In recent years, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have become quite popular. Such courses are either completely free or cost nominally. Generally, the MOOCs face the challenge of not being recognized as ‘regular’ courses (i.e., the ones taken at the traditional learning institutions). One of the main reasons for this lack of acceptability is the assessment in an unsupervised environment, which is prone to the problems of test-taker’s online lookups or interaction with others for finding the answers to the test questions. A few ways of alleviating this problem include: limiting the time for answering the questions, the avoidance of repetitive questions, and the creation of a large number of questions. This paper presents a tool named QAgen that enables the automatic creation of a large number of questions and answers related to different topics in computer/electrical engineering (ECE), computer science, physics, etc. Specifically, the tool is related to the courses on digital logic design, computer architecture, etc. The generated questions are in a format that is suitable both for learning management system (LMS) based and/or non-LMS-based assessment in conventional courses or MOOCs. The proposed tool is based on open-source software, thus eliminating the need for any commercial software packages. The underlying principles of QAgen are applicable to other engineering/science courses as well, if the assessment methods require the creation of some connected-object diagrams, tables and equations. For assessing the usefulness of QAgen, practice question sets were created for three different courses. The student surveys for these courses indicated that the questions helped students prepare for actual tests/examinations. Especially favored by the students was the availability of correct answers at the end of each practice test/examination.

近年来，大规模的开放在线课程（MOOC）变得非常流行。这样的课程是完全免费的或名义上收费的。通常，MOOC面临着不被认可为“常规”课程（即在传统学习机构修读的课程）的挑战。缺乏可接受性的主要原因之一是在无人监督的环境中进行的评估，这很容易导致考生在线查找问题或与他人互动以寻找答案的问题。缓解此问题的几种方法包括：限制回答问题的时间，避免重复性问题以及创建大量问题。本文介绍了一种名为QAgen的工具，该工具可以自动创建与计算机/电气工程（ECE），计算机科学，物理学等不同主题相关的大量问题和答案。具体地说，该工具与以下课程相关数字逻辑设计，计算机体系结构等。生成的问题采用既适合于传统课程或MOOC中基于学习管理系统（LMS）和/或基于非LMS评估的格式。提议的工具基于开源软件，因此无需任何商业软件包。如果评估方法要求创建一些连接对象图，表格和方程式，则QAgen的基本原理也适用于其他工程/科学课程。为了评估QAgen的有用性，为三个不同的课程创建了练习题集。这些课程的学生调查表明，这些问题帮助学生为实际考试/考试做准备。学生特别喜欢的是在每次练习测试/考试结束时都提供正确答案的方法。