Item Development Process

From conception to sign-off, each ONPAR item undergoes a many-staged item development process before a finished project is created.  Item ideas are sketched as storyboards, passed through a series of edits and revisions, designed by graphic artists, and made functional with programming. 

Storyboard
The storyboard is a hand-drawn sketch of an item that details the item construct, the graphical layout, and the program functionality of the item type. Layout includes:

• Item question / text prompt
  This is a phrase or sentence that poses a question or provides contextual information to the student.  Key words are colored blue and underlined in order to provide additional support for difficult text.
• Task-descriptive animated icon
  This icon demonstrates how to perform the item task with a simple animation.
• Stimulus area
  This area on the screen provides important information to the student that is required to answer the question or is related to the text prompts.
• Response options
  These are the actual objects that must be manipulated in order to answer the question.
• Response space
  This is the area in which the response options need to be placed or manipulated in order to record the answer to the question.
  

Design Mock-up
The mock-up is a computer illustrated version of the storyboard.  It meets design standards that dictate the overall graphical cohesion of the individual items.  Design standards set the guidelines for:

• General appearance of the layout elements
• Stylistic look of common content-related images including laboratory equipment, animals, etc.
• Consistency in the ways supporting or descriptive symbols, such as arrows, are used

Programming
Custom-designed program clusters add functionality to the mock-up.  The programming is item type specific and each item is created to fit into a testing interface that comprises the complete test.

Internal Review Panel
Each of the previous stages is examined by a review panel for quality assurance purposes.  Items go through the following stages:

• Initial Content Review
  Storyboards are checked for content integrity and accessibility issues.  Revised storyboards return to item writers for editing.
• Content-Design Match Review
  Design mock-ups are checked for storyboard alignment and target-irrelevant biases that may facilitate or hinder test-takers.  Revised mock-ups are returned to graphic designers for editing.
• Content-Design-Programming Review
  Approved design mock-ups get programming added for functionality.  Items are checked to detect any alterations that may have occurred to the content or initial design during the programming process.
• Functional Review
  Items are debugged and tested for programming errors that may affect the integrity of the test as a whole or the individual items.
• Final Review / Sign-off
  Items are given a general exiting review and determined to be appropriate for testing.

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An example of a Science Item

Unsupported text is aimed at test takers with mid level proficiency in English. Prompts use L1 or English audio translations to accommodate comprehension. Links exist between language components and their non-language counterparts.