Drag and drop development advice needed - pyramid game

Hi James - I've read and thought about your challenge here and have a couple of thoughts.

First, how large is the data set that you want your learners to work with? The examples you show are good, but one clear limitation to the topic (food) is that you have quite a lot of options that you present to the learner. So while you say you want them to show "where...each text element fits" you don't tell us how many text elements you have. And that could be where you can try a couple of different approaches. 

• If you take "food" as your topic, then instead of presenting umpteen options, why not break this into a few smaller "bites" (pun intended)? That is, the learner needs to drag/drop "meat," "fruit," and "vegetables" into their (top) spots first. There would be 9 possible solutions.
• If you have them work with only one pyramid at a time, you are able to manage the possible interactions. So either mask off the other two (just put a transparent object over the ones they won't work with) or put the one you want them to work with on a separate layer (or slide, by branching).

The second idea is to consider what you really want your learners to demonstrate through the drag and drop in the first place. What have they been expected to learn up to this point? Or are you seeing this as a "what do you already know" activity?

I suggest you think about this first, since it will help you narrow down your interaction. Using drag and drop is a good way to see whether they understand classification, terminology, or can simply figure out matching shapes. And you don't need to set up a grocery aisle of choices to do that.

Good luck!