Abstract:

Our team is involved in the exercise and test modelling in order to give tools to teacher communities to create and to share on-line interactive exercises and dynamic tests. To ensure a maximal level of interoperability, we have chosen to express them using the IMS-QTI v2.1 specification that we have enriched to express exercise templates with constrained parameters [1]. In IMS-QTI v2.1, an exercise is an assessment item and it is composed of the parameter declarations, the statement, the definition of the response processing, the various feedback according to the expected responses (correct or wrong) and the corresponding scores [2]. We have built an editorial chain to create exercise templates and to play those [3]. Teachers have used it to create sets of exercises in two domains: mathematics for secondary school and C2i certificate (computer science and internet) which is compulsory for all university students in France.

In this paper we address the organizative problem of these digital resources in a repository so that the search of suitable exercises by teachers and students is facilitated. These two types of users have not the same expectations in their search. We have privileged teacher needs, because they are the exercises authors and they have the pedagogical expertise to describe the characteristics of the resources. We have asked teachers in order to determine how they would like to search resources in digital repositories. The result of this survey has led us to discuss the features to characterize the exercises. Metadata are a usual way to describe resources. Several metadata sets exist for pedagogical resources. IEEE-LOM (Learning Object Metadata) [4] is the norm recommended by SCORM for describing Learning Objects, and is the basis for all specifications and profiles on the same subject at this moment.

The main metadata used by teachers for storing and searching in a repository, relate to positions in the domain classification, pre-requisites, skills to be acquired, and difficulty. To take into account the domain classification, the pre-requisites and skills to be acquired, we have defined a model of a more general classification of resources. This is composed of a domain taxonomy extended with a graph of skills and sub-skills. We have instantiated this model for Math and C2i. For each exercise, its metadata file contains its positions in this classification and other characteristics needed to describe it.

We have designed and created a metadata editor and software to store and search resources in repositories. This work is used by Pole Editions (a French web publisher) for math exercise templates intended for secondary school students and by UPMC for C2i exercises for undergraduate students.

References:
[1] O. Auzende, H. Giroire, and F. Le Calvez, “Extension of IMS-QTI to express constraints on template variables in mathematics exercises”, AIED 2007, IOS press, 2007, pp. 524-527.
[2] IMS-QTI Meta-data and Usage data (2006). http://www.imsglobal.org/question/qtiv2p1pd2/imsqti_mdudv2p1pd2.html
[3] O. Auzende, H. Giroire, F. Le Calvez, Towards Dynamic and Interoperable Educational Contents: Creating an Editorial Chain, ICALT 2008, July 2008.
[4] LOM IEEE Standard for Learning Object Metadata (1484.12.1) (2002)

Keywords:

Pedagogical resources, repository, metadata, IMS-QTI.