Tools for Online Interoperable Assessment (TOIA)
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.
Aims and Objectives
The Project aims 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).
Six 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
Objectives 1-5 are incorporated into the development of a prototype assessment authoring system. This prototype will be used as an evaluative comparator to the system being developed by the projects commercial associates. Following evaluation and modification a TOIA version of the assessment management system will be made freely available to members of the education community.
The Products (1-5) are measurable by the availability to the FE/HE sector a free QTI compliant assessment system capable of authoring and delivering questions and tests that interoperate with commercial software applications. Deliverable (6) is dependent upon the delivery of (1-5).