Question Bank, Question Pool, and Question Selections
To better understand a profile, consider these three populations of questions: the question bank, the question pool, and the selected questions. The question bank is the total population of questions in the current VISION project. The question pool is a subset of the question bank; it is the population of questions encompassed by the test units on the current test—subject to any filters that have been used. The third population, the selected questions, is those questions in the question pool that are actually selected to appear on the test.
Selecting from the Question Pool
But which questions from the question pool will you select to appear on your test? You could select every question in the pool. Perhaps if the pool is small, this might be appropriate. But it is more likely that your question pool contains more, maybe many more, questions than you care to test on a single exam. In that case you'll want to pick only some of them.
How do you do that? Well, you could go to the Selection tab and scan through the question pool, picking each question by hand. But this might prove tedious and time-consuming. It might be easier, especially if the pool is large, to let VISION pick the questions for you—according to selection criteria of your choosing. This is where the profile comes in.
Using a profile, you can tell VISION how many points you want the test to be worth, or how many questions you want to appear on the test, or how much time the test should take. You can even make VISION weigh certain test units more heavily than others—by drawing more questions from them than from other test units—in order to reflect, for example, the emphasis that was given to teaching those units in a lecture.
Define, Then Apply
You define the profile by specifying such criteria. Then, when you apply the profile, VISION randomly selects questions from the pool to meet those selection criteria. (You can reapply a profile if you want. The specific question selections may change, but they will still satisfy the selection criteria.)
See Also
Define Profile Button
On the Test Properties window, on the Selection tab, on the Select drop-down menu, select "Define Profile" to define or edit a profile.
Apply Profile
On the Test Properties window, on the Selection tab, on the Select drop-down menu, choose "Select by Profile" to apply the defined profile. This menu item is enabled only if a profile has been defined for this test.
Auto Apply Profile
If this is checked, then the profile will be applied when you click the OK button.
This is a convenience feature. It spares you from having to remember to apply the selection profile yourself after you have set or changed it. You can always apply the profile yourself using the "Select by Profile" action, which is located on the Select button menu on the window behind this one.
VISION remembers the checkbox state between VISION sessions.
Value
Use this field to enter the value of the option selected above (points, time or number of questions). For points and time, you can enter a decimal value. For number of questions, enter a whole number.
Test Units
Test Units or Objective Level Names
If you click the Points, Time or Number of Questions radio button on the Limits tab, this list shows all test units used on the test. To weight the test, select a test unit and enter its weight as a percent in the "Weight" field below. The "% Total Weight" field will show the combined weight of each test unit which cannot exceed 100%.
Note: If the "% Total Weight" field is zero, VISION will place all questions found under each test unit into one pool and will then randomly select questions from that one pool.
If you click the Objectives radio button on the Limits tab, this list will show the objective level names (Performance Terminal, Performance Enabler, Cognitive Terminal or Cognitive Enabler) found under all the test units used on the test. To weight the test, enter the weight in the "% to Test" field and the number of questions you want tested for the objective.
Note: Further information is available on Test Units if you click the Help button.
Percent Total Weight
•% Total Weight: This field gives you a cumulative total of assigned weights from test units, which should equal 100%. It is a read-only field.
•Number of Questions: If you enter 50 in the "% to Test" field and 2 in the "No. of questions" field, VISION will randomly pick 50% of the objectives of the type selected in the above list. From those objectives picked, VISION will randomly pick 2 questions from each.
Percent Weighting
•% Weight (Points, Time, Number of Questions): For each test unit listed above, choose what percentage of questions on the test should come from it. Make the percentages add up to 100.
oNote: The sum of the percentages for each test unit cannot exceed 100%.
•% to Test (Objectives): For each type of objective listed above, choose the percentage of objectives in the pool of that type from which to select questions for the test.
oFor example, suppose there are 10 objectives in the pool of type Cognitive Enabler. If you select Cognitive Enabler in the list above and enter 60 here in the "% to Test" box, that will cause the profile to randomly select 6 of those 10 objectives. Then, from each of these 6 objectives, the profile will randomly select whatever number of questions you enter in the "No. of questions" box for Cognitive Enabler.
oNote that the percentages for each objective type don't sum up to anything. You can set each to 100% if you like.
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Tip: Press the "Help" button for more on these fields.
