CBA ItemBuilder Workshop: Session 18

Ulf Kroehne

Paris, 2022/11/07 - 2022/11/08

Session 18: Workflows and Github

Overview Session 18

  • Workflows
  • Github

Assessment Cycle

Educational assessment aims at showing inter-individual differences.

Item Development according to Diagnostic Interest

  • Item design to allow test-takers to show different behavior
  • Capture construct-relevant behavior

Version Control and Project Management

Version Control and Project Management (find details here)

  • Use technical solution developed for software development in teams

    • Subversion (SVN) or GIT
    • Ticket system / issue tracker

  • Development of CBA ItemBuilder projects can benefit from version control (avoid file names like myItem_5.3.23.zip or myItem_final_fila.zip)

    • Project name (changed inside CBA ItemBuilder) should be equal to file name (don’t change file names in Windows explorer).
    • But: CBA ItemBuilder project files are binary files (i.e., comparison of two different files not possible using typical source code management approaches).

Use fastib2pci to Create PCI Components

This is a new development, so please drop me a note in case of questions or problems. The worker currently creates TAO-flavor of PCI, IMS-flavor is under development.

Why

  • CBA ItemBuilder item need to be packaged in a specific way to upload them as PCI-component to your deployment software.

  • For simple use-cases, PCI only contains information regarding the connection between CBA ItemBuilder Tasks and the deployment software, item content can be hosted on any server.

  • This circumvents the size restriction of PCI-content (e.g., 2MB in TAO)

How

  • Github-pages can be used1 to host the item content.

  • A github Worker (i.e., a program that is automatically executed when something is changed in the repository) can be used to prepare the content and the PCI component.

External Page Frames for (Rapid) Prototyping

Seller’s Perspective

  • CBA ItemBuilder does not nearly provide everything.
  • But a lot can be achieved, in particular, if missing pices are filled with External Page Frames.

Project Manager’s Perspective

  • Definition and specification of requirements (i.e., how should a feature look like) most difficult for software projects
  • Requires to bridge the gap between Users and Developers
  • External Page Frames can be cheap (and specific for single items), but might showcase how a feature should look like

Please provide examples for External Page Frame content, if this features is used to DIPF/TBA.

End of Session 17: Workflows and Github

Helpful to remember

  • Responsibility of Item Authors ends at CBA ItemBuilder project files running in Preview
  • When using ExternalPageFrames
    • Check that all resources are embedded
    • Check that embedded code runs in all browsers
  • Let’s come to an end and conclude with session 19.