Introduction
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      1. Knowledge Base
      2. Making the Most of the Asset Manager
      3. Introduction

      Overview of the Asset Manager

      The TAO Asset Manager is the place to store all your materials – in other words, your assets - which are for use in test items (but not the finished items themselves).

      These materials can include anything from images and texts to larger media such as audio recordings or video clips. This area of TAO is intended for media which serve as support materials in your assessments.

      Note: The interactive parts of test items – those which ask the test-taker to do something (as opposed to just offering support material) - cannot exist outside of test items, and therefore they can only be saved in TAO as part of an item. These belong, therefore, in the Items library, not the Asset Manager.

      The structure of the Asset Manager

      The Asset Manager is organized like any other library in TAO. In other words, it is a folder that can contain sub-folders. It has the same buttons as in most other libraries (New class, Delete, Import, Export), as shown in the image below

      TAO Asset Manager

      As you navigate around the Asset Manager, a preview will automatically be shown of any asset you click on. If this is a picture or a text, it will appear on the right-hand side. If it’s a play-back resource (i.e. audio or video), a graphic will appear with a play button which you can click on.  

      The contents of these folders can be organized in any way that makes sense for your institution: according to media type, subject material, or even according to a user.

      There are two reasons to organize your assets well. Firstly, because media are often heavy in terms of size, you don’t want to store multiple copies of the same (or similar) ones. Secondly, an author may need, for example, an image of the continent of Asia, and there may already be one in your Asset Manager (which another author has stored there). If the Assets in your TAO instance are not well organized the second author may not find them, and therefore spend time searching for and uploading duplicate ones.