Branching Scenario suggestion

Submitted by wowingles1 on Tue, 06/04/2019 - 12:52
Forums: 
Feature requests

Hi guys,

I’m checking your branching scenario tool and I think that it is the perfect tool for making my tutorials more organized and effective. I noticed though that if for instance, you have a branching question with three alternatives. Each alternative has many activities which you can navigate through clicking on the “NEXT” or “PROCEED” button on the right top part of the screen. But the problem comes if you want to go back to the previous activity in the same alternative. Shouldn’t there be a “BACK” or “PREVIOUS” button in case the student had forgotten or wanted to review some info in the same alternative? I was trying to find an answer in both the examples that you have but they have the same issue. 

I was also thinking that navigation inside each alternative would be nice too. Right now my courses are divided into lessons and each lesson has activities which makes navigation smooth and clear for the user, for instance:

Course A-> 

   lesson A1->

       activity 1

       activity 2

   Lesson 2 ->

       activity 1

       activity 2

   Lesson 3 ->

       activity 1

       activity 2

With branching scenario:

Course A->  (would include lessons 1, 2, and 3 and their corresponding activities into the same branching scenario activity). But what happens if I wanted to access activity 2 in lesson 2 from the branching scenario activity and then move to activity 1 in lesson 3, and so on. Navigation becomes confusing and frustrating!  

thanks,

Juan

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otacke's picture

otacke

Tue, 06/04/2019 - 15:35

Hi wowingles1!

I will start working on a "back feature" soon.

Branching Scenario is really not intended to be a container for a course / a replacement for a learning management system. I think using Interactive Book might be a better way to go if you want to have a structured way to present lessons with activities.

Best,
Oliver

wowingles1

Tue, 06/04/2019 - 16:51

Hi oliver,

I completely understand that this feature is not intended to be used as an LMS or a container for a course. My comment is because I strongly consider that Branching Scenario is a good feature and it could be even better. But as a teacher and in my experience creating material, people get very frustrated especially if they can't find the info they want in a matter of a "second" or "right now".

For instance, a student does and finishes the "ART OF EUROPE ACTIVITY" that you have as an example. Then after some days, they want to REVIEW some specific info about Leonardo da Vinci (renaissance), Spanish Baroque, and other painters in the Modern period. In order to do this, they would have to:

option 1: Start the activity and do some clicks to find Leonardo da Vinci (renaissance) and then reload the page re-start the activity a second time and try to find a way to Spanish Baroque and then do the same for the Modern Period. (not very fun and very time-consuming).

option 2: Start the activity and after finding the info about Leonardo da Vinci start clicking "back" and "back" and "back" ...until they finally get to Spanish Baroque and then do the same in order to get to the modern period, you know! 

I understand the essence and the logic behind the activity but maybe a student/user won't and could make him/her hesitant about doing these type of activities again JUST BECAUSE THEY CAN'T FREELY NAVIGATE THROUGHOUT THE ACTIVITY. (besides the fact Branching is not intended to be an LMS or a course container).

Again, thanks for this amazing feature and for taking the time to read my suggestions and for replying them. 

Cheers, 

 

Juan

otacke's picture

otacke

Wed, 06/05/2019 - 07:24

Hi Juan!

Branching Scenario simply was not designed for use cases like that (information retrieval). It is not "Hyperlinking Scenario".

Cramming more and more features into a content type in order to cover all kinds of particular requirements usually makes them worse because it gets harder and harder to use.

I can agree to disagree, but if I could, I would not vote for that feature.

Best,

Oliver

BV52's picture

BV52

Wed, 06/05/2019 - 04:46

Hi Oliver,

Inform me once you are done ;-)

-BV52

otacke's picture

otacke

Wed, 06/05/2019 - 09:28

Hey BV!

I will, although pull requests are usually recognized without having to hint to them.

Cheers,

Oliver 

wowingles1

Tue, 06/04/2019 - 16:50

Hi oliver,

I completely understand that this feature is not intended to be used as an LMS or a container for a course. My comment is because I strongly consider that Branching Scenario is a good feature and it could be even better. But as a teacher and in my experience creating material, people get very frustrated especially if they can't find the info they want in a matter of a "second" or "right now".

For instance, a student does and finishes the "ART OF EUROPE ACTIVITY" that you have as an example. Then after some days, they want to REVIEW some specific info about Leonardo da Vinci (renaissance), Spanish Baroque, and other painters in the Modern period. In order to do this, they would have to:

option 1: Start the activity and do some clicks to find Leonardo da Vinci (renaissance) and then reload the page re-start the activity a second time and try to find a way to Spanish Baroque and then do the same for the Modern Period. (not very fun and very time-consuming).

option 2: Start the activity and after finding the info about Leonardo da Vinci start clicking "back" and "back" and "back" ...until they finally get to Spanish Baroque and then do the same in order to get to the modern period, you know! 

I understand the essence and the logic behind the activity but maybe a student/user won't and could make him/her hesitant about doing these type of activities again JUST BECAUSE THEY CAN'T FREELY NAVIGATE THROUGHOUT THE ACTIVITY. (besides the fact Branching is not intended to be an LMS or a course container).

Again, thanks for this amazing feature and for taking the time to read my suggestions and for replying them. 

Cheers, 

Juan

otacke's picture

otacke

Thu, 06/06/2019 - 14:45

Hi Juan!

I just completed the feature and have created a pull request to add it to the official sources.

@BV: I added acceptance criteria for JIRA to the pull request message. Feel free to amend them as needed.

Best,
Oliver

BV52's picture

BV52

Fri, 06/07/2019 - 05:19

Hi Oliver,

Thank you for this. I created a task in Jira and you can follow the progress here.

-BV52

wowingles1

Mon, 06/17/2019 - 00:38

Hi there.

I am doing some tests with your “Branch scenario” tool since I find it wonderful and I would like to use it throughout my site. Yesterday, I started creating an activity with BS where I use many interactive videos. Some of these activities involve questionnaires with “open-ended questions”. When performing the tests on my smartphone I found that open questions can be answered without any problem when the cell phone is in portrait orientation. Here, when the user needs to use the cell phone’s keypad, there is no problem.

The problem arises when you fit the cell phone to landscape orientation. Here, when you try to type something the Android keypad is displayed and when you enter any text in the answer box and click on enter, the activity immediately disappears and the only thing being displayed is a black box with a line in the middle and the video controls o it. NO MORE!

As I said before, my goal is to implement the branching scenario throughout my site. But now that I noticed this problem, I don’t think I can implement it, at least in the short term, until you can give me a better view of the complexity of the problem.

Thanks for the time and help