Section 5
Content creation step-by-step guides
CourseGenie: Creating GapFill self-test questions
CourseGenie provides 15 different types of self-test question divided into five main formats as
outlined in the section ‘Self-test question styles’ in the overview of courseGenie.
Questions are created using the Question Palette which can be accessed by selecting View >
Toolbars > CG Questions or right-clicking anywhere on the Word menu bar and selecting CG
Questions. Questions can be placed anywhere within your source Word document.
For this activity, you will create a new section in your course materials for questions that may be
relevant to the whole course, and insert some questions within the sections they relate to.
Figure 1: CourseGenie Question Palette
GapFill1
1. Start Word and open (File > Open) the information sheet File management located in
the CC_content folder on the CD-ROM accompanying this pack. This is an adaptation
of the ‘File management’ information sheet from Section 7 ‘Technical know-how’.
Note: if you have completed the previous courseGenie activity, continue using your own
Word source document.
2. Start courseGenie by selecting Tools > courseGenie > Start courseGenie.
You should now have a new drop-down item on the menu bar next to Help, entitled
courseGenie.
Notice that the formatting previously applied to the document has changed. This is
because you will be using styles from the courseGenie style sheet while the program is
running. If you were to stop courseGenie running (Tools > courseGenie > Stop
courseGenie), your original formatting would be reinstated.
3.
Open the Question Palette, scroll down to the bottom of the document and insert
several blank lines. On the first blank line, enter the heading ‘Test your knowledge’ and
apply the cgPageTitle style. Click on the line below the heading and select Gap Fill
and Gap Fill 1 from the Question Palette to open the GapFill1 Question Builder dialog
box.
E-Guides training programme
Section 5
Content creation step-by-step guides
Figure 2: CourseGenie GapFill1 Question Builder dialog box
4. Select the Text tab and enter the following text for the Question Title:
Fill in the gaps in the text below. Try to complete the exercise without referring
back to the course materials.
5. Enter the following text for the Question Text:
Path is a term used to describe where a file is located on a hard drive or on a
removable storage device. To view your file structure, use Windows Explorer or
My Computer. To open a file or folder, you double-click on it. Formatting a
floppy disk will erase the current contents and scan the disk surface for errors.
When you delete files or folders, they are first moved to the Recycle Bin.
6. Select and copy the Question Text then select the Answer tab and paste the text into
Answer Text.
Figure 3: CourseGenie GapFill1 Question Builder dialog box
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Section 5
Content creation step-by-step guides
Highlight the following words one by one and click the Gap button. The words will now
be enclosed in square brackets, denoting that these are the gaps you wish the students
to fill in.
Path [line 1]
Windows Explorer [line 2]
My Computer [line 3]
open [line 3]
erase [line 4]
scan [line 4]
Recycle Bin [lines 5–6]
If the option Show wordbank with question is checked, selectable words are shown
for all the gapped words. In Internet Explorer, if the wordbank is included, it is possible
for the student to use the drag-and-drop technique – you might want to add some extra
instructions describing how to do this.
7. Select the Feedback tab. In GapFill1, rather than evaluating the entries as correct or
incorrect, the feedback simply displays the completed text as specified under Question
Text, followed by any additional feedback you specify here. A Check your answer
button is included for the student to access the popup containing this information. Enter
the following Feedback text:
Refer back to any sections you were unsure about and study them again.
8. Save your file and generate the course to preview your work. To do this, save the
document to a folder called coursegenie on your floppy disk, then select courseGenie
> Generate course.
A Browse for folder dialog box will open. Browse to the folder you have just created,
select it and click OK.
A series of dialog boxes will be displayed showing the progress of the conversion of the
Word document to XML, and the conversion of the XML file to HTML pages. The final
dialog box shows a complete list of pages generated, with the message HTML
generated OK. If the error message HTML files were not generated is displayed, then
return to your document and check that you have made the appropriate amendments
correctly.
E-Guides training programme
Section 5
Content creation step-by-step guides
Figure 4: CourseGenie HTML generate and preview dialog box
9. Ensure that Preview in Browser is checked then click on Close.
Your browser should open and you should be able to see your document converted into
a complete set of course materials in HTML pages.
When you generate your course, all the files will be put into a subfolder within the folder
you selected above. The subfolder will be named after your source Word document,
and a zipped version of this folder will also be created to enable easy export.
To see the files and folders generated by courseGenie, open My Computer or
Windows Explorer and navigate to the folder you created on your floppy disk.
Note: when content is saved, any previous version with the same name will be
overwritten. If you want to retain a copy of a previous version of a generated course,
rename your source Word document before generating the new version of the course.
10. Now experiment with Gap Fill 2, Gap Fill 3 and Gap Fill 4 using the text from GapFill1,
or creating your own. You will find that it is mainly the Feedback options that vary.
Refer back to ‘Self-test question styles’ in the overview of courseGenie for full details of
each of these question styles.
11. To edit an existing self-test question, click in the marked-up Question area of your
source Word document and select the appropriate Question type from the Question
Palette or select Question > Edit. To view the whole question within your source Word
document, select Question > View Extended.
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