Assessment tools, projects and resources

Commercial products that implement QTI
Central Question Cambridge-based company which offers assessment authoring tools, surveys and a QTI conversion service.

Question Writer Assessment tool which can export items as QTI 1.2.

Questionmark Perception One of the most popular commercial products available.

Respondus Popular assessment authoring tool which allows the exchange of items and assessments in QTI, WebCT, BlackBoard and eCollege.

STOMP: Software Teaching of Modular Physics Resource for teaching introductory undergraduate and A-level Physics, available as a set of integrated tools or an independent QTI testing system.

Surpass Suite A suite of eassessment and elearning tools from BTL Group, including content authoring, item banking and assessment delivery.

Onyx Test Suite A comprehensive QTI 2.1 based suite of tools for the creation, playback, conversion of assessment items and tests, as well as results analysis and reporting.

Other QTI tools
APIS: Assessment Provision through Interoperable Segments Open source QTI v2.0 assessment rendering toolkit. Funded by JISC as part of the eLearning Frameworks and Tools Programme from May - October 2004.

AQuRate Item authoring tool. Part of a larger consortium with the ASDEL and Minibix projects. Now superseded by Mathqurate. Funded by JISC as part of the eLearning Capital Programme from March 2007 - March 2008.

ASAP: Automated System for the Assessment of Programming Code checking and code plagiarism detection tool. Funded by JISC as part of the Distributed eLearning programme from September 2004 - March 2005.

ASDEL: Assessment Delivery Engine for QTIv2 Questions Assessment delivery, marking, feedback management and associated functions such as scheduling, user management and results retrieval. Part of a larger consortium with the AQuRate and Minibix projects. Funded by JISC as part of the eLearning Capital Programme from March 2007 - March 2008.

ASSIS: Assessment and Simple Sequencing Integration Services Tool for integrating formative assessment within innovative learning activities and sequences of activities. Funded by JISC as part of the Distributed eLearning programme from September 2004 - March 2005.

CATS: Constructing Assessments using Tools and Services Toolkit to support automated assessment construction, including identifying and retrieving resources from distributed repositories. Funded by JISC as part of the eLearning Frameworks and Tools Programme from March - August 2006.

Eqiat A system to collect and deliver QTI items, easily allowing derivative items to be authored and deposited.

Fetlar Virtual Appliance Distribution of a large number of tools and elearning content in a single virtual machine.

Mathqurate Development of the original AQuRate project with enhanced processing of mathematical content.

Minibix Item banking system for both high- and low-stakes content. Part of a larger consortium with the AQuRate and ASDEL projects. Funded by JISC as part of the eLearning Capital Programme from March 2007 - March 2008.

MQAT: MathQTI And That A free, open source collection of resources for manipulating MathQTI documents, including an authoring tool, QTI DOM and MathQTI DOM interfaces and implementations, a MathML/OpenMath engine and a MathQTI rendering and processing engine.

PyAssess Toolkit which uses web services to link an assessment delivery system with a remote response processing engine. Funded by JISC as part of the eLearning Frameworks and Tools Programme from April - October 2005.

QTI migration tool - Python release Invaluable tool for converting items from IMS QTI v1.2 to 2.1.

QTI Tools QTItools is an extensive collection of opensource software tools, libraries and web-services for the handling of QTI v2.1 questions and tests, comprising JQTI (a core software library for the development of QTI applications), QTIEngine (a tool for playing QTI assessments), validatr (a tool for validating QTI assessments), constructr (a web-application for constructing simple assessments from items from an item-bank) and QTIEngine Moodle Plugin (a plugin for Moodle allowing tests to be scheduled and run as activities within the Moodle VLE).

R2Q2: Rendering and Response processing services for QTIv2 questions A web services based engine for QTI v2 rendering and response processing. Funded by JISC as part of the eLearning Frameworks and Tools Programme from March - August 2006.

Samigo IMS QTI-based testing tool available as part of the Sakai 1.5.1 release.

Serving Maths Addressing issues around the use of mathematical expressions in assessment. Funded by JISC under the Distributed eLearning programme from September 2004 - March 2005.

SPAID: Storage and Packaging of Assessment Item Data A range of web services to enable the deelopment, population and opration of assessment item banks. Funded by JISC under the eLearning Frameworks and Tools Programme from April - October 2005.

