Add Popup text upon Quiz Question Submit

[donaldw30326818]

Gentlefolk,

I am developing a quiz for which the requirement is that if a question is failed, then the correct answer is displayed along with an explanation of why the answer is correct and the other options incorrect.

The amount of text means that modifying the existing FAILURE messages won't be practical - mainly because the user will be given two chances to answer the quiz correctly. The first response must be then the "Incorrect, try again" message. 

The logic flow then would be:

Upon submit:

- if correct, proceed to next question

- if incorrect, display "try again"

- if second attempt incorrect, display explanatory information.

> Upon close of explanatory explantion block, goto next question

Or something along those lines.

I believe there is an Advanced Action that I could employ, but I don't see a "cpQuizInfo..." variable named to cover this situation. Do I exploit "cpQuizInfoPassFail" or some other variable?

Looking for ideas!!!

Thank you!

Don

[donaldw30326818]

Alternately, if I could have the FAIL jump to another slide, then return to the next quiz question, this could work also.

[Lilybiri]

You may use the quizzing system variable cpQuizInfoAnswerChoice. Here is a blog, which has been using that variable in a different context:

http://blog.lilybiri.com/using-cpquizinfoanswerchoice-for-survey-conversion-from-swf-to-html

If you want to learn more about the (read-only) quizzing system variables, have a look at:

http://blog.lilybiri.com/using-quizzing-system-variables

cpQuizInfoPassFail is only useful on the complete quiz level, is not related at all with individual question slides as you need. Same with cpQuizInfoAttempts.

You could use two Failure messages, the first will be for the first attempt, the second for the Last attempt. Or you can use the Last Attempt action to show a text message which is previously hidden and where you use cpQuizInfoAnswerChoice.

[donaldw30326818]

Oh, thank you!

I have been playing with 

cpQuizInfoMaxAttemptsOnCurrentQuestion

and using that to toggle a text box and a "continue" button. This works fine for the first question, but fails on the second.... so the question 1 value seems to carry over to the second question and displays elements that should be hidden.

Looking at your blog now, thank you again!

[Lilybiri]

That system variable is fixed and reused on each quiz slide. I don't understand why you want to use that variable at all.

[donaldw30326818]

"That system variable is fixed and reused on each quiz slide. I don't understand why you want to use that variable at all."

<ggg> I was blundering around and looking for a system varialble that would work,and that one seemed like it could. Except, while this cpQuizInfoMaxAttemptsOnCurrentQuestion variable worked on the first use, it failed on the subsequent uses, so perhaps I just did not have the variable set correctly. 

BUT.... looking at this again, with your ideas, manipulating the second Failure option seems the easiest path for me (my ignorance, it didn't dawn on me that the Failure 1 and Failure 2 responses could be different. <duh>)

The cpQuizInfoAnswerChoice variable also works for what I want, so thanks for that lead.

I like the idea of an Advanced Action, because I like playing with Advanced Actions, but an Advanced Action appears to not be needed in this case. There is much to be said for simplicity, and using the tools that Captivate already offers. No need to invent the wheel when Captivate has a wheel already built.

[Lilybiri]

Contrary to many experts, I always look out for simple solutions, and am not always appreciated for it.

BTW I used to be named 'Queen of Advanced Actions', although since quite a while I feel more like a defender of Shared actions which are awfully underestimated even by the Captivate team. Both are very much present in my personal blog and the multiple webinars I have presented about them.

[donaldw30326818]

Well, _I_ appreciate any approach that works - and thank you again for pointing out the obvious!

[Lilybiri]

Is it possible to mark relevant answer(s) to be correctt for the sake of other users with similar problems?

Here is another link which could be useful:

http://blog.lilybiri.com/popups-on-quiz-slides

[donaldw30326818]

Your posts always take me a while to digest, but are incredibly valuable, thank you!

But now I have a question regarding an approach that _seems to me_ should work, and kind of does, but really doesn't, and I don't know why.

Captivate documentation states:

cpQuizInfoMaxAttemptsOnCurrentQuestion  - Default = 0

Returns the maximum number of attempts allowed for the current question.

I have two elements: T1 for a text block and Cbtn1 for a Continue button since the "Submit" button is not allowing progress after completion.

The Advanced Action then is:

If cpQuizInfoMaxAttemptsOnCurrentQuestion ___  is greater than or equal to 1 ____

then

Show T1

Show Cbtn1

else

Hide T1

Hide Cbtn1

This approach works as intended for the FIRST question in PREVIEW FROM THIS SLIDE but fails upon the following quiz slides in which all elements that should be hidden are visible.

This approach completely fails when PREVIEW HTML 5 IN BROWSER is used.

