BELVAL, LUXEMBOURG — (Marketwired) — 12/08/14 — OAT, the leading provider of Open Source assessment solutions for Education and Public Sector Employment, today announced that its TAO assessment platform is the first to have achieved QTI compliance in all four certification categories. IMS Global Learning Consortium develops and maintains the Question & Test Interoperability® (QTI) specification to enable the exchange of item, test, and result data between authoring tools, item banks, test constructional tools, learning systems, and assessment delivery systems. IMS recently awarded TAO conformance certification for its latest implementation of the specification, QTI 2.1.
The QTI standard calls for compliance across four categories: Authoring and editing systems, Delivery systems, Item and test bank systems, and most importantly the QTI content itself. Taken together they make test content entirely portable, which is of critical importance as users migrate from legacy proprietary platforms to open, interoperable systems. “Our customers want the freedom to choose the technology that best fits their needs,” said Marc Oswald, Co-founder & CEO of Open Assessment Technologies. “OAT is leading this transformation by promoting the disaggregation of content and platform, and enabling test users to reduce cost and errors, and introduce new assessment products at a faster pace.”
“We couldn–t be more pleased with the dedication OAT has shown to IMS and their commitment to implementing open, interoperable standards to improve education,” said Dr. Rob Abel, Chief Executive Officer of IMS Global.
TAO is both a QTI authoring solution, as well as a test delivery platform. It enables educators and HR professionals to create questions in TAO and deliver them via a third-party QTI-compliant test driver, and vice versa. This interoperability is key for educational institutions and companies looking for flexibility in how they create and administer standards-based testing.
TAO–s QTI conformance follows on the heels of its LTI® compliance. IMS– Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI) standard establishes a standard way of integrating rich learning applications with platforms like learning management systems, portals, and other educational environments. LTI compliance ensures that users can start a TAO test from within a learning management system such as Moodle or Sakai, while the student isn–t even aware that the test is being delivered by a different system. This continuity of user experience is an important benefit for educators that want to deliver a consistent test-taking experience for all students.
OAT is the publisher of TAO, the leading Open Source assessment platform for Education and Public Sector Employment. With offices in Silicon Valley and Luxembourg, OAT is working with educators and assessment professionals around the globe to develop a highly scalable, robust and secure platform that is available free of licensing and test delivery fees. OAT leads the open source community to advance the TAO technology and roadmap, and sponsors the annual TAO Days user conference. For more information and to download the TAO platform, please visit .
TAO, the TAO logo, and the OAT logo are registered trademarks of OAT in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Kristen Shue
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