QML (Questions Markup Language) is an XML language for describing learning assessment items (questions). It was originally developed for the Connexions project. It is designed to be lightweight and flexible. Documentation on QML is available at http://cnx.rice.edu/qml/intro/qml.xml.

It provides support for the following four types of items:

Yes. You can specify multiple hints for each question. For single-choice, multiple-choice, and ordered-response questions, you can provide response-specific feedback for each response option, as well as general feedback. For text-response items, you can provide feedback for a correct answer and for an incorrect answer.

Yes. QML allows you to specify the location of as many resources (i.e. datasets, programs) as you wish for each item.

Display is up to you; QML only provides the ability to describe the items. However, QML does allow you to embed markup within the text of the question, responses, feedback, and hints. This allows you to display pictures instead of text, for example.

Response processing is up to you. If you are not concerned about the user seeing the answer, response processing for single-response and multiple-response questions can be done fairly simply, by using a stylesheet, for example. If you wish to prevent the user from seeing the answers, you must use software which strips out the feedback and keys to the items before presenting the items to the user. If you wish to process responses to text-response or ordered-response questions, you will need software which can parse text-response questions and keep track of the order in which the ordered-response options are selected.

Limited display and response-processing capability is available through XSL and CSS stylesheets and JavaScript created for the Connexions project. For more information, contact assess@cnx.rice.edu.