How to Configure Metadata

This section of the course walks you through the steps of configuring metadata for your test items.

Who can configure Metadata, and where?

Metadata is defined by TAO administrators for a particular class of items or tests. Content developers (item/test authors) working within that class will then be asked to provide certain information about the items they are creating. 

Configuring Metadata

Let’s presume you’ve already created a class (i.e. a folder) in which you wish to collect items for use in reading tests for Grade 3 students of French, for example. When you select this class in your item bank (the library on the left), you’ll see an option in the action bar called Manage schema.

This is where you declare the scheme of metadata that applies to that class. It’s something you will want to do right at the beginning - before your content developers start creating items.

When you click on Manage schema, a new screen Manage item class schema will open. You need to decide what information you want to capture for that class of item in general. You might want to classify the difficulty level of the items, for example, or which specific grade of a school curriculum it is suitable for. 

To add metadata information to this class of items you need to click on the button Add property, which is displayed at the bottom of the list of existing metadata for this class schema.

Types of Metadata

There are two main types of metadata used in TAO:

• Open-ended metadata
• Closed-ended (flat or hierarchical) metadata

Let’s have a look at them in the next courses.