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The task description should be divided into questions. Questions can also be divided into sub-questions. A question or sub-question must have one or more criteria that are the scoring rubrics used to evaluate that question. A task may also have a criteria. Graders use these criteria to evaluate student work Both questions and criteria are interspersed within the task description, placed where students see them when reviewing their graded bridge task.

Questions are created by using the Question tag. Each question must have a unique id attribute which identifies the question, the value of the id attribute is any text that is unique in the document. Each question must also have the Mandatory attribute which can be set to "Y" if the question is mandatory or "N" otherwise. Finally the question may also have a OptionalRequired attribute, which determines how many optional criteria students must pass to pass the question.

The question element will have the actual text of the question. The questions are created inside the QuestionText element. The question descriptions are placed inside the file by simply typing the text. The text can be marked up to have various formatting. The mark up language used is simple HTML.

Criteria are created using the Criteria tag. The attributes for the criteria tag are similar to the attributes for the questions tag. Criteria tags have id attributes as well as Mandatory attributes. Like for the question tag, the value of the id attribute is any text that is unique in the document, and the Mandatory attribute (values "Y" or "N") determines whether the criteria is mandatory or not. Criteria tags do not have OptionalRequired attributes. The criteria description is created inside the CriteriaText element and can be formatted the same way as the formatting of the questions (using HTML).

The following is an example of a question and criteria element. Question elements are placed inside the task element or inside other question elements. Text between < !-and - > are comments and should not be typed into the editor.

<!-- Beginning of question element with id q.testquestion. A mandatory question where the student must pass 1 optional question/criteria -->
<Question id='q.testquestion' Mandatory='Y' OptionalRequired='1'>
	<!--The text of the question -->
	<QuestionText>
		Some test explanation
			<!--A mandatory criteria with the id of 'criteria.overall.handin'. This criteria will not be shown to the student during the bridge task. It will be shown to the grader and on the student's feedback page -->
			<Criteria id='criteria.overall.handin' Mandatory='Y'>
				<!--The text of the criteria-->
				<CriteriaText>
			Criteria text 1
			<!--Grader Notes are not shown to the students at all -->
			<GraderNote> 
				This part cannot be seen by students but is used to give additional info to the grader to help evaluating the criteria.
					</GraderNote>
				</CriteriaText>
			</Criteria>
			<!--End of the criteria -->


			<!--An optional question named q.question1 -->
		<Question Mandatory='N' id='q.question1' OptionalRequired='0'>
				<QuestionText>
					The actual test question
					<!--A mandatory criteria -->
					<Criteria id='criteria.question1' Mandatory='Y'>
						<CriteriaText>
							Criteria text 2
						</CriteriaText>
			</Criteria>
				</QuestionText>
			</Question>
			<!--End of question q.question1-->

		
	<!--Some more question text -->
	Instructions to the student on submitting files
	</QuestionText>
</Question>
<!--End of question q.testquestion-->

The question that the students will see is:

"Some test explanation
The actual test question
Instructions to the student on submitting files
"

Any text inside a QuestionText element (lines 2, 14) and not inside a criteria element will be shown to the users. This example has one question, and one optional sub-question. The question element is given in line 1, the id of the question being 'q.testquestion', it is a mandatory question (Mandatory='Y') and it requires that 1 optional question/criteria be passed (OptionalRequired='1'). The sub-question is given in line 13, named 'q.question1', is not mandatory and has no optional questions or criteria that is required to be correctly answered.

The example above shows a code for the creation of criteria. There are 2 criteria in the above question (line 4 and 16). Each criteria has a name (criteria.question1 and criteria.overall.handin) which are both mandatory (the attribute Mandatory is set to 'Y'). The text of the criteria is given inside the CriteriaText element inside each CriteriaElement. The student will never see the criteria when the student is taking the test. The grader will see this on his/her screen:

"Criteria text 1. Grader Note: This part cannot be seen by the students but is used to give additional info to the grader to help evaluating the criteria.
Pass Fail
Comment:


Criteria text 2.
Pass Fail
Comment:


"

When the bridge task is graded the student will see both the questions and the criteria in his space. Anything inside the GraderNote element (line 7) is not shown to the student.

"Some test explanation
Criteria text 1
Pass
The actual test question
Criteria text 2.
Pass
Instructions to the student on submitting files
"