Interactive Web Components
While at ETS I have been responsible for developing Interactive Web Components, an authoring tool used to author assessment items with embedded Interactive Web Components, and Framework that allowed us to assemble content in multiple ways to take advantage of feature pairings.
Interactive Content is content that requires the participants’ active engagement, more than simply reading or watching. In an assessment, in return for that engagement, participants receive real-time, hyper-relevant examples that illustrate concepts, theories, or abstract thoughts we want to measure their understanding of. Today within ETS we house the technology to create the following types of interactive content:
A library of 90 advanced web components that support branding (Examples of Interactive Components can be found in videos below)
A library of 17 traditional web components
Scenario based task framework that that allows us to create an endless number of testlets
Animated Score Reports framework
Interactive Components are a set of features that provide a standard component model for the Web allowing for encapsulation and interoperability of individual HTML elements. Some key benefits to this approach are:
Code once, reuse many times is the core idea behind Interactive Components.
Support styling allowing the same code to be styled to many client’s branding.
Delivered via a browser giving Interactive Components flexibility to be viewed on any platform.
Delivered locally or via the web means components could be sold using a licensing (with ongoing maintenance contracts) model or a 1 time custom development model.
Interactive Components provide feedback and user logs which gives our clients a better understanding of what their users are doing.
Content Authoring Tool
The Interactive Content authoring tool we developed was named iCat. iCat stands for: Interactive Component Authoring Tool. iCat is a custom JSON editor that is tied to an item previewer. iCat is built using industry standard HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, ElectronJS, and NODE JS technologies. We developed the authoring tool to be used both in a Desktop and Website configuration. The modular design and build environment iCat afforded us was broken down many different ways. The largest ROI was found in the areas of:
Research – Rapid prototyping
Programs - Faster Time To Market
More streamlined processes across all departments = Reduced Costs
Safety Benefits from the centralized management of component codebase
Fewer Resource Requirements and Shift Toward Lower Cost Resources
Higher Quality Assembly – Predictable Component Assembly
iCat uses a set of prebuilt components in a Lego like fashion to build content. When each prebuilt component is built aspects such as authorable parameters, user interface, current accessibility guidelines are all taken into account and test for. By the time a component is included in the iCat library many aspects of Unit Testing, Integration Testing, and User Testing are done and do not need to be retested when a component is included into an item.
Another advantage is realized when additional features are required. Since our team automates the testing of our components only the additional features need to be added to the testing scripts. The testing of existing features is timely and repeatable.
Screen shot of iCat - Interactive Component Authoring Tool
Frameworks
It is important to understand iCat is the authoring tool. Interactive Components, Scenario Based Tasks, and Testlets are all Frameworks that are supported by iCat. We worked to make sure all these frameworks have a shared standard set of functionalities which include:
Centralize authoring via iCat
Interoperability between components
Save state functionality
Standardized user data tracking
Playback functionality based on the standardized user tracking data
Response data capturing
Reporting Uses
Today Interactive Content is being used two different ways when it comes to reporting. The first way is more of a traditional way of reporting. Displaying information in static or dynamic methods where users can change values in text boxes and view results on charts or on maps. The second use is within Animated Score Reports. Example of both can be found on the slides that follow.
Example of Interactive Components used in traditional reporting
Animated Score Reports are:
Parameter driven populated by an author (one off), database, or JSON file
Student’s variable (name, score, language)
Geographic variable (background effects)
Scoring variables (scoring ranges, display and audible text by section)
50+ languages with multiple dialects for each language
Lower storage costs
Quicker updating times
Use of Interactive Component library
Response gathering
