Common E-Learning Interactions: Keep It or Toss It Drag-and-Drop #178

Keep It File It Interactions #178: Challenge | Recap

Sorting activities are a great way to evaluate a learner’s ability to identify items by dragging them to different drop targets. One of the most common versions of this activity is designed around whether items should be kept or discarded.

Some popular versions of this common interaction include:

• file it or trash it
• keep it or discard it
• healthy choice or unhealthy choice
• required or optional
• report it or ignore it

A variation might include three options, where the third choice is for “optional information.” Another variation could include a single drop target choice where users identify only the “keep it” or the “toss it” items.

In either case, this common interaction should be in every course designer’s toolkit. And that’s what this week’s challenge is all about. Let’s look at a few examples.

Comstar New Hire Orientation

Here’s a drag-and-drop version that asks learners to identify permissible items for the workplace.

Click here to view the example

Creating Effective Meetings

This is another version of the keep-it-or-toss-it interaction, only in this example learners are asked to identify required and optional items.

Click here to view the example

Giving Effective Reviews

It’s not always necessary to include two drop targets. In this example, learners choose the necessary items by placing them into a folder graphic. The unnecessary items are left on the slide.

Click here to view the example

Challenge of the Week

This week, your challenge is to share an example of a keep-it-or-toss-it interaction. The examples above all focus around office and workplace topics. Feel free to apply this model to any industry or topic for your example.

If you have extra time this week, consider sharing a few versions of your original interaction. For example, if your original demo uses drag-and-drop, try reworking your file to show how it could function as a text-entry or click-and-reveal interaction.

Last Week’s Challenge:

Before you file or trash this week’s challenge, take a look at the revealing tooltip interactions your fellow community members shared over the past week:

Tooltips and Explorable Interactions RECAP #177: Challenge | Recap

Wishing you a great week, E-Learning Heroes!

New to the E-Learning Challenges?

The weekly e-learning challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos.