Unit 10: Producing Electronic Materials

 What is an authoring tool?

 Using authoring tools to produce materials

Name : Ramanta Surbakti 201112500909

Fika Rahmayanti 201112500858
Erma Ardy Wijayanti 201112500896
Fitri Lestari 201112500922
Eunike Septiana 201112500920
Dahyani 201112500935
Oktavianus Sema 201112500859

Class: R.6.G

UNIVERSITAS INDRAPRASTA PGRI

What is an authoring tool?
An authoring tool is an installable program that allows you to create materials in electronic
format which can then be distributed on a CD-ROM, DVD, USB pen drive, floppy disc or via
wed page to your learners. Authoring programs are used to make CD-ROM-based reference
tools like Microsoft Encarta, but also more simple resources like information and
professional solutions, although any centre involved in blended learning solution which use
custom-developed materials might be well-advised to look at digital content development as a
viable way of making interactive and multimedia- based materials available to its learners. As
with a lot of high-end technology, it should be borne in mind that the learning curve for a lot
of these packages is steep, and that proficient production will have a significant drain on both
financial and staffing resources during the developmental phase.

Authoring tools usually feature a simple design interface, with drag-and-drop element
allowing you to add pictures, sounds and video material to the screen, along with navigational
options such as forward and back arrows, and content menus. Some of the more professional
authoring tools have complex programming languages allowing you to control what happens
in greater detail, but these will require a degree of expert knowledge which most teachers will
probably not have the time or inclination to acquire. There fore you would be well-advised to
ensure that any software you choose is going to be useful to you.

Using authoring tools to produce materials

Perhaps the most famous authoring tool in our filed is Hot Potatoes. This is a Small windows
or Mac program that creates of exercises and can be freely downloaded for educational
purposes. This program will install on your own computer and allow you to create web-based
exercises of the following types:

1. Multiple choice
2. Short sentence
3. Crossword
4. Matching/ordering
5. Gap-fill
The Hot Potatoes suite is a set of six authoring tools, created by the Research and
Development team at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre.
They enable you to create interactive Web-based exercises of several basic types. The
exercises are standard Web pages using XHTML 1.1 code for display, and JavaScript
(ECMAScript) for interactivity. These core W3C standards are supported by all good modern
browsers, including Internet Explorer 6+, Mozilla 1.2+, Phoenix, Safari, and many others.
The authoring tools will also handle Unicode, so you can create exercises in virtually any
language, or in a mixture of languages.

1. Introduction to JQuiz (question-based exercises)

JQuiz is a tool for making question-based exercises.

Step 1: Entering data

The first stage is to enter the questions and answers for your exercise. First, start the JQuiz
program. You should see an interface like the one below. If your interface looks more
complicated than this, it's probably switched to advanced mode; in that case, just click on
Options / Mode / Beginner Mode.

Look at the picture below, and type in the information:

1. Type the title in the title box.

2. Type the question in the question box.
3. Make sure that "Multiple-choice" is selected in the drop-down list box to the right of
the question. This defines the type of question you want to make.
4. Type the answers in the boxes on the left, and the feedback on the right. Note that
each answer, right or wrong, has its own feedback.
5. Check the "Correct" checkbox next to answer B.
 Step 2: Configuring the output

When a Hot Potatoes program creates Web pages, it does so by combining 3 resources:

 The data you entered

 The configuration information
 A set of "source files", or templates, containing the page structure.

We have already looked at data; the next step is Configuration. The configuration information
is a collection of pieces of text, including instructions for doing the exercise, button captions,
and link URLs, which are unlikely to change much from one exercise to another. For
example, some of the sample exercises you looked at earlier in this presentation included a
button labelled "Check", so that the student could check his or her answer. The caption
"Check" is not likely to change from exercise to exercise, so it does not need to be stored
with the data; however, you may need to change it (if you are creating quizzes in another
language, for example).

When you looked at the example multiple-choice exercise, you might remember that the
exercise had a title, a subtitle, and some instructions at the top of the page. The title of each
exercise is likely to be unique, so that's part of the data. However, the subtitle (e.g.
"Multiple-choice exercise") and the instructions ("Choose the correct answer for each
question") may be the same for most similar exercises, so these are part of the configuration.
In Step 2, we're going to change the configuration.
First, click on Options / Configure Output to get to the configuration screen. The first tab,
labelled Titles/Instructions, holds the exercise subtitle and instructions. Type some text in,
as in the example below, then press OK.

