Enhancing the IMS QTI to better support computer assisted marking

Computer aided assessment is a common approach used by educational institutions. The benefits range into the design of teaching, learning, and instructional materials. While some such systems implement fully automated marking for multiple choice questions and fill-in-the-blanks, they are insufficient when human critiquing is required. Current systems developed in isolation have little regard to scalability and interoperability between courses, computer platforms, and learning management systems. The IMS Global Learning Consortium’s open specifications for interoperable learning technology lack functionality to make it useful for computer assisted marking. This article presents an enhanced set of these standards to address the issue.