Quiz Basics 4: Preferences

Intro

In previous articles I talked about these topics:

Differences between Knowledge Check slides and Quiz slides are fully explored in this article.

This part has its focus on the Quiz Preferences. some of them have to be set up preferably before inserting any quiz slide, or creating a question pool. The same is the case for editing the design of the quizzing master slides which will be the topic of the 5th post in the series. Up till now the described content was valid for  non-responsive projects, responsive projects with Fluid Boxes and responsive projects with Breakpoints. That will also be the case for the Preferences. Sorry for this very lengthy article, sometimes bit boring but I didn't find an in-depth explanation anywhere else.

Preferences to set up BEFORE inserting quiz slides

It is also important to set up the design of quiz slides in the master slides before inserting questions, but in case you want to edit later on, it is possible. However this part of the Preferences needs to be done imperatively before inserting quiz slides. It concerns the default messages to appear, the labels on buttons etc. Too bad, not everything can be found in the same location in Preferences. And the amount of items to be edited can be different depending on the type of ‘quiz’ slides. Will try to structure everything as completely as possible for each type.

Default labels

This is the most intuitive location in Quiz Preferences.  The number of fields showing up can be different. This is a screenshot of the dialog box for normal quiz slides:

The first part of the dialog box shows the text for all the messages. I changed the text for the Correct and Incorrect Message. That change will NOT show up in the Master slides! That is the reason I insist on making those changes before inserting quiz slides. Resetting the Master slide cannot be used on existing quiz slides to revert to the changed labels.  Since I have to create courses i multiple languages, I have exported Preferences with those edited labels for each language.

Very confusing IMO is the indication of the Style used for the messages. Look at the Correct message, which tells that the ‘Default Success Caption Style would be used for that message. That is NOT true in the default setup of Captivate, the default style used will be the Default Success Shape Style.  Look at the Properties panel, I had the Success message selected on this slide. Reason is that in Preferences, Defaults normally the option to use Captions instead of Shapes for SFH is unchecked. However, this also means that you cannot switch to another shape style in the dialog box shown above. You have to switch to the Object Style Manager if you don’t like the used style for this message. You can find more details about the OSM in previous blog posts.

Second part of the dialog box shows the labels on the buttons of the quiz slides. You may already know that only the old type of buttons can be used (Text, Image or Transparent), not Shape buttons. For those buttons the label has to be entered in the Properties panel, not on the stage by double-clicking the button as is the case for shape buttons. Change the labels here in the Defaults to avoid having to do it on each quizzing slide. Change will not be transferred to the quizzing master slide neither.  Alternative could be to change labels on all the quizzing master slides.  Contrary to the messages, you can use the dropdown lists for the button styles to change the style if wanted.

The progress indicator is also in the dialog box (was on my pleading for translation reasons). It is a weird object, neither caption nor shape, just text. You can edit the style in the Object Style manager however, under Quizzing Objects.

Defaults under Settings

Quiz Results messages

Under Quiz Preferences, Settings more default messages can be found. Let us start with the Quiz Result messages, which will appear in the so-called ‘Review Area’ on the score slide:

In that dialog box you can edit the Pass and Failure messages (which do not appear on the Results master slide!) and eventually indicate which fields you want to show (but that can be done later). The legacy indicator for an email button is not valid anymore since many versions.

Question  Review messages

Under settings you also find the button for the Quiz Review messages which only is activated when Review is allowed.  Except for the Incomplete message, most of the messages will only be used for disabled learners. Since quite a lot of versions no text message appears for other learners, only checkmarks.

The Incomplete message will appear in the Review area (same name as on the score slide)? If you don’t need the Accessibility messages and do force the user to answer each question (see later), it is perfectly possible to make that review area placeholder much smaller on the quizzing master slides. However do not do that for the Review area on  the results master slide, it is needed for the Pass/Fail messages mentioned before.


Submit All

When you activate Submit All functionality, this button gets activated. The label on the Submit All button which replaces the normal Submit button, has been set already under Defaults in Quiz Preferences? But the popup dialog box that appears when that button is clicked has several defaults as well, which appear in this dialog box (I jsut corected Ok to OK).

