A step from CAA toward MAA: a test-question repository

The authors have previously been active in developing a learning management system, applying it to computer-assisted assessment (CAA) tasks, improvising in-class activities using students' cellphones as text-messaging terminals, and devising architectures and prototypes to apply ad hoc networking to distributed computer-mediated communication in the classroom. The need to easily exchange test questions among various server platforms has now led us to experiment with the creation of an online repository for test-question trading. This paper describes the development of a repository originally designed to import and export questions from one learning-management platform to another. In keeping with the open-architecture principles that our project has adhered to from the outset, the repository is an external application. Not only does this enable other conventional platforms for wired, client-server e-learning, such as Moodle, to access questions in the repository, it reduces test questions to a bare-bones format optimal for importing into our content server for mobile devices, thus representing a first step toward mobile-assisted assessment (MAA).