APIS – Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments APIS Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments Niall S F Barr Rowin Young Niall Sclater

APIS – Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments 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.

APIS – Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments ELF – Web services (1)

APIS – Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments ELF – Web services (2)

APIS – Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments A web service in action ● ●

APIS – Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments Use cases 1 & 2

APIS – Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments 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.

APIS – Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments 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?

APIS – Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments 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)

APIS – Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments 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

APIS – Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments Metrics

APIS – Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments 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

APIS – Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments 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...)

APIS – Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments 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)