Intro

This blog post is meant as an answer to a question on the Adobe forum; You can see the full thread under this link.

You'll see that the title is different 'Is it possible to highlight the correct answer option?' The situation:

• It is about Multiple Choice questions with one correct answer. Problem with a MCQ with multiple correct answers is that Captivate considers the answer to be correct even if it is partially correct. Hence that limitation.
• Question has 3 attempts.
• If the learner fails all attempts, the OP wants the correct answer to be highlighted.

Why did I choose a different title here? I proposed the possibility to have 3 different Failure messages (officially labeled as captions, although by default CP uses shapes) as an alternative needing less work.

As usual I create an short project (output see below) to test. In the test I included both possibilities: using a different failure message for each attempt, and highlighting the correct answer after the last attempt if it was a failure again.

Example project

This project has only two MCQ slides, with one correct answer. You'll be able to see the three failure messages, different for e

ach attempt. The arrangement the messages is not the same for both slides. When the second step (click on slide or Y) is done the correct answer will be highlighted. It is a non-responsive project. Review is possible although the learner got already immediate feedback:

Step-by-step

Workflow: use 3 Failure messages

1. Set up the Quiz Properties like this; this setup doesn't include the appearance of a highlight (see below in the second part). In that case the Last Attempt needs an advanced or a shared action instead of 'Continue'. As usual I dragged the pausing point on each quiz slide from the default 1.5 secs closer to the end of the sldie.

2. 
   Due to the choice for 3 failure messages (which is the maximum), two extra failure messages will have been added on the slide. It is not a fixed location, depends on the theme. The two extra messages (2 and 3) will often be stacked.  This means you need to move the top one (3) to see message 2. To detect the message number, hover over the message. In this screenshot I hovered over the second message, after dragging the third one down because it was covering the second:

   
3. Edit the messages and rearrange them, you can stack them again (as I did on the second question) or mirror the set up of the first quiz slide:
   

   

Workflow: highlighting

1. Create the highlight shape over the correct answer. Remember: all custom shapes are stacked below the embedded quiz objects. To make it visible you have to make sure that the 'answer area' is at least partially transparent:
   

   
   In this case the answer area had a fill color, but at 60% alpha. The yellow shape behind it will blend, you'll have to look for a proper color combination.
   
   
2. A consequence of the stacking of the highlight shape under the answer area: it is difficult to select that highlight area on the stage. Make sure to open the Timeline where selection is easier. You need to select the highlight an set it to invisible in output in its Properties panel:
   
   

   
   
   
3. You need to create an advanced or shared action, to be triggered by the Last Attempt event of the question slide (Quiz Properties). This is the advanced action,  the marked items will be parameters if you convert to a shared action (recommended). Of course you can choose another Entrance effect (I used FadedZoomIn):
   
   

   
   
   
4. For the shared action, which I recommend since you may want to reuse this action on multiple slides in this project and later projects, I indicated the parameters in the screenshot of the advanced action, and here is the parameter description. The highlight box will not always be in the same location, hence that parameter. It is not possible to have the highlight appear at the same time as the third failure message. That message appears with the first step of the Submit process, whereas the action to show the highlight is triggered by the Last Attempt action, which is with the second step of that process.
   
   

   

Q&A

You may have more questions, but I expect these to pop up. 

1. Can this also be done in a Fluid Boxes (responsive project in Captivate Classic)?
1. Yes, you can also have up to 3 Failure messages. The two extra messages will probably be inserted outside of the static fluid box which has all the other messages. I recommend to rearrange after editing, and have them all stacked in that fluid box.
   
2. The highlight is not possible because you cannot stack a shape in the same location as an individual answer, and those answers are embedded objects which means that they have no ID and cannot have states which could be used to change the color of the correct answer.
   
   
2. Can this workflow be done in New Captivate (12.2)?
   Not at this moment for several reasons:
1. There is no possibility to choose more than 1 failure message. That message is a state in a multistate object, to which you can not add custom states. But even if that possibility existed, you cannot address the multistate object since it has no ID.
2. You cannot add a highlight shape to the correct answer. You cannot add states to the individual answers, and even if that was possible, same problem arises: that multistate object would not have an ID, so you cannot change its state.
   
   

Why?

Recently a user posted a request on the Adobe forums, asking for a Multiple Choice question to be used as Knowledge Check, but with possibility of multiple combinations of answers to be correct. Here is the link:

MCQ with more than one correct answer

Example project

I used some slides from the QSP Alliance to create quickly this example project.  It has 3 MCQ slides which are using the same shared actions. For the answers I used placeholder text, so that you can recognize the 'correct' and 'wrong' answers. All questions have 6 possible answers but the workflow is not limited to that specific number of answers. The total number of correct and wrong answers is different on each slide, workflow is flexible enough to cope with those differences. Answer is considered to be correct when no wrong answers are selected and at least one correct answer is chosen. But multiple correct answers are allowed as well. It would be very easy to add scores to the MCQ slides. At this moment they are set up as Knowledge Check slides, with Infinite attempts. You cannot proceed to the next question before having posted a correct answer.

You can watch this project using this link for a scalable version, or the fixed resolution embedded version below:

Workflow Setup

Slide setup/Multistate objects

Have a look at this Timeline screenshot of the most important objects on the MCQ slides:

From bottom to top you see 

• The 6 shapes (black) which are used as shape buttons, who will trigger either a CorrectAct or a WrongAct shared action. Their names start with SB. They have an extra custom state 'Checked' to indicate when they are chosen:
  

  
• The Submit button. Each slide has its Submit button. A custom 'Retry' was added to replace the Normal state for later attempts than the first attempt. The option 'Retain State on Slide Revisit remained unchecked.
  

