Export and Import Questions with Competencies

1 Requirements

1.1 Actual Requirement to Test and Testquestionpool

Tests and test questions pools are supporting the competence service since 5.0 / 5.1. This allows to assign competences and levels to selected answers or to defined result (ranges) of a question. But at the time being it is not possible to export a question with assigned competences and import it on another ILIAS installation.

This feature request is related to Import and Export of Competence Categories and demands an extension of the export and import of tests and question pools to keep the already existing information about assigned competences, levels and thresholds and to reuse it on another installation. Precondition for a reuse is that the used competence category on the original installation already exists on the installation where the test / pool is imported, see also Import and Export of Competence Categories.

No need to mention that competence information should be kept also when the test or pool is part of an exported course or another container.

1.2 Decisions and Suggestions from Competence Workshop

A workshop about a further extension of the competence management and the support of competences in ILIAS has taken place in Hamburg in February 2016.

The objective is to export a learning-objective-driven course including the competence data.

Competences, templates, assigned competence levels and threshholds are to be transfered to a new platform allong with the course and all objects contained in it. 
After a two-step export / import the assignments are to be restored in the target platform.

It is required not only to export the whole course but also to export individual tests and according pools respectively surveys. 

1.2.1 Suggested Workflow

Precondition: the exporting platform has a registered NIC-ID.

1. Export competence category: In the Administration the administrator exports the competence category that comtains all competences that are assigned to the learning-objective-driven course.
   • All competences, levels and if applicable used templates are exported.
   • The export-file contains the NIC-ID of the exporting platform.
   • In the export-file all competences have exactly the status they had in the exporting platform, only the top-most node is set to "Draft (Offline)". Thus the compenences will not be available to users immediatly after import.  
2. Export course: In the repository the course is exported. Competence data of tests, poops or surveys in the course are exported with the object. The export-files contain the NIC-ID of the exporting platform.
3. Import of competence category: In the Administration of the target platform the administrator imports the export-file of the competence category. The export file is imported on the top-most node of the competence management. The administrator sets the top-most node of the imported competence category to "Published" manually. 
4. Import course: In the repository the course is imported. Competence data (assigned levels and threshorlds) magically assign themselves to the competences previously imported.
5. Receive report: The user importing the course receives a report on how the import went. S/he gets a list of question-IDs which could not be restored.

1.2.2 Open Issues

• What happens if the "Required Amount of Answers for Competence Triggers" of target and source plattform differ? It could happen that the target platform requires i.e. 10 questions to be answered before writing a competence level and the imported course offers only three questions per competence and thus members of this course could never attain a competence using only this course.
• In optes course refereneces are heavily used. At least in copying references are turned to objects. This would produce a problem if it is this way with export, too. Then there would be courses in courses.

2 Additional Information

• Idea / concept: Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel]
• Funded by: DHBW
• Maintainer: Heyser, Björn [bheyser] for test&assessment; Killing, Alexander [alex] for competence service
• Implementation of the feature is done by Heyser, Björn [bheyser]
• Testcases by: Heyser, Björn [bheyser]

3 Discussion

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], April 25, 2016: We highly appreciate this feature and schedule it for 5.2. The problem "Required Amount of Answers for Competence Triggers" needs to be handled by the test itself. We do not see this as a problem of the import. The course reference problem should be tackled as a separate ticket.

4 Implementation

A strong pre condition is to have the source installation registered to the ilias NIC server, so a dedicated NIC ID is assigned to the source installation.

Most of the changes are behind the user interface. When exporting a test or a pool that is configured with competence assignments, the export simply includes exacty this information. For those who wants to check this, the corresponding xml file within the export zip package (<ts>_<nic>_(qpl|tst)_<objId>.xml) contains an xml tag container called "QuestionSkillAssignments". Within this xml container all question/competence assignment information is stored. With the filename you can check again wether your installation was sorted with a NIC ID or not.

All the magic happens on importing the pool or test object to another installation. When all related competence categories have been tranfered to this installation by using the export and import feature of the competence service prior to any pool or test object import , the import of a pool or test object reconnects all assignments to the correct competences. Having the same competence structure in the target installation built up manually does not work, these competences cannot be identified for reconnecting the assignments made to our questions.

When a pool or test object does contain competence assignment information that cannot be restored in the target installation, because they could not be identified (e.g. for the fact that the competences were not imported to the target installation), the pool or test object shows an alert listing the corresponding competence titles:

When just parts of the competences can be identified, but others not, only the non assignable competences are alerted:

Within test objects there also competence thresholds that are transfered by exporting and importing to another installation. When this threshold configuration does not fit with the list of levels available from the competentce identified in the target installation, the threshold configuration import is simply skipped and also alerted:

The pool and test objects are showing these alerts as long as the user does not invoke the button to remove it. This allows to get this alert shown asynchroniously (e.g. when opening the test the first time after importing a whole container structure like a course containing test objects).

Test Cases

• C12790
• C12792
• C12794
• C12795
• C12798

Approval

Approved at 2016-07-25 by Jackisch, Ingo [jackisch].