Phase, you will create your Quizzes, test them, compose your Cover Letter and, finally, submit your work.

To help you manage your time, “⏰” guidelines are included.

💡 Please subscribe to @AptitudeTestContest. We'll send deadline reminders, new FAQ entries, and any other important news about the contest there instead of in the main @contest channel.

1.1 - Quiz Set

Make sure to re-read the General Guidelines and look at the FAQ for clarifications and answers to specific questions. “🆕” entries will be added to the FAQ over time.

If you have questions which are not answered already, ask them in the @contests group, with the tag #AptitudeContestQuestion.

1.1.1 - Research, design, and creation

⏰ ~15 days should be spent here. E.g. 2021-01-18 to 2021-02-02.

Make each of the 3 required Quizzes, to complete your Quiz Set:
- English Language
- Mathematical Ability
- Spatial & Logical Thinking

Remember that the sample quizzes you've passed as part of our evaluation task should be considered the bare minimum, or even too basic for the purposes of this contest. We invite you to do better and surprise us with something creative and spectacular.

1.1.2 - Testing

⏰ ~3 days should be spent here. E.g. 2021-02-02 to 2021-02-05.

Here, you should test out your Quiz with a few close friends or family members. We've added a new FAQ entry with instructions on how to get a sharing link for your Quiz. Please do not make your Quizzes publicly available (e.g. by sharing their link in groups), instead, send them to a chosen few.

Keep track of your testers' results for each Quiz (e.g. which – and how many – questions people get correct or incorrect). This information will be useful when writing the Cover Letter. This stage will also help you to find errors which you may not be able to see after looking at your own work for so long.

After collecting your results and feedback, you will likely need to fine-tune and correct certain parts of your Quizzes.

It might be tempting to not perform any testing, but doing so will put you in a much worse position for the Peer Reviews in Phase 2, because:

  1. Your Quizzes are more likely to have mistakes in them, and
  2. You will find it harder to review the other Quizzes we assign to you.
1.1.2.1 - Other areas to test

After you have completed the basic testing outlined above, you should think about which other areas you need to check over.

Here are some prompts to help focus your efforts on key areas:

  • Double-check the grammar and spelling across your Quiz Set.
  • Make sure that the time given per question is reasonable for each Quiz. If it is too generous for 90% of the questions, or too difficult for 40% of them, can you make adjustments to certain questions to correct this?
  • Does all of the media used across your Quiz Set follow a consistent design style?
  • If you are using non-original public domain or free license media (even if just as a small part of a larger image), have you followed the extra steps in Q: How do I show that non-original media in my Quizzes is allowed to be used?.

You should investigate and fix any issues related to the areas outlined above as an absolute minimum. If you still have time, reread our FAQ entries and try to think of anything else that could be improved.

1.2 - Cover Letter

⏰ ~1 day should be spent here. E.g. 2021-02-05 to 2021-02-06.

After you have completed your Quiz Set, copy and complete the template below. You will send this letter to the bot (as a plaintext message) when it's time to submit the Quizzes.

Do not change the formatting of the template. The only things that should be changed are:

  1. Each ANSWER should be replaced with your answer text.
  2. The Total Answer Word Count figure should be updated to indicate the total word count of the answer text you have written. In total, this added answer text should be no more more than 300 Words.

Cover Letter Template

1. In your testing, how many questions did people get correct (on average), for each aptitude?

  ANSWER/30 - English Language
  ANSWER/30 - Mathematical Ability
  ANSWER/15 - Spatial Thinking
  ANSWER/15 - Logical Thinking

2. Did you use any innovative or inventive approaches to testing?
    If you did: where, and why are the approaches useful?
    If you didn't: explain why not.

  ANSWER

3. Across all of your Quizzes, which questions are you most proud of - why?

  ANSWER

Total Answer Word Count: 0 / 300

Cover Letter Example

Your final Cover Letter should look something like this, but with real text, of course.

1.3 - Review and Submission

⏰ ~2 days should be spent here. E.g. 2021-02-06 to 2021-02-08.

1.3.1 - Review

Spend some time performing a final review of your work, to prepare it for submission.

You should test your Quiz Set end-to-end and make sure that any recent changes you've made have not caused new issues.

Additionally, proofread your Cover Letter.

1.3.2 - Submission

💡 We strongly recommend that you submit your work at least several hours before the deadline.

To submit your Quiz Set and Cover Letter to us:

1. Send /ContestCourse to @QuizBot.
2. Read the message and make sure that you're ready to proceed. Tap “Select a quiz…” and choose your English Language Quiz.

QuizBot will validate each Quiz you select to make sure it meets some basic criteria. If it doesn't, please correct the errors shown and try again.

3. Next, tap “Select a quiz…” and choose your Mathematical Ability Quiz.
4. Now, tap “Select a quiz…” and choose your Spatial & Logical Thinking Quiz.
5. Finally, send a plaintext message, containing your completed Cover Letter.
6. Your work is now submitted! Well done, and good luck! 💪

You will still be able to edit the Quizzes you've submitted until 2021-02-08 at 23:50:00 (Dubai time, check local time here). After this point, your Quizzes will become uneditable.