Can a branched e-Learning course be done like this?

Hi there Eric, and welcome!   First of all, great job at putting a lot of forethought into the structure of your course! You could certainly do it the way you've shown, but one thing that would help cut down on some of the work is to modify the flow slightly to take advantage of Quizmaker's randomization and pooling features. This way you could avoid having to create separate/alternate tests for each retry, but also ensure that learners who do need to retake the test won't see the same exact questions every time. The flow could look something like the picture below. (What this wouldn't allow you to do, though, is to get super-specific about which questions the learner sees for each attempt - like, you wouldn't be able to say "If the learner is taking the quiz for the first time, show this set of questions, but if they've already failed it once or twice, show this set of questions.")

Oh, and one more idea! For the alternate/remedial content that learners see after failing a test, you might look into using an Engage interaction for that. This would make it really easy and quick to repurpose the original chapter content into some explorable interactions that learners can review before retaking the test.

Hello Jeanette,

Thank you for your reply! i will check out the video and the Engage interactions to get an idea.

About randomization and pooling features

Since a chapter also contains a theoretical part, won't they also be randomized?

But in principle it is not a problem if the test is randomized always, so if we create a pool of 25 questions, we would have a nice collection of different tests.

The randomization feature is unique to Quizmaker, so it wouldn't affect other content on your course slides. You could randomize just the quiz questions, and everything else will appear in whatever sequence you design.

(When you build a test in Quizmaker, you drop it into your course and although it occupies a placeholder slide within your course slides, it's really treated as a separate object when you publish.)

Hope that helps. Good luck & let us know how things go!

Thanks!

Another thing i was wondering. Would it be smart / is it necesarry to put the test (all the questions) in a seperate group from the theoretical pages?

The reason I ask is because when i select Randomize Group, I can choose Include (4), while I have only 1 question and 4 blank pages (containing the theory).

Apart from that, I still have to figure out how I can set that when you PASS, you move to Chapter2 (since with random questions, I cannot branch a specific question to Chapter2, also because there are more than 1 questions).

Are you building all of your content in Quizmaker? Even the theory chapters?

Reason I ask is, the picture I pasted above would be much easier to accomplish if you use Presenter as the "wrapper" for your course. For example, a common way of doing a branched course like the one you've described is to create the content (theory) slides in Presenter, and then embed Quizmaker tests in the appropriate places. This allows you to drop the tests in where needed within your course, and use Presenter's branching options to send learners to a different slide in the course based on whether they pass or fail. That way you can contain your entire course within one project.

If you are using Quizmaker standalone, you'd need to create multiple files for each test, and host them separately, in order to direct learners to the right place based on pass/fail.

Well... i was..... :-p

I see, and with Quizmaker you can only branche per individual question?

Hypothetically, it you do it in Quizmaker, you direct from file to file, and you seperate theory and quiz into groups?

Yeah you could definitely separate theory slides and question slides into groups within the same quiz file, and then randomize/pool just the group that contains the question slides. The challenge with your situation, though, is that you want the learner to view some alternate remedial content after a failed quiz attempt, right? And then have a chance at retrying the quiz? Really the only way of doing that with standalone quiz files is to have quite a few separately published/hosted content items, and set the Finish Action on each separately published quiz so that it opens the appropriate URL based on the learner's pass/fail status.

We do something like what Jeanette suggests. If a user fails the test (and we are actually quite stringent, requiring 5 correct answers in a row to pass, and the user is kicked out of the quiz after any wrong answer) we send them to a slide that asks them if they would like to "review the material" or "Retry the test without reviewing the material" The review is usually an engage interaction with the important information summarized, so they don't have to go through all of the animations etc. again and if they are only missing one piece of the puzzle so to speak they can quickly find what they are missing.

Then the quiz is a pool of 20 or so questions, so they get different questions as well.

The problem with building the entire thing in quizmaker (not that it cannot be done) is that you can't link backwards and you can't add engage interactions. (Well...you CAN as a flash object, but that requires some back end stuff, and also can get pretty small.)