You’ll see that contrary to the other Defaults, there is no way to set styles here at all . This default dialog popup box will take on the style of the theme. If you dont like that style, go into the Object Style Manager, and find the style ‘Runtime Dialog’. It is listed independently from Standard Objects and Quizzing objects, since it can occur for both normal slides and quizzing slides.

All dialog boxes shown in this part are valid for quiz slides, pool questions and KC slides. They are the same for responsive and non-responsive projects. Screenshots were taken in a responsive project with fluid boxes.

More Preferences

The other preferences can be set up whenever you want although I would personally prefer to activate the Submit All if you want that feature, since it has consequences for the default settings for that option. Similar for the Review functionality if you need the Incomplete message.

Reporting

I will not go into details for all the settings here because it would be almost impossible since a lot has to be tested out with the LMS you are using in your courses. If that LMS accepts only packaging using Reporting (SCO’s) you need to activate Reporting. Only a few LMS’s have a dedicated setting in the LMS dropdown list. Choose the protocol to be used, in many cases that will be SCORM 1.2, AICC is really outdated, and not every LMS supports the more powerful SCORM 2004.

Just a few tips about the marked parts in this screenshot:

Template:  is the SCORM template to be used. With the default template the reporting data are sent after each slide, you can choose to send it only at the end if the course proves to be very slow and many users are taking it on the same network. However that means that when the connection is interrupted, the learner will have to retake the quiz slides.

Slide Views: be careful with using this instead or together with Quiz requirement. I often see problems when clients use a requirement of 100% of slide views.  If you need to use that requirement, set the percentage bit lower at least. Much better is to use at least one scored object at the end slide, that needs to be clicked by the learner and which you can use for a score requirement.

Data to Report: in general most LMS’s prefer percentages, not points. Especially for SCORM 1.2 if the total score is higher than 100points.

Never Send Resume Data: under the Advanced button.  That (negative) option is unchecked by default, which means that bookmarking is turned on. On a second session learner can return to the slide where he left in a previous session. If you check that option, learner will always be returned to the first slide. Setting up the alternative, bookmarking by the TOC (Self-paced learning) makes no sense when using  a LMS.

Other Settings

In a previous article about Embedded objects some of the Settings about activating/deactivating buttons was already indicated Above I already mentioned several options under Quiz Preferences, Settings. In this new screenshot I marked some other choices:µ

Required: in almost all cases it is recommended to keep the default choice which is Optional. If you prefer one of the other choices it can lead to problems, where learners get stuck. There are better ways to achieve ‘Answer all’ or ‘Learner must take the quiz’. Set up the navigation in such a way that the learner cannot skip the quiz (do not use totally free navigation with the scrubbing bar in the playbar, or with the TOC). Once the learner is on the first question, with the default button setup he can only continue when he has answered the question. If you use remediation (go to content slide) you cannot use the more strict options neither.

Interaction ID Prefix: necessary when using same question pool in more courses to be reported to the same LMS.

Review mode navigation buttons: has to be activated if you allow Review (bit lower). If you forget those buttons, learner will be stuck on the first question slide during Review, unless you provide another navigation possibility.

Branch aware: may I point to a recent article where I explore in-depth this functionality which makes the quizzing system variables dynamic?

Show Progress: either Relative (Question x of y), or Absolute (Question x) allows to turn on/off the Progress indicator.

Allow Backward movement: it may seem strange that I allow this, whereas the Back button is unchecked on quiz slides (and playbar is hidden? Reason: if you want remediation, where the learner is sent to a content slide after failing a question, it should be possible to do so if that content slide is before the quiz.

Hide Playbar in Quiz: unless you have “Submit all” activated, you should hide the playbar at least on quizzes (if you have one in the course). Reason: it makes no sense because when going back to a previous quiz slide or content slide by playbar the learner will not be able to change the answer at all which makes it a frustrating experience.

Pass or Fail

Herre a screenshot of that easy dialog box (easy compared with the more complicated previous ones):

The passing score (cpQuizInfoQuizPassPercent or cpQuizInfoQuizPassPoints) can be set. In some cases it will prove necessary to  check if same is used in the Manifest file. Again: prefer percentage to score.

