For training learners, it is necessary to have at one’s disposal numerous digital resources which can be executed on most Web servers and platforms. These resources must be organized in such a way they enable a progressive training; however, at each level, exercises must be continuously renewed, while remaining on the same level of difficulty. Furthermore from such resources teachers should be able to build different tests of the same level.
The use of templates with parameters answers to the problem of the generation of such resources in mathematics. An exercise is an instance of a template in which parameters are given a value in the domain defined by constraints associated with the template. Thanks to the constraints, the teacher can specify the level of the template. Instancing parameters enables constant changes in exercise statements, whereas constraint specifications by the teacher enable the modulation of the difficulty of the generated exercise.
We have designed and developed an editorial chain from the teacher to the learner [1].
The first issue was the representation of the exercise templates. No norm of template coding has imposed itself, each tool using a different coding format. However the IMS-QTI 2.1 specification emerges and is more and more frequently used for the contents produced by the authoring tools. In order to be able to express all the constraints relating to the parameters of our exercise templates, we have been led to propose extensions [2] to the IMS-QTI 2.1 specification.
We have developed the QTI-Editor software to enter the exercise template statement, to declare parameters and constraints, to specify the interactions with the learner, and to define the expected answers and the feedback to the learner. The interface is adapted to non professionals. Outputs of QTI-Editor are the exercise template in extended IMS-QTI 2.1 format and a program enabling the initialization of the parameters. By running the program, author-teachers can visualize many sets of values of the parameters and verify they correspond to what they had planned.
Our second issue was the execution of the exercise templates. At the moment there is no environment supporting the IMS-QTI 2.1 specification. But present Web technologies offer an immediately operational solution: dynamic Web pages containing scripts executed on demand by a Web server. Thus, the Generator of dynamic Web Pages QTI-WPG generates a pair of PHP pages, question and diagnosis, intended for the Apache servers and for the Moodle and Claroline platforms, and a pair of JSP pages, question and diagnosis, for the Tomcat servers and the Sakaï platform.
The third issue was the pedagogical management of the templates. We propose Admin-DB which allows the teachers to classify the templates. They can use either our predefined classification either their own classification. With the Web-interface REQUEST-DB, the learner can retrieve and execute exercises associated to each topic.
More information about the project and some classified exercises can be found at http://chaineEditorialeExercices.lip6.fr
[1] O. Auzende, H. Giroire, F. Le Calvez, Towards Dynamic and Interoperable Educational Contents: Creating an Editorial Chain, ICALT 2008, July 2008.
[2] O. Auzende, H. Giroire, F. Le Calvez, Extension of IMS-QTI to express constraints on template variables in mathematics exercises, International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, AIED 2007, pp 524-526.