Spectatus User-friendly QTI v2.1 test authoring tool.

TOIA: Technologies for Online Interoperable Assessment Homepage for the TOIA project, a JISC X4L Strand B project which produced an online assessment management system for distribution throughout the UK Further and Higher Education communties.

XQuestion QTI converter Converts a QTI file to a SCORM 1.2 package.

Non-QTI products
ExamOnline E-Assessment platform specifically designed for HE. Includes support for delivery and human marking of essays, and for computerised marking of short-answer questions.

Hot Potatoes Popular, easy to use assessment tool available free of charge for some users. Compatibility with SCORM 2004 may appear in the future.

Kryterion A suite of testing tools and services with a strong emphasis on assessment security.

Question Writer Easy to use Flash-based quiz tool that can import and play QTI 1.2 items; a trial download is available from the site.

WebQuiz XP Features an optional addon for compatibility with SCORM 1.2 and 2004.

Item banks
Mathematics Question Bank The project will establish a national repository for mathematics e-assessment questions for UK higher education institutions drawing on the experience of different groups and systems currently employed within the UK HE community. Funded by JISC under the Repositories and Preservation Programme from January - December 2008.

Mathletics A number of downloadable mathematics assessments from GCSE to second year university level, written in Question Mark Perception 3.4, using MathML and SVG. Created by Martin Greenhow at Brunel, these are free for personal study and educational use.

Me:tal Randomised questions for first year economics.

Physical Sciences Question Bank Free to use for UK FE and HE, this question bank provides a substantial number of physical sciences questions which can be exported for playing in Moodle, Questionmark Perception, WebCT, BlackBoard, SToMP or for printing.

PPlato Downloadable paper-based mathematics for physics questions with worked solutions, from the PPlato project.

Resources
CAA Conference Home of the leading research-driven conference in eassessment, this site offers information on the next event and access to past conference proceedings.

EASiHE Project EASiHE is a JISC and University of Southampton funded project and is run by the University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science and iSolutions. EASiHE has been funded to accelerate the process of both implementing an open source, service based solution to institutional e-assessment; and addressing institutional change by engaging academics and students in co-design and co-deployment.

FREMA: eLearning Framework Reference Model for Assessment A reference model for the eassessment domain.

IMS Question and Test Interoperability specification Access to all versions of the IMS QTI specification, including example questions.

Niall Barr's QTI 1.2.1 test question sets Test questions to support developers of QTI 1.2.1 systems.

Towards ExerciseML Work on the use of mathematical materials in a QTI-based system.

UCLES QTI v2 Java implementation Demonstration of Graham Smith's Java implementation of QTI v2. The site contains a huge number of examples of QTI XML together with detailed implementation notes. It also features test examples designed to test the capabilities of rendering and response processing systems, including examples of invalid XML which should cause errors.

Reading
Avoiding Plagiarism Excellent online resourse produced by the University of Leicester, with specific versions aimed at over a dozen different disciplines.

bobbyelliott.com Access to a wide range of material on assessment from Bobby Elliott.

BTL Resources Links to case studies, presentations and papers on a range of eassessment topics from BTL.

CAA Centre A wealth of information from the centre which ran from 1998-2001.

CAA Conference proceedings Online proceedings from the CAA International Conference from 1997 to the present.

Creating a Quiz in Moodle Extremely detailed article on how to create a full quiz in Moodle, by Jason Myrick.

eAssessment in Wales Project site for the eAssessment in Wales project based at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff.

Effective Practice with eAssessment Guide funded by the JISC Pedagogy Programme, including the outcomes of the JISC Roadmap project, case studies and the glossary.

Find your way around eassessment Brief article from JISC Inform.

Guide to Writing Objective Tests Guide to the development of selected response questions. Developed by Bobby Elliott of the SQA.

Innovating Assessment in Scotland White paper produced by the SQA's SOLAR project.

Policy Works: Recommendations for reviewing policy to manage unacceptable academic practice in higher education HEA/JISC publication on handling student plagiarism and other unacceptable academic practice, published March 2011.

Questionmark's CAA glossary Large and detailed glossary of terms relevant to testing and assessment.

Questionmark White Papers Briefing papers on a number of assessment-related topics.