CATS - Constructing Assessments using Tools and Services

CATS is a JISC ELF Demonstrator project and represents a collaborative undertaking between the Universities of Strathclyde and Edinburgh. Its goal is to develop a system which returns a complete content-packaged assessment – i.e. a structured set of items - by querying one or more item banks. The main tasks of the project are to: • analyse and scope the functional requirements of such a system • create web services to search for, retrieve and aggregate items held in item banks • utilise and build upon the outputs of two previous JISC ELF projects – SPAID and Discovery Plus (D+) • consult with assessment domain practitioners The SPAID (Storage and Packaging of Assessment Item Data) system will be used to establish and populate a test item bank. The D+ system will be enhanced to search for and retrieve assessment items held in one or more item banks. The consultation exercise will canvass practitioners about the types of query they would wish to specify inside a CATS “profile”