TAO

Despite the fact that our ever-so-smart devices are constantly around us and very much part of our lives, most educational systems are still based on traditional, slightly outdated methods, case in point: the paper test.

It's somewhat a natural evolution for the beloved and archaic methods to be replaced with ones that are more and more related to our smart devices and the answer might be provided by the new age E-learning and E-testing platforms.

TAO, short for Testing Assisté par Ordinateur (Computer Based Testing), is a comprehensive and revolutionary, assessment and testing platform that, with the help of our smartphones, tablets and computers, aims to reduce the overall costs of education and provide educators of all kind with a broad array of assessment flexibility.

Simply put, TAO allows you to create QTI and LTI standard-compliant tests and make them accessible through the Web, and deliver them to mobile devices.

Before we dive deeper into the subject, you should know that TAO has two main parts, as expected, a server and a client. In order to power the server, you will need to employ the services offered by technologies such as Apache, PHP or MySQL, while for the client, you will need any modern, JavaScript-compatible web browser.

This said, deploying TAO on your computer is not as difficult as you may assume. Thanks to a straightforward installer that, besides all else,  places two shortcuts (START TAO AND STOP TAO) on your computer's desktop, you should be able to get started with TAO in just a couple of minutes.

As mentioned before, you will need to use a web browser to access TAO's features. Once logged in using your official credentials, you are bound to discover a very neatly organized environment but not exactly what you would call novice-accessible, at least not without a small adjustment period.

The primary element that stands out within TAO's web-based interface is, of course, the top toolbar. From here, you can easily access all the main and self-explanatory sections like Items, Tests, Test-Takers, Groups, Deliveries, Results, as well as the Settings and Users sections.

Once you spend some time and get acquainted with all the features, you will find TAO to be a very well-rounded platform. For example, you can easily edit and preview items, create and schedule tests for online deliveries, generate reports and define user profiles, just to name a few.

TAO is an exciting and very powerful, cloud-based e-testing platform that, if implemented and used at its highest potential, can provide more interactive, more customizable and cheaper assessment and test delivery systems.

Better yet, TAO is not only free, but it is also open-source. This means that you can shape its functionality to a great extent in order to meet the educators and learners needs, regardless if you use it for simple multiple choice tests or other, more complex simulations. Even more so, you can enhance the platform with the help of plug-in and add-ons.

Lastly, you should also know that using TAO does not necessarily mean that you cannot use any of the other, popular learning management systems like Moodle and Sakai.