IMS GLC Public Forums and Resources - Question & Test Interoperability

unlimited interactions per item

sconnard — 2013-05-13T06:03:07 -05.00

Actually there is a minChoices attribute on choiceInteraction. Here is the description from the Information Model document:

"Attribute : minChoices [0..1]: integer = 0
The minimum number of choices that the candidate is required to select to form a valid response. If minChoices is 0 then the candidate is not required to select any choices. minChoices must be less than or equal to the limit imposed by maxChoices."

You can use minChoices to insist that the candidate makes at least that number of choices in order for their response to be valid. It's not required unless you need to make sure that some options have been selected.

Best wishes
Sue

unlimited interactions per item

sconnard — 2013-05-13T05:55:10 -05.00

Yes Sari,

You're quite right - in QTI 2.1 you can have as many interactions as you wish within the same itemBody. They don't need to be the same type of interaction either - see the attached example, which demonstrates the sort of scenario question that we are finding very useful (though the topic in this one is a bit bizarre!). It also demonstrates the feedback capabilities of QTI 2.1...

One thing to bear in mind if you have several interactions in an item: each option must have a unique identifier within the item, so the choices for a choiceInteraction and the options for an orederInteraction need to have different identifiers if they are in the same question. It's not a problem - it ensures that there is no confusion between interactions.

Best wishes
Sue

unlimited interactions per item

sconnard — 2013-05-10T02:50:06 -05.00

The choice interaction presents a set of choices to the candidate. The candidate's task is to select one or more of the choices, up to a maximum of maxChoices. There is no corresponding minimum number of choices. The interaction is always initialized with no choices selected.
The choiceInteraction must be bound to a response variable with a baseType of identifier and single or multiple cardinality.

Check out the below link. Search for 7.1 section (ctrl + F --> 7.1)
http://www.imsglobal.org/quest...pd2.html#element10278

Hope it helps you.

Custom Interactions update

mmckell — 2013-05-09T21:03:25 -05.00

The QTI/APIP APMG has approved and released the Portable Custom Interactions best practice document which outlines a method for authors to define an almost unlimited variety of custom interaction types or technology enhanced items, while still keeping the item portable between different systems. Document and details are available here:
http://www.imsglobal.org/assessment/interactions.html

Embedded HTML in QTI 2.1

daniel@adrylan.net — 2013-05-09T11:47:42 -05.00

I have been having an email conversation about this with one of the guys from IMS Global and he suggested that I post my question here for continued discussion.

The email thread is as follows:

I didn't see any mention of the use of the CDATA tag within the QTI 2.1 specification. Is this acceptable? We have been sent data that "fits the QTI 2.1 specification" that can't be read by XML parsing engines because there is html within the content. Can you please clarify for me what should be done in instances where html tags are necessary in the item content?
-Daniel

-------------------------

Hi Daniel,
Thanks for your question. The CDATA tag was used in QTI 1.2 to allow HTML to be included, however in QTI 2 XHTML is part of the specification, so that use of CDATA tags is unnecessary. Any HTML should be formatted as XHTML and included without CDATA tags, and any <, > or & characters that are to be displayed can be encoded as < > or & as they would be in an XHTML page.

The correct behavior for a QTI 2 rendering system that was asked to render HTML in CDATA tags (as in QTI 1.2) would be to display the HTML source.

- Mark

-------------------------

Hi Mark,

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly on this. Quick follow-up question:

Let's say I have this section of my item:

TEACHER READS:

Which sentence exactly matches the following sentence? My cat is very big.

Question not displayed to student.

Which sentence exactly matches the following sentence? My cat is very big.

I don't want to "display" the when my item displays on the webpage, I want it to be seen as html... so I wouldn't want to use the < and >, correct? However, if this was a math problem 2 + x > 5 then I would want to use < and > as necessary because I want it to be seen as text. So, in this instance, how would I transfer my html tags (strong, br, etc.) as I read in the xml? When I read in the XML presently, I lose all of the html tags because it sees it as an "xml tag" rather than part of the "data" within the other tags. I did some reading online and everyone seemed to be saying "use CDATA tags". I was reading in the XHTML documentation and the use of CDATA tags is allowed, so is it appropriate to use them in this instance? What would you recommend?

Thanks!
-Daniel

-------------------------

Daniel,

Here's the response I received from some of the QTI experts. I would recommend that we move this discussion to the public forum as this is a better place to carry on the conversation and it could help others with the same questions.

Thanks,
Mark

I don't recognize the markup system you're using, so am slightly guessing about the meaning of the sections. XHTML elements such as and
can be placed inside a
,
or any other block level XHTML element directly inside the section of a QTI 2 item, however that would make the text inside them visible to the candidate. I assume from the 'label="teacherInstructions"' and 'visible="false"' attributes of your elements that you do not want candidates to see this text, so I've put it inside QTI 2 elements, which allow the content to just be displayed to certain classes of user.

