Lesson 2: Creating a Multiple-Choice Exercise

JBC creates multiple-choice or true/false quizzes. Each question can have an unlimited number of answers and any number of them can be correct. You can specify that the student must choose all the correct answers or any one of the correct answers for that question to marked correct. Specific feedback is given to the student in response to each answer, and a percentage score is displayed after each correct answer is chosen.

See an example of a multiple-choice exercise

Assignment: In this lesson, you will create a 5-question multiple-choice or true/false exercise. Time: 1 hour

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Step 1: Open Hot Potatoes and click on the JBC potato.

The Main JBC Window

The main window of the JBC program appears below. It is resizable so that you can give yourself more space for filling in questions, answers and feedback. To resize the window click and drag on the bottom-right corner of the window.

Step 2: Enter an exercise title and save

The title of the exercise or quiz you are currently working on should be entered in the box next to Title. It will become the main heading of the Web page you create. Save the file as lastname_jbc (for example, my file would be called tyler_jbc) into your Exercises folder. The program will automatically add a .jbc extension to your file. You should save your file regularly as you type in new questions and answers. Don't type in 20 questions and then have the program quit and make you lose all of your work!

Step 3: Enter a question

Enter the question in the box under Question. To move from question to question, click on the up or down arrows next to the question number. You may have as many questions as you want. The number of the current question appears in the box underneath Item. Use the up and down arrows to move through your questions.

Step 4: Enter your answers

Type your answers in these boxes. You may have as many answers as you want in each question. If you want only two, three or four, just fill the first few boxes. The program will ignore any empty boxes when creating the Web pages. The letter for each of five current answers to the current question appear in a column on the left side of the window. Use the small arrow buttons between the question and answer box to scroll to more answers for the current question. As you scroll through answers, the letters in the left column change.

Step 5: Select the correct answer(s)

Use the check boxes next to each answer to specify whether an answer is correct or not. You can specify as many correct answers as you want for each question, but of course each question must have at least one. The box next to User must select all correct answers is enabled only if you have at least two choices checked as correct. If this box is checked, then the student must check all the correct answers in order to have the page consider the question answered correctly. You would use this in a question like "select all the items in the list below that have a certain property". If this box is unchecked, then the student must check any one of the answers marked as correct for the page to consider the question to be answered correctly.

Step 6: Provide feedback

"Feedback" is what you want the user to see when he or she clicks on any particular answer. This might be as simple as "Correct!" or "Wrong!", but usually it will be something more helpful, explaining why an answer is not correct, or giving extra information to help the student.

You can fill in the feedback boxes in automatically if you wish, using Auto-response on the Manage Questions menu. Auto-response fills in the feedback only for those question you have already created which don't have any other response in them. It does not fill in the feedback boxes for questions you create after choosing Auto-response. You may of course make some more questions and then choose Auto-response again.

Step 7: Configure your potato

JBC Configuration Details

The configuration for JBC includes a lot of prompts, because the exercises give extensive feedback to the student about the answer he or she has entered.

You can configure miscellaneous features such as the title, instructions, feedback, and the appearance of colors on your web page by clicking on the configuration button shown at the top of the window and clicking on individual tabs (Click here for a description of the button bar).

JBC has a few more options specific to the JBC potato in the Other tab. Some of these consist of showing a limited number of questions (such as picking 10 random questions from a test bank of 50 questions), show questions one by one, showing the score after each correct guess, and shuffling questions and answers. This window is shown below.

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To return to the main exercise window, click on the edit exercise button (the button with the numbers 1, 2, 3).

I would recommend removing buttons (click on the button tab) from your potato unless you plan on making your web exercises link to each other. For more details about configuring your JBC potato, click here.

Step 8: Make a web page!

Proceed to Lesson 3 - Creating a short answer exercise using the JQuiz potato!