Creating an item

From a starter file to a scored, saved question.

For authors

This guide makes one multiple-choice item, then shows the other kinds of question you can add. You need the author role in the tenant.

1. Create it from a starter

1. Open Resources and choose your tenant.
2. Open the Create menu and choose Item.
3. Pick a starter. Each is a ready-made shape: a blank item, or one interaction type such as choice or text entry. Your tenant admin decides which starters are offered.
4. Type a Title. AIB derives the item’s identifier from it, and that identifier never changes afterwards, so choose a title you are happy to see as an id.
5. Press Create. The new item’s page opens with the editor already running.

2. Write the question

The editor shows the item as a candidate will see it. Click any part of it to select it; the properties panel beside it shows what you selected.

• Type in any paragraph, prompt or choice: click in its text and the caret lands where you clicked. Use the formatting buttons (B, I, superscript, subscript) while typing.
• Add a question with the Question menu (one answer or several), or Insert to add any interaction, paragraph, table, image or other element where the selection is.
• Add a choice with Add choice in the properties panel of a choice interaction.
• Put something in the text, such as a link, an image or a fill-in-the-blank box, with the Inline menu while typing.

See The item editor for every tool, and Interaction types for what each kind of question does, with a sample of each to try.

3. Set the correct answer and scoring

Select the interaction. Its panel opens on the Scoring tab:

1. Mark the correct answer. For choices, click the radio button or checkbox beside the correct choice on the canvas; for an inline choice, pick it in the drop-down; for a text entry, type it in Correct answer; for a match or gap match, tick the pairs in the grid.
2. Choose a Scoring recipe:
   • Exact match: points for the correct response, nothing otherwise.
   • Accepted answers: several answers, tried in order, each with its own points.
   • Mapped (points per answer): points for each answer given, added up.
   • Not scored: for a question a person marks.
3. Set the Points, and optionally what No answer and Anything else score.

When an item has several questions, select the item body to see how they add up into the item’s total, each with a Weight.

4. Add feedback (optional)

Feedback is content a candidate sees after answering. Use Insert for feedback in the body, or Add modal feedback for a message after the item. Each piece of feedback is shown when an outcome (usually FEEDBACK) takes a value you name in its panel.

5. Check and save

• Check validates the item against QTI 3.0 without saving and lists any problems. Click a problem to select the element at fault.
• Save validates, stores the item and closes the editor. An invalid item is never saved; your draft is kept so you can fix it.
• Close leaves your changes in the draft for later. Edit draft picks them up again.
• Discard throws the draft away.

6. Try it

On the item page’s Preview tab, answer the question and press End Attempt: AIB scores your answer and lists the outcomes. Tick Show Answer to see the key on every interaction. See Item page.

7. Describe it

Open the Metadata tab to record the item’s subject, standards, difficulty and other details your tenant asks for. Some fields, like the interaction types, can be filled from the content with Refresh from content.

Things to know

• Identifiers are fixed once saved. An answer’s identifier, a choice’s identifier and the item’s own identifier are used to gather statistics, so the editor will not let you rename them. To change scoring, change the recipe, not the names.
• An item a locked test uses cannot be edited. The Edit button says so. Ask whoever manages the test, or duplicate the item and edit the copy.
• Images and audio are chosen from, or uploaded to, the bank’s media from the editor. See Media page.