If you have more than one attempt on Quiz level, you should activate the Retake button. It will appear on the socre slide as mentioned in the previous Quizzing post. In that post I also explained that the actions on Passing and Failing (after last attempt) only occur after reaching the last frame of the score slide.

More?

This was a pretty boring article, hope you found some interesting documentation.

I didn’t yet talk about Pretest quizzes here, nor about the quiz slides in a VR project or 360 slides, nor about the KC slides in an interactive video. Articles are already pretty long.  Will be in a later post.

Quizzing master slides have been mentioned several times. There is already one article about their setup for Fluid Boxes.

And some of you will be looking forward to possible ‘tweaks’? I have been creating so many cheating workflows, expect more in the future.

Quiz Basics 2: Submit Process

Embedded objects

In a first article about Quizzes I introduced some terminology and one of those terms is ‘Embedded Objects’: those objects on the quizzing slides and master slides which have no individual timeline, but have functionality built in. Some of those objects can be turned off, using either Quiz Preferences (for global settings) or Quiz Properties for individual slides. Here is an overview of those objects (for quiz master slide MCQ,T/F….), from top to bottom, using the numbering in this screenshot:

  1. Question title: cannot be deactivated. You can edit that title on the quiz slides, do not delete it.
  2. Question: same, change the style if wanted but never delete.
  3. Answer area: compulsory as well. If you expect long and/or many answers, I recommend to make this area as big as possible on the master slide. If you want custom objects on the quiz slide (like an image), free some space by editing the size of this area. For a Fluid boxes quiz slide, you’ll need to add a fluid box for that purpose. More information in Fluidize your quizzes.
    This area is the container for:
  4. Answers: it is not possible to resize the individual answer size on the master slide, only on the quiz slides. Of course you need this object.
  5. Feedback messages: are stacked in the same location (also in fluid boxes, by using a static fluid box). In the screenshot the Review area is also stacked in the same location. It has almost no meaning anymore since it is only used for skipped questions.
    Quiz Preferences offers no way to activate/deactivate the messages, that has to be done with Quiz Properties for the quiz slides.

    1. Correct message: is checked by default for a normal quiz slide
    2. Incomplete message: is checked by default for a normal quiz slide
    3. Failure message: normally set to 1, with the dropdown list you can choose ‘None’. If you have more than 1 attempt on quiz level, you can add up to  failure messages with that same list.
    4. Retry message: becomes available when the number of attempts is greater than  However if you have more than 1 Failure message it will be dimmed.
    5. Partially correct message will appear instead of the Correct message when Partial scores is turned on and the question is not answered fully correct.
  6. Review Mode Navigation Buttons: if you allow Review (Quiz Preferences), it is wise to activate these buttons in the Quiz Preferences. They will only appear during Review, and make navigation possible since quiz slides normally do not have a Next button (and I also recommend no Back button) except when “Submit All” is turned on (will post a future article about Quiz Preferences). Here is a partial view of Settings in Quiz Preferences:

7. Clear button:  can be turned on/off both globally (see the screenshot above from Quiz Preferences, Settings). In the default setting it is turned off. It is possible also to turn on/off on individual quiz slides using th Quiz Properties (see screenshot top right).

8. Back button:  is a bit confusing. You can turn off ‘Allow Backward movement’ in the Quiz Preferences, which will automatically result in having the Back button disappear on quiz slides. However, when using remediation, where you want to send the learner back to a content slide, you have to turn this option on. Having a Back button on a questions slide is not a good idea, since answers are frozen once the question slide is left. Learners cannot re-enter an answer. One exception: when Submit All is turned on (see future article). Even when ‘Allow Backward movement’ is turned on, you can still check off theBack button on all quiz slides with Quiz Preferences, Settings. You can also do it individually using the Quiz Properties for the question slide.

9. Skip button; is turned off by default, can be turned on both globally and for individual quiz slides.

10. SUBMIT button: is the most important object on this slide. There is no way to turn it off, not globally nor individually. It is that button which is responsible fir the two-step Submit process. Remember: quiz slides have a pausing point by default which cannot be turned off (you can move it only with the mouse).

