CAPE gets data-driven Condition Sets

Introduced back in CAPE 2.3, data-driven assessments began to blur the line between designs at authoring- and delivery-time. The innovation was that an assessment's design could be contained in CAPE's dynamic data representation, called Condition Sets, thereby enabling it to be modified during courseware delivery to add, remove, or alter the kind of questions presented by the assessment. Prof. Robert Roselli of Vanderbilt used this capability to create a highly generative design pattern in CAPE that supports authoring using only data structures contained in condition sets (detailed in this paper). The design pattern, involving adaptive sequencing and adaptive content in addition to data-driven assessments, acts (essentially) as a special-purpose delivery engine that enacts the "instructions" defined in the data structures, including what questions to ask learners and how to react to their responses. Similar techniques were used by Prof. Eric Perreault of Northwestern to create a lab preparation exercise where questions are randomly drawn from mutliple question banks with progressively increasing levels of difficulty.

Data-driven Condition Sets represents our next step along this path, enabling data contained in condition sets to define other condition sets that can be initialized during courseware delivery. Whereas Actions and eLMS web services enable altering a courseware's dynamic state, data-driven condition sets focus on defining (or re-defining) this state. The definitional capabilities extend to CAPE's computational features (Derived conditions and Functions) that heretofore could only be defined at authoring-time. A supporting mini-project, called "Data-Driven Condition Sets", is provided in the CAPE author area of the Repository.

We are introducing data-driven condition sets as scaffolding for forthcoming capabilities that will address assignment-time adaptation and authoring. These capabilities will allow CAPE-authored courseware designs to be adapted by educators through the web using authoring interfaces designed with CAPE that are adaptively integrated directly into the courseware. The effect will be to enable a spectrum of authoring times, from early design within the authoring environment to late design within the delivery environment, and authoring tasks, from design creation to design adaptation.