Formatting Defaults, December 2020, including editing existing courses

 

1. No asterisk-only usage - Check that no lesson questions (short answer ones) ONLY use an asterisk and say “please compare your answer to the correct answer” and move on to next page. All short answer (fill-in-the-blank) questions MUST give the following two answers & responses:

1st choice response (marked to go to next page):

Correct answer printed here, asterisks before and after every word, no spaces. (See formatting further below)

You got it right. Congratulations!

The correct answer is:

Remember:  

And then for the 2nd choice response (marked to go back to "this page"):

*

You may or may not have gotten it right, your answer didn't exactly match ours.

Please compare your answer to the correct answer:

Remember:

Formatting for Wrong answers (not used for short answer questions):

You got it wrong. Sorry!

The correct answer is:

Remember:

 

 

2. Remembers are now optional - but extra words give a higher word count and therefore more hours and are highly recommended. Most authors don't write enough words. Remembers are also a good teaching methodology, to say something again in different words helps drive home the meaning.

 

3. Short Answer Asterisks instead of spaces - Some existing course’s short answer questions do have the correct answer programmed as the first answer, but have spaces between words instead of asterisks. Single word answers need asterisks before and after that word, multi-word answers need them before and after and between every word.

*answer*

*two*words*

*multiple*word*answers*

(sometimes I’ll remove the last “s” of a word if they might type it either way, Moodle will then accept both singular and plural with use of the asterisk. Same goes with common suffixes like “ed”, “ing”, if either way of typing it would be correct, leave off the suffix so Moodle accepts either way.)

 

4. Any Flash files should be removed. In the courses that still use them, they are not integral to the course, they repeat information found in the text. Most browsers now block the outdated Flash program and we need to remove the flash files.

 

5. The correct answer should always be the first answer (for new courses. I wouldn’t spend the time to change existing courses).

Asterisk “any other answer” must ALWAYS be the last answer.

 

6. Jumps - The correct answer should always go to the “Next Page.”

All incorrect answers, or “other” answers in short answers, should go to “This Page.”

 

7. In the old Pass Prep courses, every question and all four answers need checked. All answers are supposed to match some question or another. I found several programming errors spot checking the courses.

The correct answer should say:

Congratulations! Your answer is the right answer to the question: (and then list the SAME question as was asked), and go to NEXT page.

The incorrect answer should say:

Sorry! Your answer ACTUALLY is the right answer to this question: (and then list whatever question matches that answer. It should NOT be the same one as was asked on that page), and should return to THIS page.

 

8. Heading usage in Moodle: As before, page headings usually go in Header 2. If using a higher heading and sub headings, you can choose either Heading 1 over Heading 2, or choose Heading 2 over Paragraph in Bold.

Question instructions go in Header 3:

The following question is a review of the content on this page. Answer it and then click below to check your response.

Or for question-only page on previous page’s content:

The following question is a review of the content on the previous page. Answer it and then click below to check your response.

Or for question-only page on content covered earlier in the course:

The following question is a review of the content you have been learning so far. Answer it and then click below to check your response.

The question itself is in Header 4.

 

9. We don’t repeat “The question was” any longer in the responses. They can still see that above on the page. If you are editing every page anyway, go ahead and remove them. Otherwise don’t take the time to edit every page in the course just for that. Let the course be consistent throughout in how the responses are laid out.

 

10. Old editor’s Response copy & paste errors: There was a course or two that added an extra superfluous period after the exclamation point on EVERY page! That period needs removed. As in:

You got it right. Congratulations! .