Authoring question viewers and answer viewers in INDIE

Authors enter questions and answers without associating them with the interface that students will use (meaning they specify just text and pointers to movie and picture files) with database tools described in the next chapter. They define multiple contexts (such as reference, test, and remediation) and associate questions and answers to those contexts.

While authoring an ASK system interface for a given context, authors drag out a pair of modgits from the palette. The first is called an ``answer viewer.'' Answer viewers show answers (i.e., any kind of picture, text, or movie media item entered in the model). Any answer that is ``shown'' is played in the answer viewer modgit. Figure 4.6 shows the kinds of attributes authors can edit.

  

Figure 4.6: An answer editor.

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Figure 4.7: Interface and model interaction during question asking.

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The second modgit is a ``question viewer,'' which holds a list of available questions, each represented by a button. It is resizeable and supports different looks and styles of question button. When a student clicks on a question button, an answer viewer then shows the correct media item while the buttons for followup questions appear in the appropriate question viewers. This is shown in Figure 4.7.