Section 3.1 System Performance

3.1.1 Interactive Commands

Most of the basic operations preformed by Test Tool will be effectively instantaneous. The following operation must have an immediate response time (excluding delays from network connectivity).

• Test Taking.
  • Displaying new questions.
  • Answering a question
  • Flagging a question
  • Leaving a student comment.
  • Displaying an instructor comment.
• Submitting a test (Excluding Network Delays)
• Editing a test
  • Publishing a test
  • Manually adding a question
  • Removing a question
  • Editing a question
  • Generating a test summary
  • Saving a test
• Proctoring Operations
  • Starting a test
  • Pausing a test
  • Collecting a Test
  • Locking Test Takers.
  • Adding a comment.
  • Adding time
• Question Bank
  • Selecting an answer area type
  • Placing an answer area type
  • Editing a question
  • Viewing a question
  • Removing a question
  • Changing ownership of a question
• Grading
  • Automatically Grading a Test
  • Assigning a grade automatically
  • Changing viewing mode of a test

3.1.2 Computational Commands

Test tool has two major computational commands, the generate test operation in the Test Generator and the synchronizing the question bank. Because of the tests can be generated under very specific criteria and the question bank can be very large (see section 3.1.3), the Generate Test operation may take up to a minute to perform. Likewise, because of the large size of the question bank, synchronizing the online question bank with a local question bank may take up to 30 seconds.

Other smaller computational commands found in the Test Tool are the Replace Question and Automatic Addition of questions in the Test Editor and filtering questions in the Question Bank Browser. Because these operations must find questions in the question bank with specific criteria, these operations may take up to a second to operate. Filtering questions in the question bank has an operation time of three seconds or less.

3.1.3 Data Requirements

There several components to Test Tool that will require data storage.

• Question Bank
  • The question bank must be able to function with up to 100,000 questions.
• Tests
  • Tests must be able to hold up to 500 questions.
  • Tests must be able to hold one instructor comment and one student comment per question.
  • Tests must be able to hold 10 general student comments and 10 general instructor comments (not attached to a question).
• Questions
  • Questions must be able to hold up to 25 question body elements (Answer Areas, Text Blocks, Images)