We are doing something similar to Jeanette's drawing here, except that there would not be content slides in between quiz questions. The only time content slides would be seen would be if a quiz question is failed. If so, user would see content and then retake the same (not randomized in this case) question.

With this scenario, is it still more beneficial to use Presenter as the wrapper. I was originally planning to do it all in Quizmaker, but am open to suggestions.

Also - as part of this project, we would like to have metrics on each question if at all possible. (250 people got Q1 correct, 15 incorrect). These quizzes will be hosted in Pathlore. Can you point me in a direction for that as well??

Thanks --

Hi Wendy! If you do the whole thing in Quizmaker, the up side is that you will be able to track/report on the entire set of questions. (If you instead built the course in Presenter and interspersed several smaller quizzes throughout, then you'd have to choose just one quiz to track/report on.)

Probably the sticking point though, is that you want to show remedial feedback after a wrong answer and then let the learner retry the incorrectly answered question. In Quizmaker, you can certainly do that and provide unlimited retries on a question, but to do this fluidly, the feedback needs to be on the feedback pop-up. If you instead create a blank slide in Quizmaker and branch the learner there for remedial feedback, you can't then branch the learner back to the original question and let them try again, because they've already submitted their answer. You could possibly branch them to a duplicate of the original question and let them answer that, but depending on how you want to score your quiz, that could introduce some complexity. Because some learners, if they get a question wrong and are branched to the duplicate, will technically be answering more questions than other learners, which throws the score percentage off.

Regarding Pathlore - I've not used that LMS before, so I'm not sure what its reporting capabilities are. You'd definitely want to check with them to see if your reporting needs would be covered.

Good point about the duplicate questions throwing off the percentages. The other issue that I cannot see to get around is that the pop-up feedback is text based. Is that correct? I see that there is a URL option, but ideally I would like the option of adding a graphic -- essentially the original PPT slide containing the subject matter.

Hey Wendy, yeah unfortunately with the feedback pop-up there isn't a way to display images. You could certainly add a hyperlink to a different web page or something like that... when you click the More button in the feedback area of the question editor, it opens up a text editor where you can apply formatting changes to the text & add links. But currently there isn't a way to bake in a picture on the pop-up.

I've recently been thinking about using a short quiz to determine if learners need to view the full program.  I'm especially considering this for yearly (or quarterly) compliance modules.  I, for instance, would rather be tested on something like WHMIS to determine if I require the course again.  If I get the compliance quiz correct, then taking the course becomes my choice; if I fail the quiz, then I'll be watching the whole course and re-visiting a similar test at the end.

This discussion gives me a lot of ideas to move forward with - thanks!

Hi Colin -- that is my exact scenario. This is my first time dealing with compliance training and wow, these are some seriously boring topics. : )

I have been asked to provide a test out option for those that feel that they do not need the full blown course (which is everyone, of course). The test had previously been set up to submit all answers at once - with feedback given at the end. This year, they want to have the remediation after each individual question. Each question would have two chances and if you miss the question twice - you would be prompted to take full blown course.

I am trying to figure out the least compicated way to do this - while also trying to keep the feedback somewhat engaging, which is why I was asking my last question.

As I mentioned, I have managed to avoid compliance training until now, so I do not have much experience in the area. I am always open to new ideas and am happy to share what I have learned. Thanks for jumping in.

I had originally intended to have 10 questions for the pre-test; however, if the material lends itself to sub-groups, then perhaps you could use single slide quizmaker quizzes as gates before each piece of learning.

For our compliance cbt's we weren't looking to use an LMS, so the placement of the quizzes is pretty much irrelevant to me.

So, in terms of flow, it would go: Quiz1(Quizmaker)->Content1(Presenter)->Quiz2(Quizmaker)->Content2(Presenter)->Quiz3(Quizmaker)->Content3(Presenter) or, for the folks that pass the quizzes, Quiz1->Quiz2->Quiz3

I won't be able to try this on my forthcoming compliance module, but I might explore the idea on one of the quarterly modules.