Custom review text for Random questions.

Intro

Another Quiz tweak blog, answering a question in the Adobe forums found under this ‘link‘.

None of my previous blogs about tweaking quiz slides (like Custom feedback) or using Random question slides (Do’s and Don’ts) could answer this question directly. But the workflow below did use some of the ideas of older blog posts, and addressing the limitations of random questions.

Goal: show a custom review message for random question slides. Follow this step-by-step workflow. Of course I used a shared action since it is a repetitive process. You’ll see a short example project.

Example project

Watch this quiz, either the embedded version (fixed resolution) or a rescalable version using this link. This short project has 3 random slides which will be selected from a question pool with 8 question slides. There is a score slide at the end, where you can click the Review button. There is no slide after the score slide, which means the Continue button has only the functionality to pause the score slide.



Problems to be solved

Three limitations/problems need to be addressed by the workaround:
  1. In the default Review design of Captivate the Review area is only used for questions which have not been answered.  The default messages which you can still define under  Quiz Preferences, Settings, button ‘Question Review messages’ do not appear anymore since the design with checkmarks has been introduced. You will need to create custom text messages.

  2. Although you can add custom objects to question pool slides, you cannot address those objects using an action.  It is possible to use an Advanced or Shared action for the On Enter event, but you cannot hide/show custom objects.

  3. A random question cannot have any triggered action in a Captivate project.

My first conclusion:  the custom text container cannot be in the question pool slides nor in the random question slide. It needs to be outside of them. But the message itself needs to be different for each quiz slide, somehow it needs to be attached to each question in the pool.

Workaround summary:

  • Text container will be a shape, timed for the rest of the project. It needs to be on a normal content slide immediately before the first random question slide. That ‘dummy’ slide can be very short (I used 0.1 secs) and even set to fade so that it will barely be visible to the learner. The shape will be the custom text container and it is outside of the question slides. This workflow has an extra advantage: it will be on top of the embedded objects of the quiz slides if you activate 'Place object on top' in its Timing Properties.


  • The shape is not filled with a text feedback message but with a user variable set up to show sufficient characters (I used 250). Text style and size of the shape are edited so that those characters can be displayed.

  • The value of the variable (feedback) is assigned with a Shared action On Enter for each quiz slide in the question pool(s). 

Step-by-step workflow

Step 1 (question pool): in scratch area

Use the scratch area for each quiz slide to add the feedback message.  By using copy/paste the text to fill in a parameter in the shared action. That is a lot more comfortable than having to type the (long) text in the small parameter field. Here is a screenshot of one pool question slide:

Step 2: import the Shared action

You can download the Shared action here:

https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/f63df322-5037-479a-42b8-86506a7f1b7e

Import this shared action to your project library. If you have already created a library to be used as external library in any project, add it to that library as well. I will explain the action functionality later. Importing this action in this early step,  results automatically in the creation of the user variable v_review which you’ll need in the next step.

Step 3: create dummy slide

Create a short slide immediately before the first random slide. On that slide you insert a shape (labeled Tx_Review). Time it for the rest of the project. in Timing Properties.

Go into Text Edit mode (F2 or double-click) and use the X button in the Character part to insert the user variable v_review. Be sure to increase the default duration. I used 250 characters which was sufficient for the feedback messages created under step 1. Here is a screenshot of that slide and its Timeline. You see the double arrow at the end of Tx_Review timeline, indicating it is timed for the rest of the project, and the very short duration.

Because you don’t want to show the text container Tx_Review from the start, use the On Enter event of this dummy slide to ‘Hide Tx_Review’.

Step 4: Shared action On Enter in Question pool

On each slide In the question pool add the Shared action (downloaded in step 2) to the On Enter slide event.  This is the preview of this action, with indication of the two parameters:

The functionality is self-explanatory. In the first decision 'Always' the variable v_review gets the feedback text (first parameter). Use copy/paste from the message in the scratch area (step 1) to define this parameter. The second parameter is always Tx_Review.  

Step 5: Hide Tx_Review

you don't need the text container, timed for the rest of the project, on the following score slide and/or content slides.You’ll need to hide Tx_Review similar to the dummy slide (step 3). In the example project that was done on the Score slide.

Step 6: testing!

Use only F11, Preview HTML in Browser, and preferably test in multiple browsers.