"undefined" survey answers in Moodle interaction report

[Guest]

Hello,

I am using Captivate 8.0.2.266 on a Mac to create a survey with 24 MCQs + a final text field for comments. I just used the regular MCQ tool with quiz properties set to "survey" with "multiple answers". The HTML5 SCORM package is uploaded to Moodle. I have two questions on each slide, each question has 5 checkboxes (Likert scale from SD-strongly disagree to SA-strongly agree) [and yes, I know there are better tools for surveys, but there are good reasons why I am using Captivate]. So in total there are 10 buttons on each slide. All checkbox are marked as "correct", and all slides/questions have the "report answers" checkbox selected.

When I try taking the survey in Moodle, everything seems to work fine, but when I access the 'interaction report', some of the answers - but not all (always the second one on a slide, but not for each slide) are given as "undefined" :

Any idea why this might be happening? It has been driving me crazy and I cannot work out what is causing it.

I should add that I have entered text next to each checkbox to be able to quickly identify each response. However, I don't want the text to be visible to users, so I have a few blank spaces (spacebar) before the text, and then I have made the text box 'too small' so the text is not displayed. For example, question 1 has 5 checkboxes: 1SD, 1D, 1U, 1A, 1SD, but users cannot see this text (see image below of the "before" resizing the box to make the text "invisible").

I actually tried with 3 questions on each slide initially, then because I was getting "undefined" for most 3rd questions, I thought the problem might have something to do with being at the end of the string. This is why I tried changing to only two questions on each slide, which did make things better, but a few answers are still showing as "undefined". I also tried removing spaces from the checkbox properties but it didn't seem to solve the issue.  Also, question 1 (i.e. the first 5 checkboxes) on each slide is working fine with spaces - no "undefined" there.

Thank you in advance to anyone who can point me in the right direction!

[Guest]

Follow up: After some systematic testing, I have been able to pinpoint the problem more precisely and replicate it consistently. It is only the "Strongly disagree" answers given to the second question on each slide that are causing the problem. In other words, if a user selects Strongly disagree (or any other option) for the *first* question on each slide, but any other option for the second question, then there is no problem. If they select anything for the first question, but then select "Strongly disagree" in the second question, I get the "undefined" response for that. So in a way this solves my problem temporarily, in that I know that any "undefined" answer is in fact a "strongly disagree". Nevertheless it would be good to understand why this is happening, so that I can avoid experiencing the same issue in the future.

[BDuckWorks]

It seems like you've done the hardest part, isolating where the problem is.

If you can rebuild the answers that are causing the issue: delete the text, re-TYPE it, re-publish and test.

Is there any chance you copied and pasted these response options from a Word doc?

I've seen this kind of random errors appear in multiple places in Captivate when text is copied and pasted from word. I'm now in the habit of pasting a big block of text into notepad and completing multiple copy and pastes from there.

[Guest]

Thank you, I thought it might be something to do with formatting. I did copy some text from MS Word, but it's in separate captions. The text that goes with the answers is typed in. I have tried deleting it and re-typing it in, but still get the error. I will try rebuilding the survey completely as soon as I have a moment, and report back. I guess I was just hoping that there might be some easy solution based on known issues, but I gather from your comments it's not the case (sigh).

[Lilybiri]

Maybe you are aware of the fact that Likert questions are not supported for HTML output? It looks like they are becoming 'obsolete'. That is the reason I will often create custom survey questions (reporting using variables) or even use MCQ slides for Survey reasons.

[Guest]

Thank you for your reply Lilybiri. I have stumbled across many of your great tutorials on how to create custom survey questions using variables, but as I am new to Captivate and at the moment I don't have the mental space and time to invest in learning advanced techniques, a lot of that just goes straight over my head I am planning to set aside some time for this in the near future. When you say "Likert questions are not supported for HTML output" do you mean using the "survey" as opposed to the "graded" option in the quiz properties? Because my questions *are* MCQ slides - sorry I am a little confused here.

[Lilybiri]

The screenshot that did show is not from a MCQ question slide.  But when I look again, it is not a Likert question neither because I'm seeing checkboxes instead of radio buttons. How did you create that slide? Do you use the checkboxes learning interaction?

[Guest]

It is a MCQ question slide with 10 answers.

When I realised 15 answers was the max. I thought I would have 3 statements on each slide with 5 checkboxes each, so I hid the original single "question" element, and created a separate caption containing my statements/questions (box on the left of the answer area). Then I reduced it to two statements on each slide, with a total of 10 answers. So technically it is one question, but I used text to identify each checkbox individually so that on line 1 I have 1SD, 1D, 1U, 1A, 1SA, then on line 2 I have 2SD, 2D, 2U, 2A, 2SA and so forth.

I have taken a screen shot showing all the elements on my slides: