Alternative use of ToolBooks Simulation object

- Or how to make several questions score as one without programming.

I have often faced the challenge of having to make more complex questions than what is possible out of the box using ToolBooks catalog objects. Very often you (or your client) wants a combination of multiple questions but scored as one question.

While this can be done, it typically involves writing code that check if certain properties of certain objects have a certain value. Furthermore Feedback is very troublesome to define. In short it is not very easy to create and maintain.

Using the Simulation object as a framework makes the task of developing complex questions/interactions much less complicated and much easier to maintain.

An example

First take a look at the demo.

It is a single page interaction with what appears to be 10 True-False questions - but when you press the Evaluate quiz you will probably guess that it is really a simulation.

How is done?

Setting up the objects

First create all the objects you need on the page to create the question. In our example that means creating a button (name it evaluate Quiz, and set the caption to Evaluate Quiz), and setting up radio button groups and the text fields with text for each question.

Setting up the Simulation

Insert a new Simulation (insert/new simulation).

Create 1 step, this will act as the entire interaction, and set up feedback and instruction fields of your choice.

(using the default values for the rest of the simulation settings will be ok, but make sure that the initial mode of the simulation is set to Practice, and that the simulation starts when entering the page)

Now and set up a ButtonClick trigger Object in the simulation object. Make the Evaluate Quiz the trigger object

Then set up the 10 radiobutton groups as evaluation objects, and write feedback for each evaluation object.

That's it!

You can download the Toolbook 2004 file (58 kb) I used in the above example, if you want to see what i did.

A few notes

The example uses radio buttons but all sorts of objects can be used. Another example could be selecting the correct choices in a number of different comboboxes etc. Also I made it a point not use Actions in the example, but using actions could make the interactions even more complex.

On a last note I would like to add that having a lot of questions or a good complex interactions is not neccesariy are not neccesarily good interactions from an instrutional point of view.

There is always a risk of the user being overwhelmed by the amout of information and choices. But if the the interaction/questions is put in a scenario that is known to the user, the risk of information overload is less high.

In this case the example was inspired by Danish soccer lottery coupons (where true - false are replaced with Win - lose).

I hope you have found this article useful, comments and suggestions are welcome at tlund@elearningspecialist.com.

Happy ToolBooking

Tomas Lund