RE: FLASH: Need help on Flash CBT project

[Len Harrison]

Hi Stephen,


I'd do this a bit differently than others suggested but not much.

Suggestions have more to do with instructional methods than Flash. When a

learner walks through a set of questions like this they quickly become bored

with the repeated feedback. I don't care how cute or how fancy your "You got

that one right!" animation is, I'm going to be pretty sick of it after nine

or ten repeats.


So, instead of one correct animation and one incorrect, I'd make ten of each

if I had ten questions. Yeah, it's more work, but do you really want your

learners to hate you or would you rather they thought you were cool?

Handling the corrective track is up to you. I don't know your audience or

your material. You might want to make that scenario move from consoling to

absolute ridicule with a comic twist if you felt it would be effective or

more probably adopt some kind of conciliatory, encouraging tone. Personally,

I'd use the negation to review the material but that's up to you. For the

winners I'd make each animation progressively more spectacular with a real

big payoff for every one right. If you set up their expectations properly,

they'll get the idea. If what you do is cool, you may find they take the

test more than once in an attempt to get every answer correct so they can

see the final animation.


I'd use two or three movie clips in this case rather than frames within a

single clip. Each frame of each clip is itself a clip. Your buttons

telltarget to one or the other clip and advance it one frame. This also lets

you appraise the learner of their progress. "You now have one answer

correct. That's a start..." The third clip, if you chose to use it would

appraise the user of the total number of questions answered so they could

see how well they were doing. "You've answered 3 questions so far", etc.


As far as timing goes, I'd reduce the delay just a bit for each progressive

question. Not enough to be noticeable, but right at the edge. If you use

script for that it's setTimeout(function,msec). You can declare msec as a

global so it keeps its value and then decrement it each go around. Otherwise

just jump to a later frame in your timing loop. Bringing the questions up

faster will increase involvement. Keeping it the same has a kind of dulling

effect.


Just my $.02


len harrison

instructional designer

lenhabtcorp [dot] com

> -----Original Message-----

>

From: ownershocker [dot] com [ownershocker [dot] com]On">mailto:ownershocker [dot] com]On Behalf Of Stephen

> Britton

> Sent: Sunday, October 25, 1998 11:10 AM

>

To: flashershocker [dot] com

> Subject: FLASH: Need help on Flash CBT project

>

>

> Hi Folks,

>

> I need some advice on a project that I just started. I have

> been tinkering with Flash for the past few months and I am

> just starting to get the hang of it.

>

> Here's the project - I am developing a very basic online

> training program that uses "Yes/No" and "True/False" questions.

> I want to make it so than when the user clicks the correct or

> incorrect answer, a screen will pop up showing whether they selected

> the correct question. I was thinking about using "Go To" Scene,

> but Iwondering if there is a better way to do this.

>

> <Note that I will be using some sound and small animations for this

> project, otherwise I would have used JavaScript rather than Flash.)

>

> I was also wondering if there is a way to use time responses in Flash.

> For example, if the user selects the correct question, I want a screen to

> pop up, telling them that they got the correct answer, and then a few

> seconds later, I want them to be transferred to the next question (either

> on another scene or URL). I have looked at the Flash documentation, and

> didn't see anything about timing. I wonder if there is an FC command that

> could do this.

>

> And one last question - This project has 10-12 questions. All the artwork

> will be created in Flash, so the files should be small. Do you suggest

> using a scene for each question - creating one file or create an

> individual movie for each question and linking them together on a series

> of pages? The majority of the test takers will be connecting with

> 28.8 modems.

>

> Thanks for your time.

>

> Regards,

>

> Stephen Britton

>

>

sbrittonwestnet [dot] com

>

>

>

>

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