  
• A multistate shape SS_Message which has an empty Normal state, two custom states (see screenshot). This object is timed for the rest of the project (and hidden on the End slide with its On Enter action). The option 'Retain State on Slide Revisit remained unchecked.
  

  
• The Next button SB_Next which is also timed for the rest of the project (and hidden on the End slide with its On Enter action).

Variables and events

8 user variables are used:

• Six tracking variables of the Boolean type, labeled v_1, v_2.....v_6 - one for each possible answer. Their default value is 0, will be toggled to 1 when that answer is chosen. 
• Two counter variables v_correct and v_wrong which will track the Correct and Wrong answers which are checked.

The used events are:

• Enter slide event for each MCQ slide, for a reset action 'EnterAct'. 
• Success event of the answer shape buttons SB_x to trigger either the 'CorrectAct' or the 'WrongAct', which are both shared actions.
• Success event of the Submit buttons to trigger a specific advanced action 'SubmitActx'.
• Enter slide event of the End slide to hide the messages shape SS_Message and the Next button. That Next button kept the default action 'Go to Next Slide'.

Actions

EnterAct

This Reset advanced action is triggered On Enter for each MCQ slide, it is self-explanatory. I used an advanced action in this case, based on a shared action CreateVars, which I use all the time to create a bunch of variables. 

CorrectAct (shared action)

This shared action is triggered by the Success events of the answer shape buttons which have the correct answers. Only two parameters are needed: the button itself and its tracking variable. As you may have read in my Tips about Parameters using numbers in the names makes the assignment of the parameters a lot easier:

WrongAct (shared action)

Similar to the previous action, using the same two parameters:

As you may know both shared actions appear in the project Library, easy to check with Usage if they have been assigned correctly:

SubmitActx

Due to the change state needed for this button, there is an individual advanced action for each Submit button:

EnterEnd

A very simple advanced action for the On Enter slide event of the last slide, to hide the Next button and the multistate Message shape, both were set till the end of the project.

Why?

This is an basic article because often questions about this specific feature appear on the social media. This week I had another one in this thread. The question was specific for Multiple Choice questions with multiple correct answers. It is a very basic post, not meant for advanced Quizzing users.

Terminology

Penalty

A penalty is a negative score linked to a question (or an individual answer for a MCQ, see below). It is essentially meant to avoid ‘guessing’.  Think about a T/F question where a learner always has 50% chance to choose the correct answer, without proving real understanding. In Captivate you can add a Penalty for each type of question in the Quiz Properties panel. You add it as a ‘positive’ number.  See this screenshot:

The Penalty will appear in the Advanced Interaction panel, column Negative points:

You can have a hands on experience with penalty, when playing with this short quiz (more explanation later on), has only MCQ type of question. The previous screenshot of the Advanced Interaction panel was for this example file. Either you watch this embedded version (fixed resolution) or you use this link to open a scalable version:

For this example I have used design elements from the most recent Quick Start Project ‘Business’.

Partial Scoring

For all other types of questions a learner gets the score  for a question only when everything is correct.  That can be very frustrating for learners if they just missed something.  That is certainly the case for a MCQ with multiple correct answers, but also for a Fill-in-the-Blank with multiple blanks, or a hotspots question with multiple hotspots. However those other types have no inbuilt  partial scoring.

MCQ with Multiple Correct Answers

To set up partial scores, you need to activate the option ‘Partial score’ and in this case the option ‘Multiple answers’ is of course also needed. If you do not specify the exact score for each answer, both score and eventually penalty will be equally distributed. But it is much better to identify the score and penalty, because each answer can have a different weight: some are more easy to detect than others. 

For that reason you need to:

• select each answer
• open its Properties panel
• go to the Options tab
• enter the ‘points’
• for wrong answers you enter ‘negative’ points,

After entering individual score/penalty the score and the penalty on the Quiz Properties will look ‘dimmed’, but they are calculated as sums from the individual positive and negative scores of the answers. I prefer the expert UI because I can have both Properties and Quiz Properties next to each other, or at least both visible at the same time. Here an example for one correct answer, 6 points out of the total score of 15 points, because the two other correct answers have a score of 5 and 4points:

In this screenshot you see the ‘penalty’ or negative score for one of the wrong answers:

This wrong answer has a score of -4p, whereas the second wrong answer is estimated at -3p, which leads to a total penalty of 7points.

MCQ with One Correct Answer

It may be less logical for a MCQ with ONE correct answer, isn’t it?  However the term ‘partial score’ is also valid for ‘partial penalty’ as you could see above.  You may have several wrong answers, and some may considered to need a bigger penalty than other wrong answers. This means really differentiating the penalty which is available for MCQ with one correct answer. The first question slide in the example file was set up that way. The correct answer was rewarded with 10 points, the wrong answers had 3 different penalty scores. Here is an example:

Something is wrong with the ‘total’ penalty in the Quizzing Properties however.  It has been calculated as explained above: sum of all the negative scores. But in this case, the learner can only  mark one of the wrong answers, that penalty of 10 points can never exist.

Possible Issues

LMS reporting

Attempts on Question level

The reason for the example file was the thread I mentioned in the introduction. In the example file, the Quiz attempts are set to Infinite, but the attempts on question level are limited to:

• Two attempts for the Single Choice question
• Three attempts for the Multiple Choice questions

The second and third question are identical, but the second has no partial scoring, the third has partial scoring turned on.  Captivate will see a question with a partially correct answer as a ‘correct’ question, and include it in the system variable cpQuizInfoTotalCorrectAnswers. That has also its consequence for the attempts. If you give only one correct answer, the attempts will be considered to be exhausted, you’ll not have the possibility to add correct answers. Try it out: you will see that you can use the 3 attempts always on the second question (as long as you don’t have all the correct answers), but not on the third question. That is a problem!