(Project) Revision of Test Question Creation

1 Aim of Project

Currently, for every one of the 15 question types in the ILIAS core, the creation works differently. This is the product of the long history of the Test & Assessment. Some questions types are older than others. Features have been added over time and changing paradigms have never been backported to existing questions.

This cumlminates in many problems:

• Not every form is reachable by keyboard.
• The inputs must be sanitized individiually and often this goes wrong (I look at you --> Cloze Question).
• We have 3 different editor options: Unformatted input field, TinyMCE and IPE.
• We have different ways to integrate pictures into answer-options.
• aso.

Maintaining this is nearly impossible.

Furthermore, we have already analyzed the whole process of creating questions.
This analysis (Paper) lead to the conslusion, that plenty of clicks and page loading is needed in ILIAS to create one question. In comparison to other tools: far more and far too many. We lack bulk actions for things like changing the Lifecycle or adding taxonomies. Thus, we need to focus on minimizing the steps needed to create and change questions and also simplify adding data to e.g. a whole question pool of questions.

Our plan is to revise the process as a whole, to harmonise and simplify the forms for every question type in order to speed up question creation, to remove the TinyMCE from the Test and the Test Question Pool and to use new UI-Components and forms to achieve our goals. All questions need to be migrated to the new forms. Output of elements that cannot be migrated wil need to be displayed in their current state for a transitional period (e.g. one release) or for as long as it is not actively changed.

2 Involved Maintainers and Stakeholders

• Strassner, Denis [dstrassner], Becker, Maximilian [mbecker], Kergomard, Stephan [skergomard], Joußen, Thomas [tjoussen],Schmid, Fabian [fschmid] (IRSS), Amstutz, Timon [amstutz], Klees, Richard [rklees], Fuhrer, Thibeau [tfuhrer]
• SIG EA
• u.a. Uni Hohenheim, Universität Bern, Hochschule Bremen, FH Dormund (ILIAS.NRW)

3 Timeline

• Decision of the Editor-Question
• Analyse the tasks

• Add Picture Upload and Tables to Markdown Editor
• Analyze UI Components and create new UI Components if necessary
• Revise the Creation Process in Test and Pool (not the single Question)
• Abandon TinyMCE for the creation of revised question types, hints and feedback
• Revise the Cloze-Question and integrate the Long-Menu Question into it

• Revise the other Question-Types
• Complete the project

4 Related Feature Requests and Status

5 Further Results

• …

6 Additional Information

…

7 General Discussion

The product manager sees the refinement of the ILIAS code less as a big project but more as a fundamental approach to ILIAS software development. It is a big project with an open end, so to speak. However, in order to give the necessary attention to the ongoing handling of outstanding bug reports, it makes sense to tackle the refinement initiative as part of our Big Projects.