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsqti_v2p1" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsqti_v2p1">

TEACHER READS:

Which sentence exactly matches the following sentence?> My cat is very big.
Question not displayed to student.

Which sentence exactly matches the following sentence?> My cat is very big.

We are importing items from an item vendor. I can't just display "the text" to our end-users. I need to have the HTML as well as the text when I import this into our database in order to display the question appropriately to the end-user.

What is the "right way" to do this? Should I just have them put CDATA tags around the HTML and call it good?

Thanks,
Daniel Osborne

unlimited interactions per item

sconnard — 2013-05-06T14:01:41 -05.00
Hello,

I have an QTI item xml document that has two sections inside one element. I don't see anything in the imsqti_v2p1.xsd restricting the number of interaction elements per . Is this correct?

thank you,
Sari

object element in itembody clarification

sconnard — 2013-05-02T08:45:50 -05.00
Hello,

Having a QTI xml within the object of a QTI xml item is a format that is being proposed for an import. The purpose of this is, as Wilbert suggested, a means of sharing information between different items. I wanted to verify that this format was within the QTI specification. It seems it is, but that it is discouraged. I will pass along Wilbert's recommendation to restrict the use of HTML object to purely presentational material such as pure HTML or Flash objects and the like.

thank you,
Sari

object element in itembody clarification

sconnard — 2013-05-02T07:52:37 -05.00
Hello Sari

I'm guessing that what you want to do is share the same material between different items.

If that's the case, html object can, in principle, be used to bring in any sort of material into an itembody, including other QTI XML. However, that imported QTI XML would be opaque to the rendering engine- it'd have no way to know that there are, for example, printed variables or interactions in the QTI that has been imported via . For that reason, I'd restrict the use of HTML object to purely presentational material such as pure HTML or Flash objects and the like.

Better yet, you can use rubricBlock at the section level to easily share runs of presentational material between different items.

As Sue says, though: have a look at the latest examples and XSD to determine what's possible.

Cheers

object element in itembody clarification

sconnard — 2013-05-02T06:01:17 -05.00
Hi Sari,

I hope you are using the latest imsqti_v2p1.xsd - the dtd is no longer in use now. Download the latest version from http://www.imsglobal.org/specificationdownload.cfm

The element is described by the Object.Type commplexType in the schema. It can contain a variety of HTML elements, MathML, elements and elements.

However, I wonder what you are hoping to do with a question embedded in an element? A bit more information would enable me to be more helpful

If you want to go to that other question if the candidate responds in some specific way, it may be better to use an assessmentTest which contains both questions and sends the candidate to the other question if they make the required response. It is also possible to write a question so that it changes in appearance if the candidate makes a particular response, for instance if they click a button for "Steps" the question can display a series of steps towards the final answer, and your marking scheme can reduce their score for taking that route. The Monty Hall example does something like this, though it may not seem to on first acquaintance!

Regards
Sue

matching input associateInteraction

abcd61 — 2013-05-01T13:27:47 -05.00
i created a simple matching input. a total of four boxes :

two boxes containing numbers 2 and 3 respectively.
two boxes with the numbers written out ( ie. two and three).

user must match the written numbers to the integer numbers.

now, i want to limit them matching a wriitten number to an integer number. by thi I mean they should not be able to match "two" to "three", nor 2 to 3. They can only match a written number to a integer. So 2 could be matched to either "two" or "three", but not 3.

I have this xml for the item. I am not sure how to include the limitation spelled out above.

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsqti_v2p1 http://www.imsglobal.org/quest...2/xsd/imsqti_v2p1.xsd" adaptive="false" timeDependent="false" identifier="517502" title="517502" xmlns="http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsqti_v2p1" xmlns:m="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSche...lt;responseDeclaration identifier="matchinginput1" cardinality="multiple" baseType="pair" />
Matching input item
Two2Three3

object element in itembody clarification

sconnard — 2013-04-30T10:56:12 -05.00
I was just looking at the imsqti_v2p1.dtd and if I am reading this correctly the object element can contain either PCDATA or items listed in objectFlow.ElementGroup, in which itemBody is not part of that group. I believe this restriction would apply to the "data" attribute of the element. Therefore, a data attribute link to a qti xml file that contains elements not defined in the objectFlow.ElementGroup are not acceptable.
I think I answered my own question, but would like confirmation, please.
thank you,
Sari

object element in itembody clarification

sconnard — 2013-04-27T08:03:08 -05.00
Can you please clarify if an object element in the itembody section of a qti item can link to another qti xml file?
thank you,
Sari

apip_examplar03 validation fails

abcd61 — 2013-02-20T10:01:40 -05.00
It looks like you may be trying to validate an example against an older version of the schema. Send me a message at mmckell at imsglobal.org to set up a call to walk you through it.