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Playing Championships on the Oracle Dev Gym

We've been designing a new, modern, responsive UI for the taking quizzes on Oracle Database. The "old" site is the PL/SQL Challenge. The new site is the Oracle Dev Gym.

At the beginning of each year, we hold championship tournaments for the top 50 ranked players in each of our focus areas (currently: SQL, PL/SQL, Database Design and Logic).

This will be the first year in which you can choose to take the championship on the PL/SQL Challenge or the Dev Gym. 

So I thought it might be helpful to provide a tour of the Dev Gym's championship flow.

If you qualified to play in a championship, you should have already received emails inviting you to confirm your participation in the championships. Once you have done that, you will see the championship on the Tournaments page, when it is within a week of the championship taking place.


If you click on the championship card before it is time to start, you will see either:

1. The confirmation page, in which you can change your mind, and tell you can't play the championship after all.

2. The "launch page" for the championship. The launch page is available 30 minutes before the championship is going to start. Use that time to review the assumptions and instructions for the quizzes, so you will not be wondering about "the basics" during the championship.



The launch page contains a countdown clock. When it hits 00:00:00, the button to Start the Championship will be enabled. Click on that button and off you go!




Championships generally consist of five tough quizzes. You can use the Next and Previous buttons at the bottom of the page to move between the quizzes. You can also use the navigation list in the right sidebar.

You will see another countdown clock on the right. That tells you how much time you have left before the championship is over. When the click hits 00:00:00, your current selections will be automatically submitted.



Once you have submitted your answers, you can review the quizzes and let us know if you feel there are any mistakes or ambiguities in the quizzes. If there are, we will make corrections and apply credit as necessary before any ranking is done.

To review quizzes, simply click on the Tournaments tab, and click on your championship (either in the top list of cards or the bottom section "Recently Completed Tournaments").

Once all players accept the quizzes as error-free, you will be given an opportunity to review the rankings and make sure you don't see any aberrations there, either. 

When all players have accepted rankings, we will publish the results.

Comments

  1. Hello Steven,

    Regardless of any issue related to contents or UI presentation, I would just like to signal that the response time for displaying any quiz page on the new site is currently extremely slow, in comparison to the current site.

    I guess that currently there is no high traffic on the site,
    which hopefully will NOT be the case for the "production" site,
    so I think that performance is still an issue that requires some more investigation.

    Thanks a lot & Best Regards,
    Iudith

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the feedback, Iudith. When you say quiz page, you mean the page on which you take the quiz or when you see the results of your answer? And what is "extremely slow"? 2 seconds? 5? 10?

      Delete
  2. Hello Steven,
    In the meantime I only tried to review quizzes recently played (those shown on the Tournament page).
    Today I did this again, and this time the response time was much better than on each of my previous visits.

    I did not measure exactly how many seconds it took to display the quiz page, but as by "finger experience" I would say that it was at least 10 seconds or even definitely more.

    I would underline that this was happening with this site only and NOT with the current site at the same time,
    or with any other web site, so it was NOT a problem of my internet connection.

    As I suggested on the quiz comments of one of the Design playoff quizzes, I would suggest to keep all these UI or website related discussions separate from discussing the quizzes themselves.

    As another general remark about the quiz review page,
    isn't it possible to present content parts like "Similar quizzes" or "Resources" as a Report-like List of items, that is, to keep the items one-per-line ?
    I personally find a report-like list to be easier to follow.
    Without being an APEX specialist, I saw in one of the places
    that there was an option to toggle between a "cards" display
    and a "report" display.
    This was on a page where I arrived while I was desperately looking for a list of the already played quizzes, but now I am not able to remember how did I arrive to that place ...

    Also, the content in the upper part of the page, regarding
    the e-mail reminders and results/times summary is consuming up a lot of space in my opinion, so I would rather move it to another place, like on the right edge of the screen, or display it in a much smaller font.

    I still suppose that the UI interface discussion is not closed yet
    at this point.

    Thanks a lot & Best Regards,
    Iudith

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Great idea about offering alternatives between list and card formats in more places, Iudith. I will add that to our ER list. 10 seconds to view results of a quiz you've seen before? Wow! I sure don't experience that, even when inside our VPN.

      To be clear: I am NOT saying it's your fault. We need to assume lower levels of bandwidth.

      We are exploring a number of steps to improve performance, so please keep the feedback coming!

      Delete
  3. Hello Steven,

    I'm not sure I understand how to review the results of db design play off in Dev Gym. I open the the question but don't see the correct answers.
    I just see the warning message in the top "We can't show results for a competitive quiz until after it's closed."

    Maxim Borunov.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. When you click on the the DB Design Tournament card, you should then see two tabs under the top box: Quizzes and Rankings. Click on Rankings.

      Individual quiz results will be displayed after ranking is approved.

      Delete
    2. Well, I see the rankings. But I would like to review the correct answers for the questions. Is it possible ?

      By the way, a couple of days ago I was able to see the correct choices in the original version of PLSQLChallenge, but now the review is only possible in the Gym version.

      Delete
  4. Hello All,

    I would just join in to Maxim's comment.
    The quizzes choices correctness display was available (on the current site) immediately after the playoff was closed,
    and I think that they should remain available continuously,
    regardless of when the rankings are published.
    Of course, they should reflect any changes that might arise from objections, discussions, a.s.o., which WAS NOT the case for this Playoff :)

    Once again, I am still strongly missing the Quiz Library page on the new UI !!!

    What if it happens that a player is not able to review a played quiz (not only Playoff, but any quiz !)
    in the immediately following week ?
    It will be lost from sight ... and I really don't know whether and how it will be still "diggable" out from the
    quiz thesaurus :(:(

    Thanks a lot for still continuing the discussion about the UI, hope that more players will come in and share their views :)

    Best Regards,
    Iudith

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You should be able to see the correctness display now for the championship quizzes. That was a bug and that you Maxim and Iudith for pointing it out.

      We are evaluating feedback re: the library page. Don't worry we will make sure you can get to all your quizzes in the ways you like!

      As for "lost from sight", no, if you took a quiz it is never lost from site. Just click on your name in top right, then Gym History, then Quizzes Taken.

      Delete

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