When building an activity, you can add content and prompts. Content is what you provide to the learner and prompts are how they respond.
Text Content is used to provide blocks of rich text. With the editing toolbar, you can insert lists, tables, links, images, files, and other media content. When inserting media, you can click on the embed tab and paste in embed links from other sites. The difference between Text Content and a Text Prompt is with content, you provide the text and with a prompt, the student responds to it.
Recordings are used to provide recorded audio from your browser. To record yourself, click the blue microphone icon. Your browser will typically ask permission to use your microphone with a prompt towards the top of the screen. The icon will turn red to indicate that you are recording and you can click it again to stop. After finishing recording, you can click play to listen to it. You can also click the small x to clear it and record again.
Audio Content is used to provide an audio file. It is essentially identical to recordings, the only difference that Audio is uploaded rather than recorded.
Video Content can be used to add a video from YouTube. After pasting a link, you'll see a preview of the video. If you only want to show a portion of the video, you can select Play Snippet, navigate to the starting point, click Mark, and navigate to the end point and click Mark. By default, the end point will be the end of the video. Presently, we only support videos from YouTube but intend to add additional services as the need arises.
Prompts are used for students to respond. Each prompt has a number of points associated with them and an optional description.
Text prompts are for open ended responses. You can set the length to be short where the student gets a one line text box for their response or long where they'll receive a larger text box. For short responses, students can hold down a letter on their keyboard and a popup will appear with the applicable accents. We recommend using a short response for a sentence or less and a long response for 2-3 paragraphs in length. Text prompts are manually graded and do not allow for any formatting in the students' responses.
Multiple Choice prompts offer multiple options and require students to select the correct answer or correct combination of answers. If you select a single answer then students will only be able to select one option. If you choose multiple options where multiple responses are correct, then the student will be given checkboxes. Choices are randomized when given to the students. Multiple Choice prompts are can be automatically graded. For answers with multiple correct answers, partial is credit is not given; students must chose the correct combination of options to receive credit.
Fill Blank prompts require students to fill in one or more missing words in an incomplete sentence, statement, or phrase. After inputing the input text, you can either highlight a passage and click Mark as Blank or alternatively double click single words. Fill in the Blank questions can be automatically graded. To allow for multiple correct answers or other advanced features, check out our Fill in the Blank Prompts article. For questions with multiple blanks, partial credit it not presently offered. As a best practice, we recommend that answers in blank fields be no more than one or two words to ensure auto-grading accuracy.
Recording prompts are similar to Recording content items, the only difference is that the students records themselves. Recording prompts are best used for open ended questions and require manual grading.
Spoken Response prompts allow you to ask students questions that should be responded to using their voice. You can add a list of acceptable responses. For a response with variables such as a student's name or age, you can add a wildcard using an asterisk followed by the name of the variable. For example, you could ask the student "How old are you?" and the accepted response "I am *age years old" would allow "I am eighteen years old" or "I am twenty-one years old" since it ignores the word between "years" and "old". Spoken Responses are automatically graded using voice recognition. Since there are sometimes issues with beginning learners and voice recognition built for native speakers, we give you the option to save a recording. On the submissions page, you will be able to see the student's most recent recording and the number of total attempts. The speech engine used is currently supported in Google Chrome. As a best practice, we recommend that answers in Spoken Responses be no more than one or two words to ensure auto-grading accuracy. For open ended answers meant to be manually graded, we recommend the Recording prompt.
Dropbox prompts allow student to upload work that was not completed or created on the Lingco Classroom platform. File uploaded answers allow the instructor to incorporate the work with the assignment overall and assign points for the work. Students can upload standard office document types, and images. Dropbox prompts are only manually graded.
We're often adding new activity item types based on user feedback. If there's something that you would like to see added to activities, let us know!