PIE Framework
Open Source Assessment Items
A modern, open-source framework for assessment item rendering that combines the interactive richness of commercial platforms with the flexibility of open standards. Built on Web Components and distributed as framework-agnostic custom elements.
Today's assessments demand interactive question types — graphing, drag-and-drop, mathematical expression input — delivered accessibly through browsers to millions of students. Organizations building assessment platforms face a difficult choice.
The Challenge
Commercial Platforms
Comprehensive solutions but with significant per-student licensing costs and limited customization.
Standards Alone (QTI)
Content interoperability for exchange, but no rendering guarantee across platforms, no authoring interface, and visual fidelity challenges especially for technology-enhanced items.
Build from Scratch
Complete control but years of development to cover the range of content types with production quality and accessibility.
The PIE Solution
Open Source & Free
ISC/MIT licensed. Zero per-student costs. Full source code access and modification rights.
Modern & Interactive
20+ production-ready question types with WYSIWYG authoring, layered players, and a composable assessment toolkit.
Enterprise Proven
PIE powers assessment delivery at enterprise scale, serving hundreds of millions of student interactions annually across approximately 40% of U.S. schools.
What PIE Provides
Everything you need to build, deliver, and scale interactive assessments
Secure by Design
MVVM security model with controllers as security gateways. Server-side scoring for high-stakes assessments keeps answer keys out of the browser.
20+ Question Types
Multiple choice, graphing, math input, drag-and-drop, constructed response, and more. Each with delivery UI, authoring interface, and controllers.
Layered Players
Four-level player hierarchy: item players render questions, section players compose pages with tools, assessment players orchestrate navigation. Use only the layers you need.
Core Architecture
PIE focuses exclusively on what appears in the browser. You bring your own backend — your CMS, item bank, authentication, and infrastructure.
PIE Provides
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20+ Production-Ready Question Types
Multiple choice, graphing, drag-and-drop, constructed response, and more
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WYSIWYG Authoring Interfaces
Educators create content without code using visual editors with live preview
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Layered Player Hierarchy
Item players render questions, section players compose pages with passages and tools, assessment players orchestrate multi-section navigation
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Assessment Toolkit
Calculator, text-to-speech, accommodations, and more — coordinated through a centralized ToolkitCoordinator
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QTI-Inspired Models
Sections and assessments use QTI 3.0-inspired structures, making content naturally mappable to QTI
You Provide
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Item Storage & Retrieval
Your CMS, item bank, or content repository
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Authentication & Authorization
User management, permissions, session handling
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Reporting & Analytics
Score reports, analytics, learning insights
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Infrastructure & Hosting
Your servers, databases, deployment pipeline
This separation means PIE integrates with any backend technology. Your authoring CMS and production delivery system can be unified or separate — PIE works because it speaks JSON and emits standard events.
PIE Elements: The Question Type Framework
Reusable, interactive question components spanning simple to highly complex interactions. Every element includes delivery UI, authoring interface, and controllers. Print and list view interfaces are in progress.
Simple Response
- • Multiple Choice
- • Text Entry
- • Extended Text
- • Inline Choice
- • Math Inline
Matching & Categorization
- • Match
- • Match List
- • Categorize
- • Placement Ordering
- • Drag in the Blank
Visual & Graphical
- • Hotspot
- • Image Cloze
- • Drawing Response
- • Graphing
- • Number Line
Support Elements
- • Passage
- • Rubric
- • Image
- • Math Templated
QTI Interoperability
PIE-QTI, a sibling project, provides production-ready QTI players and bidirectional transforms with a version-agnostic architecture supporting both QTI 2.x and QTI 3.0.
- Version-Agnostic Architecture — Auto-detects QTI version from XML and maps both QTI 2.x (camelCase) and QTI 3.0 (kebab-case with
qti-prefix) to a shared canonical model - QTI Item & Assessment Players — 21 interaction types and 45+ response processing operators with full scoring support
- Bidirectional Transforms — Plugin-based engine with CLI and web app for converting between QTI and PIE formats
- QTI 3.0 Influence on PIE — Personal Needs Profiles, accessibility catalogs, and context declarations directly inspired PIE's toolkit architecture
PIE-QTI
Production-ready QTI players and transforms supporting QTI 2.x and 3.0 with auto-detection and shared response processing.
Trusted Partners
PIE is sponsored and developed in collaboration with leading organizations in educational technology.
PIE's primary sponsor and largest production user, serving approximately 40% of U.S. schools.
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Implementation partner since 2017. MCRO has been instrumental in developing PIE from concept to production-ready framework.
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