Step 3: Creating a Web page

The final step is to create a Web page from your data. All you need to do is click on Create
Web page / Web page for v6 browsers from the File menu, then give your page a filename.
Use the filename "test.htm":
The program will tell you that it has produced a file, and let you view it in your Web browser.
That's all there is to it!

2. Introduction to JCloze (gapfill exercises)

JCloze is used to make gap-fill or cloze exercises. The idea of a gap-fill exercise is that the
student completes all the answers before checking; in other words, it's a holistic exercise.
When all the answers have been entered, the student presses the Check button to mark the
answers. Correct answers will be inserted into the text; any incorrect answers will be left in
textboxes, so that they can be corrected. When the student checks an answer that is not
completely correct, a penalty is incurred, so the score depends on the number of checks
required before the answer is completely correct.

In a JCloze exercise, you can include a Hint button which will give the student one free letter
of the answer he or she is currently working on (based on where the cursor is). You can also
include a specific clue for each gap. Using the Hint or Clue buttons.

Making a gapfill is easy -- see the picture below for basic steps:
You can also look at this example JCloze exercise. For more information on how JCloze
works, check out the Help file -- just start JCloze and press the F1 key.

3. Introduction to JMatch (matching exercises)

JMatch is used to create matching exercises. Basically, this means that a list of items appears
on one side, and each one must be matched up to an item on the other side.

JMatch output comes in two types: standard and drag-drop. The standard output (see an
example) uses a drop-down list of items on the right. This is the format to use when you have
more than seven or eight items, and the items on the right are only text; if you have only a
few items, and especially if the items are graphics, you may want to use the drag-drop format
(see this example). Don't use the drag-drop format if you have more than eight items, because
scrolling on the page will make dragging and dropping difficult.

To make a JMatch exercise, enter each pair of items on the same line, as in the picture below.
When you export to create the Web page, the program will shuffle the items on the right for
you.
For more information on how JMatch works, check out the Help file -- just start JMatch and
press the F1 key.

4. Introduction to JMix (jumbled sentence or jumbled word exercises)

JMix is used to make jumble exercises. You can jumble the words in a sentence, or the letters
in a word. Like JMatch, JMix has two output formats: standard, and drag-drop. For
examples, see this standard exercise and this drag-drop exercise.

To see detailed instructions for making a simple JMix exercise, go to the 2-Minute Challenge
link below.

For more information on how JMix works, check out the Help file -- just start JMix and press
the F1 key.

5. Introduction to JCross (crosswords)

JCross is used to make crossword exercises. There are two steps to making an exercise: first
enter your letters in the grid, then add the clues. To enter letters in the grid, click on a square
and type a letter. Try following the example in the picture below to get you started:
When you've created the grid, click on Add Clues. Then, to add each clue, click on the word,
type the clue, and press the OK button:
Here is an example JCross crossword. For more information on how JCross works, check out
the Help file -- just start JCross and press the F1 key.

6. The Masher (buildling linked units of material)

The Masher is a different kind of application from the others in the Hot Potatoes suite. It's
intended to help you make larger units of materials, linked together. The Masher is also used
to upload files which are not Hot Potatoes exercises to the www.hotpotatoes.net server.

The Masher has its own tutorial (click on Help / Tutorial in the Masher program, or go there
now), and a detailed Help file with full instructions. To see the Help file, start the Masher
program and press the F1 key.

Interactive stories
Another area to explore in electronic materials and a move away from straight forward test
and practice exercise, is the creation of interactive stories where learners read scenarios and
then make choices to decide what they will do at certain key points. There are excellent for
reading comprehension practice or as small-group discussions that encourage collaborative
and critical thinking skill. They encourage learners to develop a wide range of skills from
listening to debating, agreeing, and disagreeing and making point and supporting them. Since
these are basically text-driven activities, you should be able to product them for any level.

Example of typical interactive stories.

A Quandary exercise consists of a large number of Decision Points. These are like nodes in a
tree. Each decision point represents a situation in the "adventure", or a position in the maze.
The user reads the information at the decision point, and then chooses from a range of
alternative courses of action, by clicking on a link. You're looking at a decision point now --
it's called "Starting out". This decision point only has one link, though.

