Exporting Items

Interactions can be put together on almost any computer that has access to TAO. However, there will be situations in which sharing items will be useful. For instance, two teachers might instruct the same course, and as a team they decide to split the duties of creating questions for an upcoming test. The ability to share items becomes essential in this situation. Doing this takes only a few easy steps.

Step 1: Upon opening Items from the Assessment Builder Bar, either click on an existing item class (folder) in the Item Library panel, or click on the Item folder itself. In the Actions Bar, click New Class.

Creating a new class, or a new folder, allows the user to place items in an organized location in which they can be made ready to be transferred from one machine to another. When doing this, where it says “Edit item class” in the canvas area, find the field marked Label. Here the item class can be renamed, if desired. Hitting the blue Save button will create the class.

Step 2: In the Item Library, move the items to be transferred to the class.

This selects the items that will be exported.

Step 3: After clicking on the class select from the Actions Bar Export.

Alternatively, an individual item can be clicked on for exporting, without creating a new class to transfer it in. However, in most instances it is more useful to organize the transfer in a single folder that can be exported in one go.

The pane that comes up on the canvas will ask that you confirm that the folder highlighted is the one that should be exported. If the item is to be exported as a Question and Test Interoperability (.qti) formatted document, it will save the files as a compressed .zip file. Otherwise, the export will be in Resource Description Framework (.rdf) format. Click the blue Export button in the pane to continue with the export.

Step 4: Select the location on which to export your item, and then save.

The item will then be available to transfer either by data storage device or over a computer network. The next step in the transfer is to import the item onto the desired computer.