Test Your Geography Knowledge

How does your knowledge of geography measure up against 8th graders from the 1910s? In this week’s eLearning challenge, David Anderson came across a list of questions from an exam written in 1912. It was Kentucky’s Bullitt County exam for 8th graders covering a wide variety of subjects including arithmetic, geography, grammar, physiology, civil government and history. David asked us to create an updated version of the exam for online learners. I loved the idea, and created mine based on a few of the geography questions.

Take the Geography Quiz

Make Them Laugh
I like to customize my feedback, so you don’t just get the generic “correct” and “incorrect” responses. Since geography can be a bit of a bland topic if not taught properly, I threw in some humor, sound effects and simple illustrations into the feedback layers.

Storyline Assets
For my background picture and illustrations, I dug into Storyline’s built-in and royalty-free images. I usually search in Storyline first for images. Since I’ve already paid for the software, it only makes sense to look there first before going to outside providers. Being the quiz was originally written for 8th graders, I remembered there was a little boy’s voice (named Justin) in Storyline’s text-to-speech voices. Justin’s voice is also one of the less robotic-sounding options. I also thought the sarcastic attitude of some of the feedback would sound particularly funny delivered from this little boy’s voice.

So check it out and let me know what you think. Your feedback is always appreciated and can stimulate some interesting and informative conversations.

Fighting Wildfires in Alaska

You are a fire manager in Alaska and three wildfires have broken out across the state. You don’t have the resources to fight them all, so you have to prioritize. This interaction is a combination scenario/quiz question incorporating video, music and a sorting interaction.

The Challenge
This week’s eLearning challenge was to create a quiz question with customized feedback. In this scenario, I used the existing feedback layers giving the learner the opportunity to try again if they get it wrong initially. When they do get it right, it takes them to the “correct” feedback layer with a Continue button which takes them to another slide with more detailed feedback in the voiceover and a video giving a bird’s eye view of the landscape and communities we were talking about.

Too Much Information!
There simply was not enough space to incorporate all the feedback the client wanted on the feedback layer itself, so I simply moved that feedback onto a separate slide accessible via the Continue button. For the video, I just took some high resolution still shots of the Alaskan landscape and using the Ken Burns technique, panned across and zoomed in and out of the different shots to add more interest. Check it out here and let me know what you think!

Roger Ebert, the Beatles, and Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy splits learning into six levels: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. The six levels were designed to help instructors and others develop learning objectives and to select the appropriate methods and learning tools.

The Challenge – In his weekly e-learning challenge, David Anderson asked us to create an interaction that introduces an instructional design principle. I chose Bloom’s Taxonomy and thought it would be a fun and useful exercise to match each level with a famous person.

I thought I better start by defining Bloom’s Taxonomy and then define the six levels so that when it came to the exercise, learners would have something to refer back to.

Defining Terms

What’s the Point? – My objective in all this was for learners to be able to differentiate between (or “analyze”) the six levels, but to do it in a way that would be memorable and not get mired in abstraction. I don’t know if I can explain my creative process, but somehow it popped into my head to take people from recent history, famous for a particular talent, and to tie that talent into each of the six levels.

Inspiration Hits – Right away, I thought that Roger Ebert was a great evaluator and the Beatles were obviously very creative, and then the rest of the people just dropped right in line. So the exercise would be to match each person with the level of Bloom’s Taxonomy their particular talents best represented.

Roger Ebert makes an appearance

To make the exercise a little easier, I was careful to include in my definitions of the six levels certain keywords like “illustrations” and “songwriting” that I knew would help learners make the connections later. I figured Audubon was well-known for his illustrations of birds and the Beatles were obviously songwriters.

Feedback They’ll Remember – I also decided to have a little fun with some of the feedback for the right and wrong answers that related to the persons in the exercise. I used the Beatles song titles “Yes it is” for the positive feedback and “Help” for the negative. A little humor can go a long way in learning retention, especially when it’s relevant.

Help, you got it wrong!

Wrapping it all Up – And for one last exercise, I thought it would be really cool to ask the learner what level of Bloom’s Taxonomy the actual activity they were participating in most closely matched, which in this case was “analyzing.”

So, check it out for yourself. I hope you have as much fun playing the game as I did making it and that maybe you’ll learn something new along the way. I sure did.

7 Tips for Writing Good Quiz Questions

One of the easiest ways to confirm your e-learning is actually teaching the learner something is to confirm it with a well-written final quiz. What does that mean exactly? Here’s a quick list of things to do and things to avoid when writing effective quiz questions.

1. Don’t ask overly simple questions. There has to be some challenge. If the answer to the question you’re asking them is too obvious, perhaps they don’t need to learn it at all, or more likely, it just needs to be rewritten with better, more-convincing erroneous answer options. Otherwise, they’ll forget it.

Overly simplistic question

2. Make sure your wrong answers aren’t actually right ones. Under certain circumstances, a good bluff answer might actually be right for the situation. You could try rephrasing the question to drill down further, so that your wrong answers are really wrong (the question part might be too broad in other words).

3. Don’t make the questions too hard. Know your audience. Have they been at the job for 20 years or are they new hires? What’s the technical level of the learner? You don’t want to make the question too hard for the level of learner you’re addressing.

4. Add a little humor once in a while. In a multiple choice question, this could mean throwing in a wrong answer that’s a bit silly. As long as a couple of the wrong options sound realistic, you can include some humor without making it too easy.

Question with humor

5. Tell a story. Put in a little bit of narrative, to make it more memorable. Characters and story can paint a memorable picture that the learner can call upon when they need the information in a real life situation. It doesn’t have to be a novel, just provide enough narrative to present the question in context.

Click to view storytelling example

6. If it’s part of an interaction, try delaying the final answer. For example: put your learner into a scenario and give them options of what to do where none of the options lead directly to the final correct answer. Instead, have all options lead the learner to ask more questions and gather more information. Then you can present them again with two or three new options to choose from. Based on the additional information they just learned, they will now know enough to be able to choose the correct final answer. This causes learners to think more deeply about the situation, teaching them what questions they should ask before they draw any conclusions.

Click to view example of delayed answer

7. Provide useful feedback when they get it wrong (and right). Provide clues if they get it wrong and give them a second change to answer the question. I usually do this on questions that appear before the final quiz, so learners can test their knowledge.

Feedback for right answer

Feedback with clue for wrong answer