Granted, this approach is awkward and a kludge, but I am using this as a learning experience.

My reading is that, since in the first instance, cpQuizInfoMaxAttemptsOnCurrentQuestion will be 0 and upon first fail, will increment to 1, and on the second fail will increment to 2 and display the hidden T1 and Cbtn1.

When I click the Cbtn1 to progress and proceed to Quiz 2, I have the same Advanced Action, although the objects are now named T2 and Cbtn2. 

But in both PREVIEW modes, the objects that I expect to be hidden, since this is a new quiz and cpQuizInfoMaxAttemptsOnCurrentQuestion should now be 0, both hidden elements are visible.

Where is my thinking flawed? (It is OK to say "everywhere" but a bit of specificity would be appreciated for the sake of education and making  my next efforts even more convoluted.)

[Lilybiri]

I may misunderstand but you are taking away the Submit button from a quiz slide? That means that you are crippling the quiz functionality of that slide. It is the most important embedded object, and should never be deleted. Here are some more links:

Basics about Submit Process: Captivate's Quizzes (2): Submit Process - eLearning (adobe.com)

And here you'll find some possible tweaks for that submit process:

Quiz Tweak 4: Submit Process - eLearning (adobe.com)

I didn't publish those blogs on my personal blog, only in the community. If you want to read all my blogs about quizzes, you'll need some time because I have over 40 of them.

I offered you already a link to the post about quizzing system variables. the one you are using about the maximum attempts is only useful for showing the maximum number of attempts in a popup tip, but not like you are using it. It has never the value 0 at all. On each quiz slide it will be the allowed attempts you defined in the Quiz Properties panel.  

Oops forgot a question. For a non-responsive project Preview from this slide is using temporary SWF output, only F11, Preview HTML in Browser can be trusted.... But the most important problems are at the start of my reaction: do not mess up the functionality of Quiz slides. Tell what you want to tweak about them, and I probably could offer a safe solution. Almost all consultancy jobs where I had to debug or find solutions were linked with tweaking quizzes.

[donaldw30326818]

Well, I didn't want to eliminate the Submit button, I just found that with the Advanced Action I was playing with, the quiz slide would not advance after the second submission attempt, but the scoring appeared to be working correctly. So the Continue button was a navigation function to get the quiz slide to move to the next.

You have answered my questions, and I thank you! NOW I need to spend more time on your links to get more of a background on these functions. The Captivate files I have found are not particularly informative.

[Lilybiri]

What do you mean by "The Captivate files I have found are not particularly informative."? Are you talking about the 'official' Help documents? In that case know that I started my blog in 2009 because I was so frustrated about missing information in the offical Help. For a while Adobe asked me to moderate the Help by adding links to relevant external informatoin, but they abandoned that interesting idea after a couple of years. 

[donaldw30326818]

Yes, I was referring to the extant Captivate help files. For example, when I looked for information on system variables, I found the information on the default values and that brief description of what the variable was but no information about how to use the variable or any specific information on just what the variable did. So I was going by name, thinking "yeah, that is what I want this slide to do" and find out that through trial and error and your assistance, what I thought would work was never designed for what I had imagined. 

[Lilybiri]

Sighing...  I remember years ago several users asked when Adobe would allow me to write out the Help They were kidding of course.

[donaldw30326818]

I do wonder if Adobe has given up on Captivate and surrendered the eLearning app world to Articulate.

I am not running across that many eLearning people using Captivate.

Chicken and egg issue, I guess. If money were spent on documentation and training, more people may use Captivate, but there is no point in spending on development and training if people aren't using Captivate.

So that leaves people like me to blunder, and people like you to pick up the pieces and give Adobe free support. 😞

[Lilybiri]

Being a user, I have no idea about the use of Captivate compared with othe eLearning tools. Documentation has never been great for Captivate, but I wonder if it is better for other tools? Customer support is not great neither, is it better with other tools? Maybe. Of course as long as people believe in the power of a tool, and spend some time helping other users, which may not be sufficient, the tool is alive. Sometimes I am shocked, like last week when I published a rather simple blog psot and got over 3K views on LinkedIn in a couple of days... 

You may be right, the best tools not always survive medocre tools who have better marketing teams. WordPerfect fell for Word (much worse still today), Lotus 1-2-3 for Excel (which still not manages 3D sheets as Lotus did previous century). No time for training to use a tool efficiently or no time to learn, which is cynical when talking about an 'eLearning' tool. Low skills, low budgets, same reason why formal education is all but efficient. Recently was asked to test skills for intermediate Captivate developers. Only one of them succeeded to have a quiz score above 40%. Simple quiz about basic Captivate topics.