One Interactive Question - Under Four Hours

I have built up a small, but useful, stack of tools to put together various interactive questions.

As a result, my newest, multi-step question about a cat (below) took just under four hours to complete, from concept (hand-written notes) to end product. (The only new element was the diagram of the cat itself. Everything else was re-used from previous questions.)

This is the final screen of the problem.
(The previous screen had students write/solve the equations.)

My Flash programs are designed using ARRAYS to help me create new questions more easily. Instead of having to re-program every question I mostly just change the contents of various arrays that the program uses. Don't get me wrong. There are still things that have to be directly manipulated/programmed for each question. However, the brunt of the work is done using arrays.

A basic question works like this: There is an array of "draggers" (which are graphics or text elements that the student can click-and-drag around the screen.... The student manipulates these.). Then there is an array of "dots" (which are graphics elements that the students can drag objects TO. This is where they place the elements.)  For each sub-question I have a logic array of "Legitimate moves" which tells the program which "dots" the students may correctly place each "dragger" on to. There is also a logic array of "NON allowed moves" which tells the program what combinations students are NOT allowed to do.

Here is a photo of the page of notes used to create the cat question:

 

The sub-scenes are numbers on the left (There are four sub-scenes for this question.)

"draggers" are numbered in boxes. For example: along the left side of the page you can see the first downward arrow with "20N" next to it. That is "dragger item 1" in the array. It will be a graphic of a vector with two division sections on it, and it will point down. "Dragger item 2" will be an UPWARD graphic of the same vector.

"dots" are numbered in circles. "dot item 1" is almost always a trash can. (Most of my questions have extra "draggers" that the student will need to drag into he trash.) "dot item 2" is just the basic DOT (the pink dot in the center of the cat to which the students will drag the vectors to.)

The rest of the notes on the page are basically the logic information to plug into the "Legitimate moves" array and the "NON allowed moves" array. For example: "1,2, 20 newtons down" means that "dragger item 1" may be placed on "dot item 2" and when the student does this the words "20 newtons down" will be temporarily displayed in yellow nearby.


Time: 4 hours