APIS Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments

1. Niall S F Barr Rowin Young Niall Sclater APISAssessment Provision through Interoperable Segments

2. 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.

3. ELF – Web services (1)

4. ELF – Web services (2)

5. A web service in action • http://ford.ces.strath.ac.uk/niallb/QTIServiceConsumer/ • http://130.159.236.5/wstest/oghma_service.asmx

6. Use cases 1 & 2

7. 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.

8. 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?

9. 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)

10. 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

11. Metrics

12. 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

13. 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...)

14. 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)