Two-step Submit Process

When the learner clicks the Submit button:

Step 1

Feedback message appears, playhead is not released but remains paused at the pausing point. If you have added slide audio to the question slide and it is not finished, it will continue playing. The pausing point will not stop the audio. Four possible situation in this first step:

  1. There is no answer or answer is not complete: Incomplete message appears.
  2. The answers were totally or partially correct. The feedback message Correct (or Partially correct) appears.
  3. The answers were not correct (partially correct is considered as correct).
    1. If there is only one Failure message and one attempt Failure message appears
    2. If there are multiple attempts which are not exhausted,  and one failure message: Retry message appears
    3. If there are multiple attempts, not exhausted, and multiple failure message: the appropriate failure message appears. Make sure to indicate that they can retry except for the last failure message.

All messages, except the Retry message and the intermediate failure messages (not the last one) should indicate how to trigger the second step. For all types of quiz slides, except the overlay quiz slides in a VR project, that will be ‘click the slide or press Y’.

The goal of this first step is to offer the learner as much time as necessary to read the feedback messages. Some developers don’t like the present workflow, will post some possible tweaks in a future post. Personally I hope that the new workflow for the overlay quiz slides in VR projects, which is more user friendly, will be extended to the other types of quiz slides.

When the user clicks the slide or presses Y:

Step 2

With this step the playhead will be released, same way as what happens with an action when the option ‘Continue Playing the Project’ is activated. It can only happen in two cases: for a correct answer, or for a Last attempt answer.

  • Correct answer: the action ‘On Success’ specified in the Quiz Properties panel will be done. Beware: default action is set to ‘Continue’.  It means that the released playhead has to travel through the inactive part of the slide (the part after the pausing point).  It it is only the default 1.5secs, that may be OK. However if you added slide audio, and forgot to move the pausing point closer to the end of the slide, that may be a long waiting time for the learner. Alternative could be to replace the action ‘Continue’ by ‘Go to Next slide’. In most cases that works fine, some users could have issues in case of low bandwidth and slow reactions of the LMS due to hardware problems. I had that problem in college when too many students were taking the same assessment, due to outdated switches.
  • Wrong, last attempt: the action ‘Last Attempt’ will be done. Same comments as for the Correct answer concerning the pausing point and audio. Look at the screenshot below: due to the audio clip, if you leave the action to the default command ‘Continue’, the learner will have to wait 4 seconds before getting to the next slide. Better drag the pausing point to almost the end, at 4 seconds. You cannot use the Timing properties panel to do so.

Retake (quiz) Tweaks

Intro

In the recent weeks a lot of questions about tweaking Quizzes appeared. 

Themes, Timelines and Shared actions are amongst my favourite topics, and I needed a long sample project, for this blog about combining two tweaks for Retake Quiz:

  1. The quiz slides are not all in sequence, but distributed in the project in between content slides. How can the learner see only the quiz slides during Retake, not the content slides which are in between the quiz slides?
  2. On the score slide on failure, how to offer the learner the choice between Retaking only the quiz, or retake the full course including all content slides?

Sample Project

This project has 3 sequences of quiz slides in between content slides. Question slides have one attempt, on Quiz level you have 6 attempts. On the score slide you have the possibility to Retake quiz, or to choose to retake the course. When passed or after the last attempt on quiz level, you have the Review functionality, using the customized Review message described in an other article Customized Review Message.

In this example project design elements (not interactions) from the Quick Start Project “Wellbeing” have been used. You can watch the embedded version below or use this link to watch a scalable one.


The project was created with:
  • 5 advanced actions
  • 6 shared actions, replacing 45 duplicate advanced actions

In this post I will only explain the actions for the two Retake Tweaks, not the actions for the multiple Forced view cocntent slides.

Workflow

Situations and events

In this course 3 different situations occur for the quiz:
  1. First view: the tutorial will be followed as designed. It is not a linear course, because the slide with the 3 topics is a sort of dashboard, from which branching occurs. Each branch ends with a question slide. The return to the dashboard slide is configured using the Success and Last Attempt action of that last quiz slide.
  2. Not first view with Retake Course: is a Retake but including all content and quiz slides. All quiz slides, and the dashboard (Topics) slide need to be reset to their initial state. Difference with 1: the number of attempts on quiz level.
  3. Not first view with Retake Quiz (only): this is the default Retake situation, but needs actions to skip the content slides situations in between quiz slides.

