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Interactive Questions

Introduction | Basic Question Format | Examples | Files and File Names

Introduction

Instructional Web pages are much more engaging when you present or reiterate major teaching points in the form of questions. Questions force the student to interact with the material and reinforce key concepts. MTX currently supports three different question formats:

Simple - feedback is given all at once with any right or wrong answer
Progressive - feedback is progressively disclosed with wrong answers
Multiple Answer - more than one correct answer is available

Basic Question Format

The question mark (?) tag is used to begin each question. The tag is followed by letters indicating the correct answer (the letter "c" indicates the third choice, etc.). The text of the question follows on a subsequent line. Questions can include images. Here is an example of these elements:

  ?c
  {=picture=}
  This is the text of the question.

Questions will be automatically numbered from 1, 2, 3, etc. for each document.

Each answer begins with an at sign (@) tag. Each choice is treated as a separate paragraph. The letters A, B, C, etc. are added automatically. Optional feedback is provided as a series of indented lines.

  @Red
     Feedback for Red
  @Green
     Feedback for Green
  @Blue
     Feedback for Blue

There can be as few as 2 choices and as many as 26 (A-Z).

Examples

Simple Questions

This is an example of a simple question.

Question 1

What color is the sky?

A) Red

B) Green

C) Blue

Progressive Questions

This is an example of a progressive question. Add a second question mark (?) tag to add progressive disclosure to a question:

?c?

Question 2

What color is the sky?

A) Red

B) Green

C) Blue

Progressive Questions with Custom Prompts

This is an example of a progressive question with a custom prompt. Text for the prompt follows the second question mark (?):

  ?c?Get Real!!

Question 3

What color is the sky?

A) Red

B) Green

C) Blue

Multiple Answer Questions

This is an example of a question with two right answers.

?bd

Question 4

Which of the following are even numbers?

Questions with Images

You can use pictures or hypertext links in any part of a question. Providing feedback with counter example images is one useful technique.

Question 5

This is a picture of:

A) The Moon

B) A Flower

C) Some Trees

Files and File Names

The questions on this page produce fifteen extra HTML files, one for each feedback element. The names for these files are assigned automatically when the MTX file is processed. For greatest compatibility, the length of these file names is limited to eight characters as follows:

The first four characters of the main page file name
The letter "Q"
The question number (1, 2, 3...)
The answer letter (A, B, C...)
The ".html" extension

For example, the feedback file for the first answer to question 2 is:

  quesQ2A.html

Note that these file names are arbitrary and will change as you add, move, or eliminate questions from the original MTX file. Be sure to update any hypertext links you make to these files when you edit them.

Edited on February 18, 1996 / Updated on March 5, 1996
MTX 1.3 User's Manual / Copyright 1996 by the University of Florida
Location: http://www.med.ufl.edu/medinfo/mtx/docs/quest.html

Contact: Richard Rathe / rrathe@ufl.edu

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