Each time the user makes a choice, he or she moves to another decision point, and is faced
with a new situation. In this way, the user moves through the adventure, or maze, and may
eventually find a solution, or reach a dead end. As the author, your job is to create the series
of decision points and link them together. Quandary should make this process easy for you.

 Start creating the exercise

These are the first steps to take:

1. Make sure you have a new document in Quandary (click on File / New to be sure).
2. Type a title for your exercise into the Exercise Title box.
3. Type a title for your first Decision Point into the Decision Point title box.
4. Type text explaining the initial situation in the Decision Point contents box.
For example, you might decide that you want to create a maze in which someone has to make
decisions about travelling late at night:

Exercise title: Getting Home

Decision Point title: Take a cab or catch a bus?
Decision Point contents: You have just been to a concert downtown, and you need to get
home. It is midnight. What will you do?

Adding a link

So far, you have created only one decision point. Now, you will want to create a couple of
links. Your links might look like this:

Take a cab.
Go to the bus stop to catch a bus.

Each of these will link to a different, new decision point. There are two ways to do this -- you
might create the decision points first, then link to them, or you could create the decision
points as you make the links. We will do the latter, since it's simpler and quicker. This is what
you do:

1. Click on the New Link... button. You'll see a dialogue box. The main item is a drop-
down list.
2. Click to drop down the list. When there are lots of decision points in your exercise,
you will see them listed here, and you can select one to link to. Right now, though,
there's only one decision point. However, you can choose to...
3. ...Add a new decision point. Select that item, and you will see a new dialogue box
pop up.
4. Type the title of the decision point (We'll call it "Take a cab") you want to create in
the box, then press OK.
5. You'll see that a new decision point has been created.
6. Press OK to return to the main screen. A link has now been added to the first decision
point.

Now try adding another link to a third decision point, called "Go to the bus stop to catch a
bus."

Completing the new decision points

You have now created two new decision points. You can see them in the main link box:

and you can see at the bottom left of the screen that there are now three decision points:
Now, what you need to do is to complete these decision points. Click on the right arrow at
the top to move from decision point 1 to decision point 2:

Complete the second decision point.

Now you'll see the title of the second decision point is there, but there is no content, and no
links. You'll need to add the content, and then create the links. One link will be to decision
point 3 (which you've already created); the others will be to new links. Here's what the screen
should look like when you've finished:

Finish the exercise.

Now you can continue this process to take the story in any direction you like. (Strictly
speaking, that should be "directions" -- Quandary mazes can branch infinitely!) When you
reach an end point (when the user has "solved the puzzle" or arrived at a conclusion), then
you can simply say whether it's a successful conclusion or not, and add no further links from
that point.
Add three more decision points -- here's an example of how this little maze might work out,
to give you some ideas.

Saving your file.

When you've finished your exercise, you need to turn it into Web pages. Here's how you do
it:

First, save your data file, so that you can reload it later:

Exporting the file to create Web pages.

Next, you need to export the file:

Choose a file name for the exercise, and press OK. You'll then be able to view the exercise in
your Web browser.

Viewing the outline of your exercise.

If you wish, you can see your exercise in a kind of outline view, which looks something like a
flow chart:

You should see something which looks like this.

In the outline screen, you can:

1. Click on a node (i.e. a decision point) to see what it links to (red lines show links to
the node, and blue lines show links from it). Hold down the control key to add lines
for multiple nodes.
2. Double-click on a node to go to the main screen and edit it.
3. Create new links by holding down Shift, clicking the mouse down on the source node,
dragging to the target node, and then releasing the mouse.

To get you stared, here are a few more example software for teaching:

 Clarity software (http://www.clarityenglish.com/)

Clarity has a long history in producing English language related product, and their
authoring tools are both reasonably priced and easy to use.
 Creative technology-software for teaching
(http://www.cict.co.uk/software/textoys/index.htm)
Features Quandary and other useful tools including a marking program for
incorporating in to word, a cloze program called web Rhubarb and a text
reconstruction program called web Sequitor, where learner reconstruct written texts
from smaller chunks.
 Quia (http://www.quia.com/subscription/)
This is a subscription based service allowing for the creating of various types of
activities, urveys and web pages, as well as extensive learner tracking options.

CONCLUSIONS

 Considered various types of interactive exercises.

 Looked at websites which allow for the creation of interactive exercises.
 Examined reason for using interactive exercises with learners.
 Learnt how to product a variety of exercises types.
 Produced an interactive reading maze.