Test Authoring Tool for Demonstration
Masters Project Presentation Fall 2006
Presented by Anushri KumarSupervised by Dr. Irwin Levinstein
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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.
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Overview
Background Motivation Implementation Details Screen Shots Lessons Learnt Conclusion Bibliography
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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.
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Background - Demonstration Module
Reading Strategies : Paraphrasing, Bridging, Monitoring, Prediction, Elaboration
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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.
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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
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New Demonstration – Self Explanation Display Styles
Entire Text Reduce Text
Reduce Text with color highlightsEntire Text with Color Highlights
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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>……
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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Screen Shot – Main page
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Screen Shot – Create Questioning style, Step2
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Screen Shot – Create Questioning style, Step3
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Edit existing Questioning Style
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Preview Questioning Style with Demonstration
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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
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Questions ?
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Implementation Details (cont..)
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.
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Implementation Details (cont..)
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.
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