Interactive Questions

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 two different question formats:

• Simple - single correct answer only
• Multiple Answer - more than one correct answer

Both of these formats can be used for formal on-line testing.

Basic Question Format

The question mark (?) tag is used to begin each question. The tag is followed by the question stem. Questions can include images and hypertext. Here is an example illustrating these elements:

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

Questions will be automatically numbered 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). Correct answer(s) are indicated by stars (*).

Examples

Simple Questions

This is an example of a simple question with progressive feedback.

Question 1 - Single Best Answer

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.

Question 2 - Best 2 Answers

Which of the following are even numbers?

A) One
B) Two
C) Three
D) Four
E) Five

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 3 - Single Best Answer

This is a picture of:

A) The Moon
B) A Flower
C) Some Trees

Files and File Names

The questions on this page produce twelve 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, you should limit the length of these file names to eight characters as follows:

• The main page file name
• The question number (1, 2, 3...)
• The answer letter (A, B, C...)

For example, the feedback file for the first answer to question 3 is quest3A.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.