Download the Course Files (Self-extracting executables)
Lectora Demo – Creating Quizzes
Section 1 – Getting Started
Begin by creating a new chapter – we’ll use this as a “splash screen” to alert the user that they are about to enter the test.
Go to: Add => Chapter
- name the chapter “Test Landing Page”
Rename the Page to “Test Landing”
Right-click on the page and go to Properties – make sure that your navigational
buttons have been inherited (back, forward, home, and exit) as well as your
“show chapter name script”
Add 3 animated gif’s to
the page by doing the following:
Go to: Add => Object => Image choose the earth.gif file. Repeat this process
to add mars.gif and neptune.gif. Position images to your taste on the page.
Add a text block and name
it “click next to take test” –
Go to: Add => Object => Text Block – choose a suitable font/font size/color
and use the following text – “You are about to enter a test covering the material
you’ve just learned. Click the Next button to proceed.”
Note: The way things have been set up – the user can still exit the test without ill-effects by clicking on any other button than the “Next” button. Once into the test they will be forced to continue to the end of the quiz.
Now, onto setting up the framework for the actual test. Our test is one test with 3 smaller sub-sections inside of it. Each section contains 5 questions of which we’ll have Lectora randomly choose 3 questions to ask from each section.
Select your newly created
Chapter (Test Landing Page) and choose:
Add => Test (we won’t worry about naming it.)
Now add 3 Test Sections:
(making sure you still have the Test selected)
Go to Add => Test Section – name it “Test Section – Mercury”. Do this two
more times and name the sections: “Test Section – Venus”, and “Test Section
– Earth”
We’ll populate the quiz in the next section.
Finally, we’re going to make a new Chapter called “Test Results” that follows the Test and place two pages inside it. One called “Pass” and one called “Fail” This is our results section which we’ll deal with later
Now that we’ve got the framework – it’s time to populate our test with questions.
Section 2 – Setting up the Test and Test Sections
Take a quick look at the Test Questions List handout. This is a hard-copy of the questions we’ll be asking in the quiz. They are separated into sections and have the question type next to the question. Because the process of creating test questions is basically the same, I’ll outline the procedure of creating each type of question only once. Lectora is capable of handling the following types of questions: T/F, Multiple Choice, Fill in the Blank, Essay (or long answer), Matching, and Drag-n-Drop. NOTE! Lectora can’t evaluate the answers given in essay type questions! You may need a separate section for essays if you need one.
Select a test section and:
Go to: Add => Question click on the “Click here to Edit Question” button.
Once selected you’ll be prompted to choose which question type to use.
True/False Questions:
Once you choose T/F, it will ask you to provide the question text – fill this
in.
(Note: if you need an image to show with your question, click on the appropriate
checkbox and browse for your image) Click Next when done.
You’ll now be prompted to enter the True and False text – remember T/F questions don’t necessarily have to have T/F as one of the answers! (yes or no) Then choose which of the 2 answers is correct by clicking the radio button next to the appropriate text item.
Hit Finish to end editing the question.
Multiple Choice
Questions:
Once you choose multiple choice it will ask you to provide the question text
– fill this in.
Hitting the next button will ask you how many choices you give the student to
answer from. If you have a question that requires more than one answer – click
on the “Question requires more than one answer” box. Hitting Next will prompt
you to enter the choice text and will ask you which one is correct.
When you’ve gone through all the answers – click finish.
Fill in the Blank
Questions:
Once you choose FITB, it will ask you to provide the question text – fill this
in. Starting to see a pattern develop yet? Hitting the next button will provide
you a chance to fill in the appropriate answers. Pay attention to the character
length of your answer and change it accordingly in the box provided. In the
box on the right – list all of the possible choices that the student can enter
to get a correct response. (answers are NOT case sensitive but are SPACE sensitive)
Spelling is the key here – if there are alternate spellings of your answer –
be sure to enter them here. (if you answer is DreamWeaver (no space) – dreamweaver
or Dreamweaver would be correct – but dream weaver or Dream Weaver would NOT
be correct!)
