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Release notes assessmentQ 2.11

  • Updated

In these release notes

assessmentQ 2.11 contains the following new features and improvements:

Multi-stage adaptive assignments

An adaptive assignment is an assignment that adapts to the participant’s ability level. There are several forms of adaptivity in e-assessment:

  • Multi-stage adaptivity or block adaptivity
    In a multi-stage adaptive assignment, the participant completes multiple stages and gets a certain block of questions in the next stage based on his result in the previous stage. There are 2 forms of multi-stage adaptivity:

    • the transitions between the stages are based on the score in the previous stage

    • the transitions between the stages are based on an algorithm

  • Item-based adaptivity
    In an item-based adaptive assignment, the participant completes a selection of items. The selection of the next item is based on the score for the current item.

In assessmentQ 2.11, we have implemented the first variant of multi-stage adaptivity, i.e. the transition to the next stage is defined by the participant’s score for the current part.

Reporting for multi-stage adaptive assignments is completely different from the standard assignment reports. In the report of an adaptive assignment, you don't see a total score or passed / failed status as in a standard report, but you see the path every participant has taken through the assignment and the part in which the participant ended up. It is then up to the analyst to interpret these results.  

More information

New Insights module with Item development reports

Starting in assessmentQ 2.11, we introduce the new Insights module in assessmentQ. 

Whereas in the assessmentQ Reporting module you will find reports on participants' results, in the new Insights module you will find reports on data in your assessmentQ environment that is not related to results.

The first type of report we have added to the new Insights module is the Item development report. It is a very valuable report for authors and administrators to follow up on the item development in the item bank:

  • In the Item development report you can see how many items have already been developed with a certain metadata key or using a certain item type. 
  • You can also define your target in the report (for example: 10 items per degree of difficulty per topic) and see where there is still a gap in your content.

More information

Automatic distractor generation with GPT-3.5

Starting from release 2.11, assessmentQ now contains its first feature powered by GPT-3.5 (the engine used by ChatGPT): the automatic generation of distractors.

This feature was already available before in assessmentQ, but has now been significantly improved as it uses a better AI algorithm.

It has also been improved functionally:

  • The button has been updated so that it can be easily found by the author: 
  • The AI not only suggests distractors, but now also explains why it has selected these distractors.
  • The author can optionally change the explanation and select to add it automatically as negative feedback for the selected answer.  

More information

New scrolling behavior in the player

The scrolling behavior in the assessmentQ player has been changed to improve the user experience:

  • The top bar containing buttons for supporting tools, for resetting and flagging an item, etc. has become a fixed bar. It no longer scrolls along with the item content. This is very useful when you want to use the highlighter at the bottom of a long text for example, as the highlighter and other supporting tools remain visible at the top of the screen.

  • A case for which the case information page is shown to the left of the case items can now have two separate scroll bars: one for the case information page at left side of the screen (containing for example a reading text) and one for case item at the right side of the screen (where the question about the text is displayed). This ensures that the question always remains visible when participants need to search for an answer at the bottom of a long text, reducing the cognitive load for the participants.

Warning for unanswered questions

Participants sometimes double-click the Next button, causing them to accidentally skip a question. In assessmentQ 2.11, a new warning can be enabled in the player, notifying participants when they have not answered a question and try to navigate away. This way, they can confirm that they want to leave the question blank or answer it anyway.  

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Possibility to hide tooltips for math entry items

In the Math entry item, a new option had been added that allows authors to show or hide tooltips for math buttons in the player. By default, the tooltips are displayed, but the author can decide to hide them for participants:

More information

Showing the first item immediately when the case information page is repeated

A new option has been added to the item options of a case in the assignment template allowing to immediately show the first item in a case when the case information page is repeated. 

Optimization of the calculator

Several improvements have been made to the calculator to optimize its use on small devices:

  • The font in the display of the scientific calculator has been reduced to make sure more calculations fit on the display.
  • The calculator has become resizeable: the participant can now drag the border of the calculator to increase or reduce its size.
  • When the calculator contains too much information on the display, it will have a vertical scrollbar only and no longer a horizontal scrollbar. To scroll horizontally the participants have to use the arrows on the keyboard to move forward and backward, just like in a text field for example.
  • When the result of a calculation is displayed, the values entered by the participant are displayed completely without a scrollbar. This means that the display of these values can become very small in case the calculation was long.
  • There is also a small aesthetic update to the calculator: the font of the numbers on the calculator has changed so its look and feel become more consistent with the font that is used in the buttons.

More information

Consistency of behavior for entering and displaying scores

All scores are now displayed and rounded up to 2 decimals. This increases the consistency in the display of scores throughout assessmentQ. For example, you can now:

  • Set the maximum score of an item to 1,25

    Note: You can no longer enter scores with 3 decimal places.

  • Set the minimum score of a part of an assignment to 66,67%
  • Set the score for an item to 1,25 in Grading
  • See the absolute scores and the scores in percentages with up to 2 decimals in the assessmentQ
    reports.

The use of a point and a comma in scores has become more consistent:

  • The thousands separator is always a space. For example: 1 000 and not 1,000.
  • The decimal separator is a comma when the user language is Dutch or French and a point when the user language is English. So 0,25 in Dutch or 0.25 in English.

Other improvements

  • Optimizations for content review tasks
    • It is now possible to delete items from a content review task in bulk:
    • You can add a maximum of 250 items to a content review task.
  • Maximum number of parts in an assignment
    To improve the performance of assessmentQ , a limit has been introduced on the maximum number of parts in an assignment. Starting from assessmentQ 2.11, an author can add a maximum of 20 parts to an assignment. 
  • Preloading per part
    When the author used the options “Allow navigation without internet” and/or “Preload media and other files” in the assignment template, the entire assignment was preloaded when the participant started it.
    Starting from assessmentQ 2.11, the assignment is no longer entirely preloaded in the player, but every part is pre-loaded separately. Preloading will go faster as less content has to be loaded.  

    Note: The participants now need to have an internet connection every time they start and finish a part, instead of only at the start and finish of the assignment.

  • CAS optimization
    In the CAS evaluation, multiply by is implicitly added for combinations of numbers after letters. As a result, input strings as 3abc, 3bac, ab3c and abc3 are considered equivalent answers. 

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