1.1 Conformance Statements

2.1 Terminology

Assessment Delivery System

A system for managing the delivery of assessments to candidates. The system contains a delivery engine for delivering the items to the candidates and scores the responses automatically (where applicable) or by distributing them to scorers.

Assessment System

A system that enables or directs learners in learning activities, possibly coordinated with a tutor. For the purposes of this specification a learner exposed to an assessment item as part of an interaction with a learning system (i.e., through formative assessment) is still described as a candidate as no formal distinction between formative and summative assessment is made. A learning system is also considered to contain a delivery engine though the administration and security model is likely to be very different from that employed by a Delivery System.

Authoring System

A system used by an author for creating or modifying an assessment item.

Item Bank

A system for collecting and managing collections of assessment items.

Test Administration

A system that manages the administration of assessment programs and tests. This generally involves a database of prospective candidates, along with information about which tests, dates, locations, and other information specific to the candidate (accessibility and/or accommodation requirements). The systems regulate access to the assessment sessions and track the completion status of candidates.

Test Construction Tool

A system for assembling tests from individual items.

2.2 QTI Actors

The set of roles identified in this specification have been reduced to a small set of abstract actors for simplicity. Typically roles in real learning and assessment systems are more complex but, for the purposes of this specification, it is assumed that they can be generalized by one or more of the roles defined here.

Author

The author of an assessment item. In simple situations an item may have a single author, in more complex situations an item may go through a creation and quality control process involving many people. In this specification we identify all of these people with the role of author. An author is concerned with the content of an item, which distinguishes them from the role of an Item Bank Manager. An author interacts with an item through an Authoring Tool.

Candidate

The person being assessed by an assessment test or assessment item.

Item Bank Manager

An actor with responsibility for managing a collection of assessment items with an item bank.

Proctor

A person charged with overseeing the delivery of an assessment. Often referred to as an invigilator. For the purposes of this specification a proctor is anyone (other than the candidate) who is involved in the delivery process but who does not have a role in assessing the candidate's responses.

Scorer

A person or external system responsible for assessing the candidate's responses during assessment delivery. Scorers are optional, for example, many assessment items can be scored automatically using response processing rules defined in the item itself.

Test Constructor

The role of test constructor is to create tests (test forms) from individual items. The items are typically drawn from an item bank.

Tutor

Someone involved in managing, directing or supporting the learning process for a learner but who is not subject to (the same) assessment.

2.3 What's New in QTI 3.0

In 2014, 1EdTech released the Accessible Portable Item Protocol® (APIP®) specification, providing a standard way to exchange and deliver assessment content that is accessible and meets individual student needs and preferences. With QTI 3.0, while the initial focus has been on content portability, the next steps in the evolution of APIP/QTI are to:

• Merge the concepts of APIP/QTI into a single and homogeneous specification;
• Achieve interoperability from a user experience perspective during assessment delivery by harmonizing it with the corresponding broader W3C accessibility and Web standards, accessibility best practices, and assistive technology ecosystem;
• Provide a solution that supports end-to-end accessibility, i.e., from assessment authoring to delivery on the candidate's device, supporting the user's preferred assistive technology, and the reporting of the associated outcomes and collected data;
• Improve ease of adoption by adding presentation information to QTI, in order to eliminate inconsistencies in terms of rendering across delivery systems;
• Educate appropriate domain experts about QTI to foster multidisciplinarity and effective communication between team members implementing, using or vending QTI content and systems, on the basis of a user, author and developer-friendly specification;
• Improve interoperability by extending synergies with existing 1EdTech specifications such as Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®), Caliper Analytics® and Access for All® (AfA®) Personal Needs & Preferences (PNP).

2.4 Technical Documentation Set

The technical specification work has involved the development of extensions to the base 1EdTech specifications and profiling of several 1EdTech and non-1EdTech specifications. Profiling is the process by which, one or more specifications, are tailored and combined to provide a best practice solution. In the case of QTI 3.0, profiling has been completed for 1EdTech AfA PNPv3 [AFA-30], 1EdTech Content Packaging v1.2 [CP-12], 1EdTech AfA Digital Resource Description (DRD) [AFA-30] and 1EdTech Metadata v1.3. Profiling of the IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) [MD-13] has also been undertaken.

The technical documentation set for QTI consists of the following:

• QTI Best Practice & Implementation Guide [QTI-IMPL-30] - containing a number of annotated examples of the data files exchanged by QTI compliant systems for the import/export of QTI Items and Tests. This document that takes you through the data models by example and is the best starting point for readers who are new to QTI and want to get an idea of what it can do.The BPIG addresses the following areas of QTI:

• QTI BPIG Section 1 Introduction and Appendices;
• QTI BPIG Section 2 Constructing QTI 3 Solution;
• QTI BPIG Section 3 Items;
• QTI BPIG Section 4 Tests;
• QTI BPIG Section 5 Personal Needs and Preferences (PNP);
• QTI BPIG Section 6 Packaging and Metadata;

• QTI Conformance & Certification [QTI-CERT-30] - containing the conformance specification for QTI v3.0. This also describes how QTI content and a QTI application/tool/system must comply to achieve the various QTI conformance certification marks;
• QTI Terms and Definitions [QTI-TERM-30] - containing the terms and definitions, and other useful information that is required to provide a full context for QTI;
• QTI APIP to QTI 3 Migration Guide [QTI-MIGR-30] - A brief guide to migrating APIP information into QTI 3 information for both Personal Needs and Preferences (PNP) candidate profiles and items;
• Assessment Test, Section and Item Information Model [QTI-INFO-30]: The reference guide to the main data model for assessment tests and items. The document provides detailed information about the model and specifies the requirements of delivery engines and authoring systems;
• Assessment Test, Section and Item Binding [QTI-BIND-30]: A document describing the way the data models have been bound to XML;
• Metadata Information Model and Binding [QTI-MD-BIND-30]: A document that describes a profile of the IEEE LOM data model suitable for use with assessment tests and items and a separate data model for representing usage data (i.e., item statistics). This document will be of particular interest to developers and managers of item banks and other content repositories, and to those who construct assessments from item banks;
• Results Reporting Information Model and Binding [QTI-RR-30]: A reference guide to the data model for result reporting. The document provides detailed information about the model and provides associated best practice for assessment systems;
• Usage Data Information Model and Binding [QTI-UD-30]: A document that describes reporting statistical information about the usage of a set of items;
• XML Schema Definition files - these are the control validation files used by applications to confirm that the data instance files being exchanged by QTI compliant systems are syntactically correct;
• Examples - the set of example instance files that are described in the best practices examples document.