Short Answer/Essay Questions:
Once you choose one of these question types, you’ll be asked to provide the
question text – fill this in. Clicking on next will prompt you for how many
characters the answer should be. (Remember: characters INCLUDE spaces!)
Lectora can’t evaluate questions of these 2 types – you’ll be required to view the answers and grade as needed.
Matching Questions:
Once you choose a question of this type you’ll be asked to provide the question
text: this is usually nothing more than “Match the 2 Columns” Look at Question
#6 in the Earth Test Section in the completed space demo for an example of matching
questions.
Hit Next and choose the number of matching items that should be shown.
Click on the Next button to get to the matching pairs. In our example the left column has text while the right column has images of three planets. The student is then to match the image of the planet with the appropriate text on the left.
When you’re creating these pairs – Lectora is asking you to provide a matched pair. When the question is posed, Lectora will automatically “randomize” the columns so that the matches are mixed up.
In pair 1, type Apollo and Hermes for the left column and choose “Show Image with item” and Image 3003.bmp for the right column. In pair 2, type Love and Beauty in the left column and use Image 4003.bmp for the right column. In pair 3, type Fertile Soil and use Image 2003.bmp for the right column.
Drag-n-Drop Questions:
These questions are the most time consuming to create. Look at Question #1 in
the Earth Test Section in the completed space demo for an example of drag-n-drop
questions.
Drag-n-drop questions work ONLY with images. Both the dragable item and the target item must be images!!!
Hitting Next will get you to the Questions Text area and the “drop item” screen. The drop item is our target. In this case our target is nothing more than an image with the question on it (use Image 4004.bmp) and blank spaces provided so that the image can be “placed” inside it.
Click next and choose the number of drag items (remember – each item MUST be an image!) Click Next.
In this window, we’ll define the items to drag AND where exactly they’ll be dragged to. In the Drag Image area, browse for the image 2003.bmp image and then click Place Image. You’ll be in a new window that has our question image and our drag item. Place the drag item where it should be (last blank) and hit OK.
Repeat this process twice using the Image 3003.bmp (first blank) and the Image 4003.bmp (middle blank) images.
When the question is posed, the drag items will be placed (randomly) in a column to the left. Our target image will be placed to the right of that. The student then just drags and drops the items on.
Congratulations! You’ve just learned how to create every single question type in Lectora. Now for the hard part. Telling Lectora what to do with the questions.
Section 3 – Finalizing the Test
First things first. Let’s
make sure that we are able to access this test right from the main menu. Under
Page 1 of the “main menu” open up the Skip to Test text item and add an action
if one isn’t already there. Make sure the actions are as follows:
On: Mouse Click
Action: Go to
Target: Chapter, Section, or Page
Name: Test Landing (or the name of the Splash Screen Page you created in Section
1)
Now when clicked from the Main Menu, you’ll go straight to the test page.
Setting up presentation,
results and branching
Right-click on “Test 1” and get Properties. Once open, click on the Content
Tab. Make sure “Ensure student answers all question” is checked. This way they
cannot skip a question and must answer or guess as the case may be. If you have
“Show All Questions on one Page” checked, Lectora will put all your questions
on one page – otherwise it will be one question per page. The Random Selection
tab will randomly select the number of questions you wish each successive time
you take the test. However, since we made test sections - we want to be sure
that all of the sections are accounted for. We will not have random selection
at this point. (we’ll do that later in a per section basis)
Click on the “Results” tab. If you want Lectora to grade your test – make sure the “Grade Test” option is checked. Furthermore, you can opt (which I would suggest) to have the results shown to the student. Finally, enter the lowest passing score in the box. Lectora needs to know this as we’ll do some “branching” depending on the student’s score. Put 75 here.
