[Xerte] Instructional Challenge: Crash Report Screening

[Dave Burnett]

>If you're a coder, is/are there things you might do with a little script?

All programs are ultimately code driven.
The usability challenge from a coding point of view is to provide "front ends" or "wrappers" that abstract what's going on under the hood. This imposes limitations, as the author of that front end can never pre-suppose all the conditions that the end user may want. "I need 8 distractors", etc.

In this case, when coding, I myself would consider, OK, we've got x number of repetitive screens that will vary as to correct choice.
So I build a single looping structure that reads in a "grocery list", say an xml file, which defines all the meta ingredients I need for a series of questions.

Pseudo xml file:

- question 1 (container)
 - URL to visual content (object under consideration (.pdf))
 - distractor (response choice)
 - distractor (response choice)
 - distractor (response choice)
 - distractor (response choice)
 - evaluation (which choice is correct)
 - feedback (if any)
 - optionals (weighting, etc)
- end question
- question 2 (container)
repeat above structure as necessary


The advantage here is that you are separating your content layer (xml file) from the presentation layer (code to display what the user sees).
Flexibility and reusability are built in. If you decide to add 2 more questions, you simply add 2 more "Question" node to the xml file.
You want to do a completely different topic? You create a new .xml file.

In the case of the "I need 8 distractors", instead of manually creating a whole new interaction to meet those criteria, the code would count the # of distractor nodes in the xml file and loop through the "create distractor" logic the appropriate number of times, then fill the text in from that file.

This is a good reason to keep all the discussions "under one tent".
As SME's, ID's, pedagogical folks, it's your bailiwick to come up with more effective interaction strategies. Coders help make it go (at all, or more efficiently).


> P.P.S. I'm equally confused by "Kind Regards", "Warm Regards", and their seemingly competitive siblings "Kindest Regards" and "Warmest Regards", used I can only imagine by those trying to one-up those who used the former. ;)

Another learning object.
Pick the correct culture the salutation originates from.
Bonus points for etymology.

Cheers! (My interpretation is a combination of "Good health!" and "Next round's on you.")
;-)



 		 	   		  
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