Publish and Deliver Your Test

You've just assembled your pop-quiz, and it's just an hour before the start of the day. You've only a few minutes to get this test assigned to your class before preparing to face your first lecture session of the day. TAO saves the day through its assembled delivery system. Assembled deliveries govern when and how long a Test will be taken by selected individual or groups of Test-takers. Fortunately, they take only a few moments to put together.

Step 1: In the Assessment Builder Bar, select Deliveries. In the Deliveries Library, click on a desired class, or on the Assembled Delivery folder itself.

This brings up in the Actions Bar, in addition to Properties, icons for new classes and new deliveries. If a new class (folder) is required, click on New Class and rename the label (folder name) accordingly. Otherwise, continue to the next step.

Step 2: After clicking on the class that will store the delivery, click New Delivery in the Action Bar.

This brings up a Create a New Delivery pane that asks for a test selection. From the pull-down menu, select the test that is to be sent to test-takers in this delivery. Once selected, click Publish.

Step 3: Set delivery properties in the Properties pane.

First, you will need to either accept the default label for your delivery ("Delivery of Test Name"), or change it according to your personal preferences. Then you will need to enter the maximum number of executions (attempts to take the test) that the test-taker can make (this defaults to zero, meaning that the student can attempt the test an unlimited number of times - any non-zero positive integer will be set as the maximum number of tries).

The start date and end date should next be set so as to set the earliest and latest date and time that the test-taker can submit answers. The format to use is to provide the date and time in the following order: year, month, day, and 24-hour time (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM).

At the end, you will need to choose where the results should be stored (the default is TAO Results Server 2.5, or DB storage).

Step 4: Assign the test to a group of test-takers in the panes adjacent to the Properties pane.

The Assigned to pane contains all available groups of test-takers. When a group is selected, hit the blue Save button below. If there are test-takers in the group who, for whatever reason, should not be taking this exam (because of absence, remedial assignments, etc.), click the blue button at the bottom of the Test-takers pane that reads Excluded test-takers. This brings up a pop-up window that includes windows containing the names of the assigned test-takers in the group, and a window that can hold excluded test-takers. To move a person from assigned status to excluded status, simply click on that person’s name in the assigned column (likewise, click on the name in the excluded column if it has been put there by mistake).

Step 5: To complete the delivery, click Save (or, alternatively, to halt the deliver, hit cancel) to close the pop-up window.