This screenshot of the Advanced Interaction panel shows the relevant interactions and events needed to cope with those 3 situations; the relevant actions are marked with a colored highlight box:

There is one special Advanced action, invisible in this panel: On Enter event for the first question slide has an advanced action FirstQuestion. On Enter actions for question slides do not show up in this panel, because the Success column is linked with the Success action of the question slide.

Variables

There are several reusable variables (v_1, v_2…. and v_counter) needed for the multiple Forced View content slides, and the system variable (cpInReviewMode) for the custom Review message. For the Retake tweak workflow these variables are used:

  • v_course: has a default value of 0. That value is valid for situations 1 and 2, where content slides need not to be skipped. The variable will be toggled to 1 for situation 3, where content slides need to be skipped.
  • cpQuizInoPassFail and cpQuizInfoAttempts: both quizzing system variables
  • v_theme, v_timeline, v_shared  are used to track the completion of the three topics, on the Topcis slide (3). I mention them because they will appear in the advanced action EnterTopics.

Actions

EnterTopics (Advanced action) triggered On Enter for slide ‘Topics’

This action checks the values of the variables associated with completion of the three chapters. Only when all have been visited, the learner will be navigated to the score slide. That score slide shows the results of the complete quiz.

There was no possibility to use the variables (v_1, ….v_6) on this slide. Since the action is only used once, it made no sense to use a shared action neither. For situation 2, this Topics slide needs to be reset. Reset is happening with the RetakeAct action (see further).

FirstQuestion (Advanced Action) triggered by On Enter  First question slide

Only the second decision (RetakeCourse) is relevan for the Retake tweak, first decision is for the custom Review message. That second decision is required for Situation 2. Since the Retake button is used in that situation, by default the learner will be sent to this slide, the first question slide. But in Situation 2 the learner wants to see the full course. For that reason learner is redirected from the first question slide to the Topics slide.

EndQuestion (Shared action) for Success and Last Attempt of last question in each sequence

Each decision corresponds with a situation (same sequence as situations).

This action skips the content slides in Situation 3 – ‘Decision SecondNormal’. In that situation the last question will be followed by the first question in the next sequence of questions. The two other decisions - situation 1 and 2 - navigate to the Topics slide.

There is one exception: the last question slide of the last sequence needs to navigate to the score slide. I could have used the same shared action and give the second parameter the value of the score slide. However due to my experience with low bandwidth situations, it is better to use Continue for the Success/Last Attempt actions on question slides. For that reason, I used the shared action as template to create one Advanced Action:

EnterScore (Advanced Action) On Enter for score slide

As explained under Variables, the user variable v_course is tracking whether a normal Retake will be done, or a full course Retake. Of course the button to Retake full course is not needed when the quiz is passed. If the learner failed, the value of v_course is toggled to 1. That stands for a normal Retake (no content slides). The start value was 0, which meant that all slides were viewed the first time. That value will be reset to 0 by the RestartAct.

RestartAct (Advanced Action) for Success Event custom button (Bt_Restart)

If the learner fails, Bt_Restart will appear on the score slide. It is a shape button, having the same look (style) as the Quiz buttons. It will trigger this action:

It is a standard action, inviting the learner to click the Restart button.  At the same time it will reset the variables for the course situation (v_course) and for the items on the Topics slide, both variables and states. That slide was the only ‘forced’ slide where the ‘Retain State on Slide Revisit’ was checked, hence the need to reset the states.

The state change for the button is to pop up the explanation text, inviting to click the Retake button. As usual I did drag the Review button under the Retake button. Review button will only appear after the Quiz is Passed or all attempts on Quiz level are exhausted.

Possible extensions

It would have been possible to restrict the Force View on the content slides to the first view. That workflow is described in these two posts presenting yet another Shared action:

Force First View

Advanced to Shared action

Of course Narration could have been added as well. And that same shared action could also improve the second view of a content slide by skipping that narration with the same micro-navigation.