ActivEngine was originally developed for BBC Languages as the ‘Profiling Tool’ - a tool allowing learners to have their abilities in various aspects of foreign languages assessed.  It has evolved greatly since this initial delivery.

The ActivEngine is a configurable, extensible Flash-based quiz/game tool that allows editors to set up simple games and quizzes with no bespoke Flash development required. A range of ‘off-the-shelf’ activities are available such as:

•    multiple choice
•    match pairs
•    fill in the blank
•    drag and drop, etc.

ActivEngine is effectively made up of two areas - the shell (the Engine part), and the activities (the activ part) placed within the shell.

The shell is the master Flash application that pulls in each of the ActivEngine activities chosen by the editors by configuring XML files, stores the user’s progress, scores and feedback.

The Activities are the heart of ActivEngine and are where users can interact with the games and quizzes embedded within the shell. Currently we have 12 ‘off-the-shelf’ activities and are planning to extend this with new activities from the ActivEngine team.

ActivEngine has been developed using ActionScript 3, and makes use of its object-oriented features along with implementation of the MVC pattern to ensure good interoperability and interchangeability between newly-developed parts.  For example, the activity progress bar is defined as a View-Controller pair, so a different progress bar can be included without any rewriting of the shell application, as long as the progress bar conforms to the progress bar interface.

This framework means that given the necessary interface definitions, any developer can write a new activity, progress bar, or even an entirely new skin for the application by creating a conforming SWF and referring to it in the quiz’s XML configurtation.

Aerian Studios are immensely proud to be at the forefront of this project, we are constantly trying to push the boundaries of the web and create award winning software and we feel this is a perfect piece to demonstrate that.