APIS Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments

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APISAssessment Provision through Interoperable
Segments

• Niall S F Barr
• Rowin Young
• Niall Sclater

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Why APIS? (human factors)

• Assessment is vital to education
• Learning is an interactive process
• 'Conversational' model
• Current on-line assessment systems are fairly
  inflexible.
• Roll your own systems tend to be limited, but
  appealing because they 'fit'
• Glasgow Dental School
• APIS provides simple to use, standards compliant
  assessment item support.

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ELF Web services (1)
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ELF Web services (2)
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A web service in action

• http//ford.ces.strath.ac.uk/niallb/QTIServiceCons
  umer/
• http//130.159.236.5/wstest/oghma_service.asmx

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Use cases 1 2
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Use case 3
Name - Integrating assessment with other
material Context of use A course or tutorial
structured using Learning Design or Simple
Sequencing requires integrated QTI
assessment. Primary Actor A VLE or
similar Preconditions VLE has access to APIS
and either ISIS or SBLDS services, course-ware
written using Learning Design or Simple
Sequencing exists. Trigger Student logs into
VLE and accesses course-ware Main success
scenario 1. The student is completely unaware of
the web service technology! Related
Information The mechanism by which APIS is
integrated with the Learning Design and Simple
Sequencing services is unclear.
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Use case 4

• Assessment embedded into web pages
• This is what teachers keep asking for.
• APIS makes it simple.
• Light weight alternative to LD/SS
• Automatic conversion to simple sequencing a
  possibility?
• Only a minor change to what teachers already do.
• Why don't we have this as a key requirement for
  all formative assessment systems?

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Technical stuff existing systems

• Currently APIS is a library that requires a thin
  wrapper to convert it into a web service
• Development application is a simple web server,
  runs on Windows and Linux
• Demonstration application runs on any web server
  with PHP 4.3 support (e.g. IIS or Apache)
• ASSIS project will integrate APIS with ISIS
  (Simple Sequencing) and TOIA (item banking)

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Technical stuff what is being developed

• A Java library which -
• renders QTI 2 XML into HTML form fragments for
  presentation
• converts HTML form data to QTI 2 response
  variables
• carries out QTI 2 response processing
• integrates feedback and adaptive material into
  rendered HTML

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Metrics
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Technical stuff what is being developed

• A example Java applet which -
• provides support for interactions that return
  co-ordinates (selectPointInteraction)
• A demonstration service consumer
• PHP web application, reads item XML, and calls
  APIS for rendering and processing
• Supports QTI v 2 through APIS and QTI v 1.2
  through Oghma-C web service

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Technical stuff what is being developed

• Not being developed yet -
• Support for other interactions that are beyond
  basic HTML forms.
• Support for response processing significantly
  more advanced than the published examples.
• (Probably) Support for template items (A
  necessary piece of requirements scrubbing, more
  on that later...)

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Technical stuff platform and language

• Programming all in Java 1.4
• XML reader uses Apache SAX
• Intention is to provide a Axis web service,
  however a Tomcat servlet or stand-alone web
  service will probably come first. (A J or C
  .NET variant is also a possibility...)
• Should run on Windows (2000 or later), Linux and
  Solaris servers (With Tomcat and Axis)