Uniqurate Making QTI authoring accessible Paul Neve Kingston University

The Story So Far… A number of JISC and HEA-funded research projects have produced open source software for authoring QTI electronic assessment resources Aqurate QTITools Aqurate, continued… MathAssess Mathqurate FETLAR Mathqurate, continued…

The elephant in the room The research projects producing the tools have involved many of the same old young faces at the same institutions The user base for the tools thus far are therefore QTI experts and predominantly based in the maths subject area – this has influenced their use cases The later authoring tools like Mathqurate reflect this i.e. you stand little chance of being able to use it to its full capability unless you are a maths expert and know the QTI specification intimately This was fine for projects designed to research and showcase QTI's capabilities, but not for increasing usage of QTI in HE

Uniqurate – a change of approach Uniqurate is a new project in JISC's current Assessment and Feedback programme under strand C, Technology Transfer The main objective is to increase the usage of QTI in HE by transferring technology from existing tools into a number of new "client" institutions The key driving factor is to put the uninitiated front and center in terms of driving the user experience and requirements The result – hopefully – will be a useful tool for authoring QTI content that is accessible to those outside the past and present project circles

In a nutshell… Less "we need the tool to support the graphicGapMatch interaction" More "we would like to create an exercise where the students have to place the missing parts of an engine into the right places on an engine graphic" The QTI savvy on the project team have been banned from talking in terms of QTI interactions Uniqurate takes elements from the user-experience driven Aqurate and the multiple interaction power of Mathqurate

Question components NOT QTI interactions Uniqurate's user requirements are being gathered in terms of "question components" – the constituent bits that provide interaction between a question/exerciser and the student These may map onto QTI interactions – but may not! – hence the term question component We want to avoid the tail wagging the dog! A crucial aspect of our requirements analysis is to identify question components that provide the best cross-disciplinary benefit

One possible component… V I R (Ohm's law – V = I x R)

One possible component… D S T (Distance = speed x time)

Demonstration…

One half of the equation… Authoring is not much use if you can't deliver the material! The other half of the equation is our sister project, QTIDI, led by Glasgow QTIDI builds on previous projects' tools to render and deliver QTI content Again, the focus is on providing a means of delivery that is useful in a real world context… i.e. published and delivered to students within their usual VLE

Questions and contacts… Project blog and further details Demonstration site Lead developer Paul Neve