Demonstration Test Authoring Tool

Test Authoring Tool for Demonstration

Masters Project Presentation Fall 2006

Presented by Anushri KumarSupervised by Dr. Irwin Levinstein

Dec 4th MS Project Presentation 2

Test Authoring Tool for Demonstration module Provide a simple interface for creating new

questioning styles for Demonstration and to maintain existing ones.

Automate the process of generating complex structures used to store question sets of the Demonstration module.

To generate logically and syntactically correct XML Configuration file.


Overview

Background Motivation Implementation Details Screen Shots Lessons Learnt Conclusion Bibliography


Background iSTART ( Interactive Strategy Training for Active

Reading and Thinking ) iSTART is a web-based tutoring system that teaches Reading Strategies to high school students in order to improve their reading skill and understand their text books better.

Training modules in a sequence: Introduction - Reading strategies are introduced. Demonstration module – Shown how reading

strategies can be used self explain sentences. Practice – Students generate Self Explanations to

science texts.


Background - Demonstration Module

Reading Strategies : Paraphrasing, Bridging, Monitoring, Prediction, Elaboration


Background - New vs. Old Demonstration

Old Demonstration New DemonstrationHad fixed set of questions for various student levels in the application code.

Didn’t provide much help to the weak students during the test.

Left scope for guesswork.

More flexibility since application code and questions are separate.

Introduced Questions methods & SE styles more adaptive to student level.

Introduced Follow up strategies if the student answered incorrectly. tellStrategy - give the answersimpleNo - ask student to try again

Introduced Tool Tips which provide reminder of strategies.

Developed a new version of demonstration as a part of Research work done under Dr. Levinstein.


New Demonstration- Questioning Methods

Multiple Choice box with reduced number of options & Tool tips

Genie used strategy X with a reminder Genie used strategy X


New Demonstration – Self Explanation Display Styles

Entire Text Reduce Text

Reduce Text with color highlightsEntire Text with Color Highlights


New Demonstration- XML The Self Explanation styles, Questioning method and Follow up

strategies for each student level are contained in a XML file.<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?> <para id="para1"> <sentPart id=“1"> <student level="5"> <question no=“1"> <method type="MCB" style="deterministic"> <strategy>P</strategy> <strategy>M</strategy> <strategy>B</strategy> </method> <SEFocus present="Y"> <part>1</part> <part>2</part> </SEFocus> <parsing>Y</parsing> <FollowUp> <part no=“1">simpleNo</part> <part no=“2">tellStrategy</part> <part no=“3">tellStrategy</part> </FollowUp> </question>……


Motivation For each sentence, we have to store question set for 10 student

levels.

The question set is stored in a complicated structure which naïve users cant understand so there is a need for an authoring tool.

Current Procedure : Researchers at Memphis put question sets in an excel sheet. At ODU, we use a Perl script to generate the XML from the excel

sheet.

The Authoring tool will automate this process and would provide researchers with a single interface to enter, update and edit question sets all in one place.


Test Authoring Tool for Demonstration

The Test Authoring Tool will give the researcher/experimenter an interface to Create new Questioning styles (XML

configuration file) Edit existing Questioning styles Preview the Demonstration test with the

Questioning styles View student settings in a consistent manner Perform Sanity checks


Authoring Tool - Design & Architecture

BrowserASP.NET

WEBAPPLICATION

(C# ASPX Pages and

ASP.NET AJAX)

XML

WebServiceXML

MYSQL

Fetches/Updates XML files

Stores Account information

Configuration files


Technologies Used

GUI/Presentation: ASP.NET 2.0, ASP.NET AJAX, Object Oriented

JavaScript, HTML Business Objects: C#.NET, ADO.NET

Database: XML, MySQL

Web Server: IIS


Screen Shot – Main page


Screen Shot – Create Questioning style, Step2


Screen Shot – Create Questioning style, Step3


Edit existing Questioning Style


Preview Questioning Style with Demonstration


Lessons Learnt

ASP.NET AJAX Partial page refreshes and asynchronous post backs Incremental rendering of information using xml script Object Oriented JavaScript to store text Show large amount of information effectively on the page.

ASP.NET 2.0 Web Services (accessed directly from the browser) SAX & DOM Parsing Forms Authentication and Role based Security ADO.NET Master Pages and Themes


Questions ?


Conclusion

Creation of complex question set structure for Demonstration can be easily done by using the Authoring tool.

This project will thus help the iSTART psychologists, researchers, experimenters to create and maintain question sets for demonstration.


Bibliography

ASP.NET AJAX - http://ajax.asp.net/ ASP.NET 2.0 - http://asp.net/ MSDN .NET Framework help link Laurence Moroney, Foundations of Atlas:

Rapid Ajax Development with ASP.NET 2.0


Implementation Details

I’ve used ASP.NET AJAX, which is a new Web development technology that integrates client script libraries with the ASP.NET 2.0 server framework and it enables you to create AJAX-style applications.

I’ve incorporated AJAX features such as Partial page refreshes and asynchronous post backs to the server for better user experience and a richer UI.


Implementation Details (cont..)

A Web Service is used to fetch and update data in the XML files on the server.

All web services are accessed directly from the browser (using JavaScript). Previously, a web service client had to be written to consume the web service. So, this results in faster access to the server and thus a more responsive UI.

The web service uses SAX XML parsing to fetch data and DOM XML parsing to save data.



Microsoft AJAX Library adds type system extensions to JavaScript that provide Object Oriented features like namespaces, inheritance, interfaces etc.

These enable you to write applications in a structured way that improves maintainability, makes it easier to add features, and makes it easier to layer functionality.

The sentences and the corresponding explanations of the text are stored in objects at the client. The objects are populated when the page loads and there after the data is accessed by calling methods on the objects. So, round trips to the server are avoided.



I’ve used ASP.NET Forms Authentication and Role based Security to make the application secure.

I’ve used ADO.NET to communicate with the MYSQL database.

I’ve used Master Pages which provides ability to define common structure and interface elements.

Documents

Demonstration Test Authoring Tool