Questionsto

Questionsto is a hypothetical concept used in discussions about annotating text with structured questions to support learning, evaluation, and interactive QA systems. It envisions a standardized notation or data model for marking questions inside prose, worksheets, or digital content so that software can locate, render, and answer them efficiently.

Core ideas include metadata fields for each question (topic, difficulty, answer type, source location), relationships between questions and text passages, and links to answers, explanations, or related questions. The idea is to enable scalable tracking of comprehension and to support automatic generation of quizzes, tutoring sessions, and research datasets. Proponents view questionsto as a way to improve interoperability between educational tools and to streamline the creation of evaluation material.

Implementation considerations often discussed include probable serialization options (such as JSON or graph-based representations), a minimal viable schema for basic use, and optional extensions for multimedia sources. The concept is not standardized and has appeared mainly in speculative or experimental contexts rather than as official guidance. As such, there is no formal body governing questionsto, and existing proposals vary in scope and detail.

Example: A sentence like “The process of photosynthesis produces glucose and oxygen.” could be annotated with a Questionsto entry such as: id Q1, topic biology, difficulty easy, type short-answer, text_location paragraph 1, answer “glucose and oxygen,” explanation “products of photosynthesis.”

Potential benefits include improved traceability for QA systems, better data for assessing understanding, and easier content reuse. Criticisms note that creating and maintaining such annotations can be burdensome, may intrude on content readability, and requires consensus on a schema to be interoperable.