[QTI] Hi and some questions

[Niall Barr]

Hi,

An attempt to answer most of your questions, however other people can 
hopefully give you more complete answers to some of them.

The best way to associate other objects with the test would be to 
include them all in the same content package, and use an <organization> 
to provide an indication that they are related, however that won't allow 
data to pass from an SCO to an assessment. (I'm not sure if there is a 
way to pass data from an SCO to a QTI 2.1 assessment - hopefully Steve 
will post an answer covering that.)

You also need to decide on whether to use QTI 1.2.1 (currently better 
for compatibility with VLEs, but rather limited) or QTI 2.1. (Very much 
more flexible and more clearly specified so it provides better 
interoperability, but so far not supported by major VLEs.)

The only comparison of QTI support  that I know of is Pierre's  
Quickscan report 
<http://www.digiuni.nl/digiuni/index.cfm/site/Internet/pageid/980AE511-AB8F-98D2-57F438FCD402F4D1/objectType/product/objectID/08E120BE-A59E-8C9C-B0620BC9B28E07F2/LayoutTemplate/tekst/index.cfm>. 


If you want a simple way to view and test QTI 1.2.1 items you can use 
QTIViewer (http://www.nbsoftware.com/quizauthor/qtiviewer), however it 
doesn't support assessments or QTI 2.* yet. There are a couple of open 
source Java QTI 2.0 item players, links at 
http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Assessment_tools%2C_projects_and_resources. If 
you look at the posts to the list over the last week you'll find mention 
of various authoring tools.

The only alternative I know of to MathML for atomic symbols is an image 
with alt text to provide some level of accessibility support, however I 
think that MathML is a much better approach.

Both QTI 1.2.1 and QTI 2.* should support multiple response types within 
a single item, but in practice most commercial QTI 1.2.1 systems seem to 
be unable to cope with this. I expect most, if not all, QTI 2.* systems 
do support multiple response types though.

Niall.

Danny Kodicek wrote:
> Hi there. We've been using an internal file format for worksheets with our
> software for a while, but as I'm doing a general review and recode of it, I
> thought it might be interesting to look into switching to QTI. I've been
> doing a bit of research on the subject, and quite a few questions and
> potential compatibility issues have come up, so rather than driving myself
> crazy with the documentation (I really, really hate looking through
> specification documents - why do they always have to be so dense?), I
> thought I'd see if I could get some opinions from the people who know!
>
>
> So, in no particular order:
> Can I specify accompanying documents to go with the test? Web pages / files
> / SCORM objects? (Perhaps somewhere in the item metadata)
> If I have a SCO in a Learning Platform, is there any way to get data from
> the object into the QTI assessment (a long shot, I know)
> Which LPs support it? Is there a comparison chart somewhere? 
> Is there a good QTI development tool, and/or a good tool for viewing and
> testing QTI objects?
> Can I extend the format to include additional information for my own
> purposes?
>
> And a few more nitty-gritty ones:
> If I want to include an atomic symbol (eg a 12/6C atom) is there any better
> way to do it than using MathML?
> (related to the recent post on multiple textEntryInteractions) How easy or
> hard is it to mix different response types within a single item? Can I have
> an item that uses both inline combo boxes and inline answer fields?
>
> Apologies for the number of questions, and leaping in without the customary
> lurk period...
>
> Best
> Danny
>
>
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