Take a quick look at the remaining tabs: On Completed/Pass, or On Cancel/Fail. If a student completes the quiz and gets higher than 75%, Lectora will then do as instructed under the Pass tab. If they fail, however, the Fail tab takes over.
Click on the Passed tab. What we’re going to do is tell Lectora to go to our Pass page within our Test Results Chapter. Select the pass page from the Name pull down menu. Now, click on the Fail tab and select the fail page from the Name pull down menu.
Enabling “randomization”
Randomizing questions is a tricky subject. Let’s say you have 20 questions over
one topic. The easiest way to do this is to set up a test with 20 questions
with or without sections and let Lectora pick questions from that pool of questions.
However, if you are covering more than one topic, you may wish to make sure
that your random pool of questions will contain questions from each topic. The
only way to do this is to create “Test Sections” as we’ve done and tell each
section to randomly show a certain number of questions. This way we’re guaranteed
that questions covering all of our topics will be shown!
Right-click on any test section and get properties. Under the Section Content tab make sure there is a check mark next to the Random Selection of Questions box and choose the number of questions (3) to be shown from this section’s pool. Lectora will NOT go outside of this section to get questions! Repeat the process for the other two sections.
Finalizing the branching
– OR – what to show when the quiz is completed
We’ve setup the test. Now we’ll work on what to show and where to go once the
quiz is completed. Finally, we can now get to the pass/fail pages in the Test
Results Chapter.
Let’s start with the Pass page. Add a new text block by going to Add => Object => Text Block. Choose a suitable font, font size, and color and type something to the effect of: “Congratulations! You passed. Your score is:” (Don’t forget to name this text block – call it “congrats”) Add another text block, and call this one “x-pass” Choose a suitable font, font size, and color and type the letter “X” in it. All this “X” is here for is to become a place-holder for text style and formatting. We’ll associate a script with it in a minute to replace the “X” with the student’s score.
With the Pass page still
selected, go to Add => Action. Give it the name of: “ show test score” in
the Action Name field. Make sure all of the drop down menus contain the following:
On : Show
Action : Change Contents
Target: x-pass (the text block with only the “X” in it)
New Contents: Test_1_Score
So what happens is that once the test is scored, it is stored in a variable called “Test_1_Score”. This variable is automatically created once you begin making a test.
We’ll do the same process for the Fail page.
Add a new text block by going to Add => Object => Text Block. Choose a suitable font, font size, and color and type something to the effect of: “Sorry! You failed. Your score is:” (Don’t forget to name this text block – call it “failed”) Add another text block, and call this one “x-fail” Choose a suitable font, font size, and color and type the letter “X” in it. All this “X” is here for is to become a place-holder for text style and formatting. We’ll associate a script with it in a minute to replace the “X” with the student’s score.
With the Fail page still
selected, go to Add => Action. Give it the name of: “ show test score” in
the Action Name field. Make sure all of the drop down menus contain the following:
On : Show
Action : Change Contents
Target: x-fail (the text block with only the “X” in it)
New Contents: Test_1_Score
Conclusion:
If you don’t have Lectora put all of your questions on one page, buttons for next, back and exit will automatically be created for you. Students will navigate through the questions until the last question is answered. They are also allowed to navigate back to previous questions and change answers (which is why you probably don’t want to show feedback per question!)
Once finished, a popup window will appear with the questions, the student’s answer along with the correct answer for the student to view. Once this popup window is closed, Lectora will branch to one of the appropriate pages within the Test Results Section.
If you wish on these two result pages, you may opt to have a button that exits the program and a button that takes you back to the main menu. (so that they can study once more <wink>)
Fill in the Blank questions can be very useful to “password” protect your course. Let’s say you don’t have access to a secure webserver – you can put a Test question that might be something like “Enter the Password to enter the class” sort of thing at the head of the Lectora Project. Then use the On Cancel/Fail and On Completed/Pass buttons to allow or deny access to the course content. But, like anything else, security is a fickle thing these days. If you are trying to protect confidential data – I’d urge you to use another approach.