JISC

Tools for Online Interoperable Assessment project (TOIA) brings together recognised UK FE and HE leaders in the area of online assessment and interoperability. 

The Project builds upon the previous work of the University of Strathclyde on test creation and delivery tools (the Clyde Virtual University assessment engine) and the work of the e³an project based at the University of Southampton on item banking and metadata classification. Integral activities in the area of interoperability drawing upon the experiences of several institutions and capitalises upon the parallel work of the JISC funded project at Loughborough in relation to VLE interoperability. 

The project aimed to develop in conjunction with commercial associates an assessment management system that has technical conformance with the IMS Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) specifications and reflects the 21 user role requirements identified within the Ultimate Assessment Engine paper (Sclater and Howie, 2002). 

6 project specific objectives were identified within the tools-only-bid:

• Development of a QTI based Question and test database
• Question and test creation tool (for on and offline use) incorporating all IMS supported question types
• Test delivery system
• Construction of a QTI Results Reporting Specification database
• Development of a web based tool to interact with the Results database
• Interoperability testing of TOIA testing and results systems with commercial assessment products

Project Outputs and Outcomes

The main outputs of the TOIA project were the TOIA Assessment Management System, which is compliant with the QTI version 2.0 stnadard. Copies of the accompanying Teacher and Administrator guides can also be accessed from the website.

The project also delivered a number of outcomes:

• Increased awareness and use of online assessment within the targeted UK HE and FE community
• Demonstration of hosting as a means of reducing institutional administration commitment thus increasing the uptake of computer-aided assessment (CAA)
• Increased understanding of the technical issues of hardware, software, security and robustness associated with managing such a hosted web application.
• Evaluation of the demand for a regionally or nationally-hosted CAA service
• An understanding of the relative financial costs associated with setting up and administrating a completely hosted CAA service
• Promotion of the use of question banks within the community. Hosted or centrally managed services tend to facilitate sharing of content and this would be a positive step towards fulfilling the visions of the IBIS (Item Bank Infrastructure Study) project. IBIS report
• Early adoption of QTI version 2.0 specification. As one of the first assessment management systems to implement QTI v2.0, TOIA promoted the take-up of the improved specification.