Data Entry Field Formatting Help

Mar 13, 2013

I've gone through the information in the data entry Screenr, but I have still have a question:

I would like to be able to set the data entry field to create a bulleted list with a prompt something like this:

Is this possible to format the data entry box in this way for learners?

6 Replies
Christine Hendrickson

Hi Jonathan,

You can apply some additional formatting options to the prompt (instruction) text in the data entry field, such as bold, italics, underline, highlight color, and even bullets.  However, these formatting options will not apply to the user-entered data. I can certainly see how this would be a pretty awesome option, though. If you haven't already, you may want to submit a feature request

Quick question - do you know if these responses will be multiple lines of text, or more likely to be single lines? If it's likely that they will only be single lines of text, you could get a little creative with this using variables and objects to make the appearance of a bullet list. If this is something that would work for you, just let me know and I can try to work up an example for you.

Jonathan Workman

Yes, this would be really helpful!  I want to format with bullet points to suggest to learners that their feedback should appear in small chunks rather than paragraphs.

While we're grabbing for the brass ring, it would be great to report their feedback to an SME when the learner clicks a "Submit" button or even to an online discussion board where their feedback could be viewed by others, generating ongoing discussion of the topic outside of the course.  Thoughts?  Ideas?

Christine Hendrickson

Hi Jonathan!

For the SME, I'm honestly not sure how you could accomplish this. Hopefully someone that's played with that before can give you some suggestions.

On the bullet topic, though, I have put together a quick example for you. Keep in mind, however, I only set this up for five items. You could certainly do more and add some customization to the size of the bullets, etc.

Example for Jonathan

For simulating the automatic addition of bullets, I used layers and variables. Each time the user hits "Enter" it adjusts the variable and calls the layer for that bullet. I think this works pretty smoothly The only issues I can see with this are adjustments to previous lines, or if you have someone that goes past the default size of the data entry window and it scrolls. 

I'm also attaching the example file, just in case you want to see how I've set this up. 

I know it's not very fancy, but I'm hoping this will help with what you're trying to do :)

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