As with all objects in Opus you can set certain aspects of the appearance of the Question container. For Questions this includes the Border style and Background style.
The Question also has a tab which is specific to the object where you can set the details of the Question. There are two versions.
These are questions where the user selects (in one way or another) an object on the page or triggers an action to register that a particular answer has been chosen. The content of the answer is on the page itself and the user’s choice will connect it to the relevant answer setting in the Question Properties for scoring.
This is the setting which tells Opus the format of the question you are creating and includes options such as Multiple Choice and whether or not the question is expecting a Confirm Question action. If you are choosing questions from the template palette you will not need to chang this.
The following question formats require a Confirm Question action – single select with confirm, mutliple select, text input and drag and drop.
The content of an answer is provided by the object on the Opus page but on Question properties you can set certain management values for each answer.
You connect the object on your page to the answer by referring to the index number of the answer in the Answers grid.
A grid is provided for you to type in the various details of each answer. Each line represents one answer value and for most questions you will have at least one correct answer and one incorrect answer.
Note:
You do not have to just one option for one answer. You may want to set one answer value for the best answer and another for an answer which is still correct but not quite as clever. The opus object representing the best answer sets the user’s answer as Answer 1 whilst another object sets answer 2. For multiple choice questions you will need an answer for all options. Opus will not count an answer more than once just because it has been set more than once. So to give a compound score for three correct answers you will need three correct answer lines entries.
The first column is not editable and indicates the index number of the answer which is used by the Question actions
The next is an edit box allowing you to give the answer a name/description which is used to indicate the answer in the Course Log. Simply double-click in the box to edit the content and type in a name you want to use for the answer.
Note:
The answer name is NOT the answer content itself but simply a name for it. Obviously it can be used to indicate the answer but the actual content of an answer will be set by whatever object is displayed as the answer – a piece of text or an image for example. Text input answers work slightly differently as below.
A box is also provided for the score for each answer (this can be a negative number if you want to penalise incorrect answers). Using different values for different answers is also useful in creating weighting – giving greater value to the more difficult answers to a question.
Finally a checkbox allows you to set whether the answer should be considered correct or incorrect. All the individual scores are calculated for the scoring values variables but only one correct answer needs to be chosen for the question to be counted towards the Q_SCORE_CORRECT total.
The neutral setting can be used to stop an answer being considered correct or incorrect. This might be used where you want a value to be added to the score as a bonus but not be relevant to whether the question has been answered correctly or incorrectly.
The Question Properties tab will appear slightly differently for questions involving Text Input as it allows for you to type in words to search the users answer text for. Obviously in these types of question the answer is not specific to the object on the page but is the information typed in by the user.
To check for an answer you need to check the text typed in by the user against possible answers. When used within a Question object the Text Input object allows you to "connect" it to the answers in your question by selecting them from a drop down.
You can also choose to check the input against Any Answer by selecting that option. This is useful where there may be several possible responses and you want to score each one differently.
At the bottom of the dialog is a box allowing you to type in the words or phrases you want to search the answer for. This can simply be a single word or phrase or you can set up combination checks using common search keywords such as AND, OR and NOT. As a result it can be used as a very sophisticated function allowing you to test for combinations of words and phrases and accommodate different spellings.
Note:
To check for a phrase rather than individual words you can simply surround the phrase with quotation marks as in "United Kingdom" otherwise Opus will score for either United OR Kingdom and not just the combination. You can describe combinations explicitly by using AND, OR and NOT.
There is an option to Ignore case so that users can type in caps or mixed case and the content of the answer will be checked irrespective of capitalization. We recommend this is left on unless you are specifically testing for the correct use of capitals.
Note:
Remember to take possible spelling mistakes or alternate words when building a text input question test. You may wish to apply different scores for correct spellings or you can simply combine possible spellings using OR as in "particular OR particualr"
You can add more than one answer which enables you to check longer pieces of text for a range of different answers.
Thus you might ask for a description of the water cycle and want to search the answer for the keywords evaporation, precipitation and transpiration. You could put this into a single search as "evaporation" OR "precipitation" OR "transpiration" but this would just score a point for any one of the answers. If you put each word into a different "answer" you can then award a point for each or even give a score of 2 points for transpiration.
A set of buttons is provided to the right of the answer grid to allow you to change the order of your answers or delete them altogether. Simply select the answer you want to move or delete and then click the button required.
Most question formats require a Confirm Question action which requires the user to actively submit their answers. This allows you to permit users to review their answers before actively submitting them. Opus automatically stores users answers so that they can navigate away from the page and their answer will still be there when they come back to review it. If they have not pressed the Confirm Question button then they can change their answers.
Normally the Confirm Question action prevents any further scoring being made for that question. However, you may wish to allow users several attempts without resetting the question entirely. For this Opus includes a Limit Attempts to setting in the Question Properties. In most instances this will be limited to one.