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[school-discuss] Collecting Assessments at District Level



Hi Stephen,

I've been chewing on this kind of problem for a few years now. Last year I
wrote an online assessment database part-time for a provincial online
project (It stores assessment items and generates PDF/RTF tests for
teachers to give as paper tests).

There are several questions that arise from your email:

1) What format are the assessment items in now? Are they in just raw text
or are they marked up in some fashion...Tex, HTML, etc. or are they just
collections of files in proprietary formats like Word, Wordperfect, etc?

2) How do you want these items to be assembled into tests?

3) How are you going to classify these items so that they can be usefully
retrieved?

4) What kind of output formats do you want to generate?

5) Who has access both for retrieval and for entry/editing of existing
items?

So, I'm willing to help out with some opinions or code if you wish. I use
a MySQL database and Perl/DBI for my testbank. Markup is either raw text
or TeX for the items.

My testbank is here:

http://richtech.ca/testbank

Les Richardson
H. Hardcastle School
Edam, Sk. Canada





On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, Doug Loss wrote:

> I'm forwarding this message from Stephen Braunius with his permission.
> Please include him in any replies you make.
> 
> Stephen Braunius <sbrauniu@zeeland.k12.mi.us> wrote:
> 
> > I continue to enjoy the discussions with this list.  Thank you all for
> > continuing to look for ways to move linux into education.
> >
> > As a district, we are starting to collect a large amount of assessment
> > data from the local level, the State level, and the National level
> > (ITBS, PLAN, etc).  Currently I have a MySQL database set up that is
> > integrated with Zope to serve up the data we are collecting.  The
> > problem is that I don't know that much about database planning and am
> > finding that it is difficult to scale this thing over time.
> >
> > Any suggestions on the formatting of a relational assessment database
> > (i.e. table structures that deal with student data, test structures, and
> > test data...almost a data warehouse concept?) or web enabled software
> > options that are out there that allow for data entry, viewing,
> > reporting, and charting?  I have checked the seul-edu list, freshmeat,
> > and google.
> >
> > Some really neat projects that are similar to what I am looking for are
> > the State of Washington and Massachusetts web education spaces.
> > http://www.k12.wa.us -- look at the Ed Profile
> > http://www.ves.ws/nsportal.html -- Virtual Education Space
> >
> >  From what I have seen, the above projects are commissioned at the State
> > Level and are not publicly available packages.  Ideas?
> >
> > --
> > Stephen Braunius
> > Director of Instructional Technology
> > Zeeland Public Schools - http://www.zeeland.k12.mi.us
> > Zeeland, Michigan
> 
> --
> Doug Loss                 All I want is a warm bed
> Data Network Coordinator  and a kind word and
> Bloomsburg University     unlimited power.
> dloss@bloomu.edu                Ashleigh Brilliant
> 
>