Tokyo - Activities | Essay

Activities with "Essay"  answers allow students to write their own answers.
This type of questions does not offer self-correction, so they are only appropriate if they are going to be assessed by a teacher or mentor. The student answer is sent to the LMS and this platform will be required to interpret this information correctly and send it to the mentor. If intelligent systems like Netex SmartContent are used, it will be possible to assess and grade student answers.

This type of activity is divided in three areas:

A. Wording area. It includes a sample text by default, but other components like images, audios, and videos can be added as well.

B. Writing area to answer questions. Students write their answer in this field.

C. Feedback. This type of activity only admits adding a neutral feedback. Feedback text should be as neutral as possible.

Setup process

• Step 1. Set up activity properties
• Step 2. Set up the wording
• Step 3. Set up the writing area
• Step 4. Advanced layout design: how to add columns
• Step 5. Configure feedback

Step 1. Set up activity properties

After adding the activity, go to the "Properties" tab and configure them:

PROPERTY	DESCRIPTION
Title	Activity title.
Weight	This property is only avaliable with a quiz with a "Quiz" view. All the questions have the same weight by default, but we can modify how much a question counts towards the final score. See here to know how to calculate quiz scores depending on the weight of each question included in the quiz.
Attempts	This is only applied when we add questions within a quiz with an "Activity block" view (see here). This property allows indicating the number of attempts available to complete the activity.If you want unlimited attempts, write "0" attempts. (It will only be finished after overcoming the activity).

Step 2. Set up the wording

1. Write the text for the question (see here the setup options available for texts).

2. Optionally, you can add more components within the wording. Make sure you select the wording (you will easily find it within the breadcrumb trail) before going to the "Add" tab and including the components you need.

Step 3. Set up the writing area

3. Select the page and access the "Properties" tab. This text field behaves like a column, so we can change its size and position, if needed:

PROPERTY	DESCRIPTION
Size	The text field works like a column, so it occupies 12 spaces in the screen by default (that is, 100% of available space). We can change the number of spaces from 1 to 12 in order to adjust the space occupied by the text.
Offset	This option allows creating a breaking space on the left of the option (1-12 spaces).
It's the last column	This property allows marking an option as the last one within a row. This means that the second column will be placed below the first column, so that the third column appears as the last one within the row. This example shows that more options could have been included in the first row, but we have decided to insert them in the next row.

4.  If needed, you can add more text fields within the activity.

Step 4. Advanced layout design: how to add columns

Normally wordings and text fields are enough to configure activities correctly, but sometimes we want to add especial elements (images, audios, etc.) and create more complex layout designs. So, we will be able to add "Columns".
Columns can be inserted anywhere: after wordings, after answer options, etc.

Within a column, we can add different elements: images audios, videos, texts or answer options. Within the "Properties" tab, we can configure properties like "Size", "Offset" and "It's the last column" (as mentioned in Step 2).

Use of columns allows creating complex layouts like the following:

Step 5. Configure feedback

Finally, we write the texts for neutral feedback. It is a generic feedback and we recommend making it look as neutral as possible. It is possible to delete it, if preferred.
Additionally, we can add some positive feedback.