About The Guide
The TAO User Guide is designed to guide you through the processes involved in creating and delivering assessments in TAO. It provides information on the components you will need to deliver a Test, and will walk you through the whole process of delivering assessments in TAO, from creating your first item through to retrieving your results. This guide can be used to support our Core, Ignite, Pro and Enterprise editions of TAO. Please note that each edition follows a unique release cadence, where some features may become available at different times based on the release schedule.
The User Guide starts with an introductory section, answering the question “What is TAO?“, and inviting you to Take a Tour, which gives you an overview of how to prepare and organize your assessments using TAO. It also gives information on Customizing the “Look and Feel” of your TAO instance, including adding your own branding.
After the introduction, each section deals with a specific task you will need to carry out as part of working in TAO. These sections can be grouped together as follows:
- Setting up your TAO instance
- Developing tests and test materials
- Running tests
- Processing completed tests
The content of these sections is described below. In addition to these sections, the User Guide contains a section on the manual scoring environment which can be used with TAO (the TAO Grader), and an Appendix, which includes supplementary materials such as a Glossary of the terms used in TAO.
Setting up your TAO instance
There are two sections in the Guide which help you set up your TAO instance.
Installing TAO: In this section you will find information on the necessary prerequisites for installing TAO, as well as the installation instructions for different operating systems. See here for an overview of this section.
Managing TAO: Here you can find information on topics such as system administration, as well as how to manage users, roles and permissions. See here for an overview of this section.
Developing tests and test materials
There are three sections in the Guide which give information on developing tests and test materials.
Creating Test Materials: This section contains everything to do with test questions (items), from how they are created to what you can put in them. See here for an overview of this section.
Putting Tests Together: Here you can find information on assembling and configuring tests. See here for an overview of this section.
Managing your Resources: This section contains everything you need to know about managing your materials, such as storing, re-using, imprting and exporting items and tests, as well as supporting materials. See here for an overview of this section.
Running tests
There are three sections in the Guide which give information on running tests in TAO.
Preparing Test Sessions: How to get ready to deliver your tests, including converting them to the form needed and registering the people who are going to sit them – the test-takers. See here for an overview of this section.
Delivering Tests: How do you deliver your tests? This section includes information on test centers and proctoring, as well as the possibility of delivery tests using LTIs. See here for an overview of this section.
Taking Tests: This section looks at tests from a test-taker’s point of view, and contains information on the tools which are available. See here for an overview of this section.
Processing completed tests
There is one section in the Guide which gives information on what do when the test-takers have completed the test.
Processing Completed Tests: This section looks at both the scoring process, and what to do with the results. See here for an overview of this section.
The image below shows an example of a typical test item in TAO.
