Appendix C: Importing items

Items can be imported using Excel, Word, or QTI 2.1 formats.  Currently, these work with multiple choice item types.

Excel

Excel import is accomplished by putting each item on a row and each field as a column, as you see below.  The first 3 fields are required.  The full file of this example is provided as an attachment.   

Note: There are certain columns on the example spreadsheet that are highlighted in grey, please do not delete these columns as they are required for the importing of items.  You can safely use the Hide Columns option in Excel if these columns are causing any confusion.  These columns are Column - A and U - Z (inclusive).

Unique Id

Difficulty (P)

Discrimination (Rpbis)

IRT Model

IRT a

IRT b

IRT c

Importing Tags:  Create the Tag Groups and Tags for the Items by Going to Tags.

1. Create or Select the Tag Group

2. Create or Edit the Tag Groups

3. Take note of the Tag names

4. Enter the Tag information on the Excel Spreadsheet with the other data about the items.

An example of the Tag Groups and Tags:

An example of how to capture the Tag information in Excel:

Custom Field columns will be indicated by (custom)

Tag Field columns will be indicated by (TG)

Enemy Items column to list Enemy Items

Word

Word import files are .docx extension. 

• Put each item on its own page, with a page break in between. 
• The item number should be the first text on the page, then a period.
• Press tab.
• Type in then the question stem. 
• Press Enter
• Put each answer on a separate line, preceded by e.g. A) tab Answer for Option A
• Mark the correct answer with an asterisk (*) to denote the correct answer.

Here's a simple example.  Download the attachment below to use as a template.  

Note: If the item has an image, the image will have to be saved in Assess.ai as an asset before it can be added / linked to an item.  It is not automatically imported from Word.  Import images by going to:

Items - Assets - Add Asset.   

QTI 2.1

The Question and Test Interoperability Standard is an international set of standards for how test and items can be transferred from one system to another.  It is produced by IMS Global, a consortium of industry stakeholders that makes other standards too.

QTI is based on XML so it is not something you can easily type up yourself.  You will most likely use this method if you are importing from another assessment platform.  

QTI comes as a ZIP file which contains 3 general things.

1. XML files with all the item content

2. A sub-folder with all the relevant assets (image files for example)

3. A "manifest" file that tells the importer how to deal with 1 and 2.

Troubleshooting

When you import items, you will receive a notification on your Notifications page when complete.  This is asynchronous because large files might take an hour to import so the screen does not sit there spinning the entire time.  The notifications will look like this:

If you have a failed import, you can click on View Logs to see a report on potential issues.  If this happens, the entire import will be aborted.  This is to prevent you from fixing one problem item out of 100 and doing the import again and ending up with 99 duplicates.