The difference between a test and a delivery in TAO

Let's presume you have created a test called the Capitals of the World, which is designed to test test-takers' knowledge of the capitals of a selection of countries using multiple choice questions. You then generate a delivery from this test. The test and the delivery are, in essence, the same core entity, but they are different forms of that entity. A test is dynamic. It consists of a number of test questions put together and configured in a certain way. The questions, however, can be changed or deleted, or new ones added. The configuration may be altered – for example you may decide to enable the answer eliminator for the test, so that test-takers can eliminate choices as they go along.

The delivery you have generated, on the other hand, is a static entity; it is a published version of the test. It is probably best to consider it to be a frozen version of the test. As such, it is immutable. There are several ways of generating a delivery (or publishing a test – this is the same thing). These are described in the next chapter. When you generate a delivery from a test, the delivery exists from this point on as an immutable version of the test.

This course is about deliveries, not tests – in other words, about the frozen entities you can generate from your tests.