What is a QTI package and where can I find them?
Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) is a “standard way of packaging and moving tests and test questions from one application to another” (https://www.1edtech.org/standards/qti). In essence, QTI packages are collections of code that are written to tell a system how to create questions. These packages can sometimes be purchased with curriculum from curriculum vendors and may be offered by various curriculum distributors such as HMH or McGraw Hill.
The image below is a screenshot of a portion of a QTI package for one item.
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When creating custom item banks, how should I organize them?
You can organize your banks in whatever way best suits needs of your district. No one organization structure works for all districts. Keep in mind that every custom item bank that you create will be visible based on the permissions you set. In part, the solution that works best for your district also depends on how the vendor has supplied the QTI files for you to use.
To avoid overloading the potential list of custom item banks when searching for items, consider organizing each custom item bank by vendor rather than by grade level and subject combination.
Alternatively, if you structured your banks based on grade level and subject, consider using multiple vendors within each custom item bank. Be cautious with this approach as some vendors do not supply QTI packages with this level of granularity.
Does the importer support QTI v1.1?
It depends on how the QTI file was written by the vendor. QTI v1.1 is an older spec and was not considered when testing support. You can attempt to import that version, but at this time, we cannot offer any guarantee of how many items will import successfully.
How do I know if the QTI package supports prebuilt assessments?
The easiest way to know is to ask the vendor that created the QTI package directly. Some vendors support prebuilt assessments and some do not. If the QTI package includes the necessary structure and information to create prebuilt assessments, the importer will handle them automatically.
If I have a QTI package without prebuilt assessment support, can I create prebuilts myself from the items?
At this time, you cannot manually create prebuilt assessments in the custom item bank interface. We do not yet support the ability to create your own assessment from imported items and make them available in the prebuilt assessment table.
I imported items, but none of them are visible in Author and Questions and Resources. What do I do?
First, check to make sure you applied the correct permissions for visibility. When managing the custom banks, make sure you checked at least one of the three options to make the questions visible.
Second, check to make sure standards are connected to each question. Our system requires standards be attached to items before they can appear in Author and Questions and Resources.
If both of these things are verified, reach out to support for additional assistance.
I had a lot of items come in without standards attached. Can I add standards to many questions at once?
Yes, you can manage standards for multiple items. First, select the item bank from the Custom Item Banks screen. Select the checkbox for each item you want to edit and then select the Modify Standards button that appears above the table.
For more information about editing standards, see Managing Item Bank Imports.
You cannot edit item standards from Author or Questions and Resources at this time.
Can I edit items to change spelling, add content clarifiers, change answer choices, etc.?
At this time, items that were imported using a QTI package cannot be edited directly in our custom item bank interface. However, you can make edits to questions once they’ve been added to an assessment.
I have a lot of items that were rejected, what should I do next?
Items that failed to import will not be visible in Aware. Items might be rejected for a variety of reasons. Most often, an item is rejected if it is not an item type we support in Eduphoria or if the QTI was written in a way that we cannot support.
While the QTI spec is a set of guidelines to facilitate item support across a large variety of vendors, the specifications allow for quite a bit of customization that cannot be accounted for in every possible variation.
For a list of item types we do support, please refer to Supported Item Interactions. The next step would be to download the error log and initiate a conversation with the vendor that created the items. They can use the error log to determine what potential changes might need to be made to make the item supportable in our system. At that stage, it is up to the vendor to make the required changes.
If you feel as though the items match the requirements and should be supported, reach out to support for further assistance.
What types of items can Eduphoria’s importer support?
For a list of items we can support, please refer to Supported Item Interactions. Please keep in mind that supporting an item in Author does not necessarily mean we can support all possible variations of how that type of item could be authored. For example, we support the ability to create vertical charts as an item. If the item is sent in the QTI package as horizontal charts, we cannot support that item even though it is a Charting item.