Overview

Here is a graphical overview of the subsystem in the Assessment package that organizes Items into Sections and whole Assessments:

Review of Specific Entities

• Assessments (as_assessments) are the highest-level container in the hierarchical structure. They define the key by which all other entities are assembled into meaningful order during display, processing, retrieval and display of Assessment information.

  The primary key assessment_id is a revision_id inherited from cr_revisions. Note, the CR provides two main types of entities -- cr_items and cr_revisions. The latter are where sequential versions of the former go, while cr_items is where the "current" version of an entity can be stored, where unchanging elements of an entity are kept, or where data can be cached. This is particularly useful if the system needs a single "live" version, but it isn't appropriate in situations where all versions potentially are equally-important siblings. In the case of the Assessment package, it seems likely that in some applications, users would indeed want to designate a single "live" version, while in many others, they wouldn't. However, a given revision can be chosen many easy ways other than looking at cr_items, while being forced to create and maintain appropriate state in cr_items when an application doesn't want it would be a major complication. Thus, using the cr_revisions part of the CR alone seems to be the most useful approach here. This decision pertains to all entities using the CR, but it is particularly important with Assessments since they are the key to all the rest of the entity hierarchies.

  Attributes of Assessments will include those previously included in Surveys plus some others:

  • assessment_id
  • name - a formal title to use in page layouts etc
  • short_name - a curt name appropriate for urls
  • author
  • definition - text that can appear in introductory web pages
  • instructions - text that explains any specific steps the subject needs to follow
  • scaled_p - whether some kind of scoring algorithm is defined (ie "grading" or other schemes)
  • mode - whether this is a standalone assessment (like current surveys), or if it provides an "assessment service" to another OpenACS app, or a "web service" via SOAP etc
  • validated_p - whether this is a formal "instrument" like an eponymous test (eg "Seattle Angina Questionnaire" or "MMPI" etc; this means that alterations to this Assessment are not allowed since changes would invalidate the Assessment
  • enabled_p - released for actual use?
  • editable_p - can anyone alter it further?
  • template - references as_templates - ?not entirely clear how/why we want to use this

  Permissions / Scope: Control of reuse previously was through a shareable_p boolean. As with Items and Sections, we instead will use the acs permission system:

  • Read: An assessment author (who is granted this permission) can reuse this assessment (NB: Usually the original author has admin priviledges.)
  • Write: Author can reuse and change this assessment.
  • Admin: Author can reuse, change and give permission on this assessment

• Sections (as_sections) represent logically-grouped set of Items that always need to be present or absent together in the Assessment. Sections thus divide at logical branch points. These branch points are configured during Assessment creation to determine movement among Sections based on one of various mechanisms: pre-set criteria specified by the Assessment author, or criteria based on user-submitted data up to the point of branching. Note that Items within a single Section may be presented one-by-one in different pages; pagination is thus related but not equivalent to Section definitions and in fact is an attribute of a Section. Well, more accurately, of a Section Display Type (see below). Attributes of Sections themselves include:
  • section_id
  • section_display_type_id - references as_section_display_types
  • name - used for page display
  • definition - text used for identification and selection in admin pages, not for end-user pages
  • instructions - text displayed on user pages
  • enabled_p - good to go?
  • required_p - probably not as useful as per-Item required_p but maybe worth having here; what should it mean, though? All Items in a required section need to be required? At least one? Maybe this isn't really useful.
  • content_value - references cr_revisions: for an image, audio file or video file
  • numeric_value - optional "number of points" for section
  • feedback_text - optional preset text to show user
  • max_time_to_complete - optional max number of seconds to perform Section

  Permissions / Scope: Control of reuse previously was through a shareable_p boolean. As with Items and Assessments, we instead will use the acs permission system:

  • Read: A section author (who is granted this permission) can reuse this section (NB: Usually the original author has admin priviledges.)
  • Write: Author can reuse and change this section.
  • Admin: Author can reuse, change and give permission on this section

• Section Display Types (as_section_display_types) define types of display for an groups of Items. Examples are a "compound question" such as "What is your height" where the response needs to include a textbox for "feet" and one for "inches". Other examples are "grids" of radiobutton multiple-choice Items in which each row is another Item and each column is a shared radiobutton, with the labels for the radiobutton options only displayed at the top of the grid (see the SAQ for an illustration of this).

  This entity is directly analogous in purpose and design to as_item_display_types.

  • section_display_type_id
  • section_type_name - name like "Vertical Column" or "Depth-first Grid" or "Combo Box"
  • pagination_style - all-items; one-item-per-page; variable (get item groups from mapping table)
  • branched_p - whether this Section defines a branch point (so that the navigation procs should look for the next step) or whether this Section simply transitions to the next Section in the sort_order (it may be better not to use this denormalization and instead always look into the Sequencing mechanism for navigation -- we're still fuzzy on this)
  • item_orientation - the pattern by which 2..n Items are laid out when displayed. Note that this isn't a purely stylistic issue better left to the .adp templates or css; the patterns have semantic implications that the Assessment author appropriately should control here.
    1. horizontal - all Items are in one line
    2. vertical - all Items are in one column
    3. matrix_col-row - Items are laid out in matrix, filling first col then row
    4. matrix_row-col -Items are laid out in matrix, filling first row then col

  • item_labels_as headers_p - whether to display labels of the Items; if not, a "grid of radiobuttons" gets displayed. See discussion of Items and Item Choices here. There are contexts where a Section of Items all share the same Choices and should be laid out with the Items' item_subtexts as row headers and the radiobuttons (or checkboxes) only -- without their labels -- displayed in a grid (see this example).

  • presentation_type - may actually be superfluous...gotta think more about this, but there's at least one example:
    1. ranking - a set of alternatives each need to be assigned an exclusive rank ("Indicate the order of US Presidents from bad to worse"). Is this one Item with multiple Item Choices? Actually, not, since each alternative has a value that must be separately stored (the tester would want to know that the testee ranked GWB last, for instance).
    2. what others?

  • item_alignment - the orientation between the "section description part" of the Section (if any) and the group of Items. Alternatives accommodate L->R and R->L alphabets (or is this handled automagically be Internationalization?) and include:
    1. beside_left - the Items are left of the "heading"
    2. beside_right - the Items are right of the "heading"
    3. below - the Items are below the "heading"
    4. above - the Items are above the "heading"

  • display_options - field to specify other stuff like the grid dimensions ("rows=10 cols=50" eg)

• Item Section map (as_item_section_map) defines 1..n Items to a Section, caches display code, and contains optional overrides for Section and Item attributes:
  • item_id
  • section_id
  • enabled_p
  • required_p - whether Item must be answered
  • item_default
  • content_value - references CR
  • numeric_value - where optionally the "points" for the Item can be stored
  • feedback_text
  • max_time_to_complete
  • adp_chunk - display code
  • sort_order

• Section Assessment Map (as_assessment_section_map) basically is a standard map, though we can override a few Section attributes here if desired:
  • assessment_id
  • section_id
  • feedback_text
  • max_time_to_complete
  • sort_order