Up until now, all interactive activities on TextActivities.com have worked by automatically checking interactions immediately. This gives students instant feedback on every single move.
So if rebuilding a text in blocks, clicking the correct next block produces a positive "ping" noise and inserts the block in the next text slot, whereas clicking the wrong next block produces a negative sound and stops you in your tracks. Same with putting words in order, filling gaps, separating words, filling in letters, etc.
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Correct interaction = positive sound and keep advancing.
- Incorrect interaction = negative sound and progress blocked until you find the next correct block, word, gap, letter, etc.
This "immediate feedback" is still the default for the vast majority of the activities. It makes sense for the "gamey" activities, and it stops students from having to write out a whole sentence before realising they were on the wrong track.
Adding more challenge / Requiring greater reflection
BUT I decided I wanted to offer something that puts students on the spot a bit more.
The new Submit mode requires them to build their full response before submitting it for analysis.
There is still immediate feedback, but it only comes after they hit the submit button. This requires much more thinking on the part of the student to consider the structure of their response before submitting, instead of just reacting to the default "roadblock" by just trying something else, such as clicking one of the other options available.
After submitting, students are shown which bits they got right and wrong. They can then re-think their response by, for example, removing blocks or words, reordering blocks or words, deleting and retrying spelling activities, etc.
The SUBMIT activity menu sub-groups
In the Vocab / Matching menu, the SUBMIT activities are as shown below:
And in the Text Rebuild menu, you will find the following SUBMIT activities:
Those familiar with TextActivities will note that most of the activities are ones that already exist in other parts of the activity menu. However, there is one brand-new addition: "No clues".
No clues = text entry from scratch
The new "No clues" activity shows a simple text box. Students must type the correct response from scratch (the correct matching term or the correct next section of text).
A letter count is provided so that students know how long the answer should be, but apart from that, no initial clues (such as word shapes, or initial letters) are given for the first attempt.
When students submit their response, they get feedback regarding the correct words, word sequences and letter sequences in their response. They are also shown clues to help them to reach the correct answer. If they still haven't managed to get it right after 4 attempts, they are given the correct answer and must copy it out to move on.
Answers with missing punctuation, missing or incorrect accents, or in the wrong case (upper/lowercase) are accepted as "correct enough" to move forward. However, these errors incur a small penalty that affects the percentage score.
Accents and capitals in Submit activities
Just like in the "No clues" activity, incorrect accents or (lack of) capitals in the other Submit spelling activities will slightly lower the percentage score, even though the answer is accepted as "correct enough" to move on. Students will only be given the option to correct accents and (lack of) capitals if their answer is not accepted (i.e. if there are other spelling errors in the response).
To make it easy for students to insert accented characters, accents buttons are provided below the text input box.
Those familiar with TextActivities will know that in our regular activities (i.e. those not in the Submit group), accents are added automatically. For example, clicking a normal 'A' on the keyboard automatically inserts an 'À' or 'á' if that's what the space requires.
With the Submit activities, however, students can type whatever they like into the letter spaces before submitting. Because of this, it made sense to require them to actually choose and add the correct accents themselves if they want to earn a perfect 100% score.
Assessment mode
Submit mode activities can also be set in "Assessment mode".
For regular (i.e. non-Submit) activities, assessment mode grades students' first interaction, and the correct interaction is simulated. (e.g. for a Jumbled words activity, no matter which word the student clicks, the correct word is inserted, and students are scored accordingly). This means that students can see immediately if their interaction was correct and can change their approach or re-think their response midway through their answer.
For Submit mode activities in Assessment mode, the principle is similar. The student builds their entire answer and submits it. Only then is it scored and the correct answer revealed. For Gap-fill and Jigsaw rebuilds, this happens at the end of the whole text. For all other activities, it happens after each section.
Vocab tests?
Using one of the Submit spelling activities -- especially the new "No clues" activity -- in combination with Assessment mode, is a great way of setting a vocab test where students' submitted answers are given a percentage score.
And obviously, you can apply the same principle to the text rebuild activities too, especially if you provide either a parallel L1 text, TTS dictation, or both (since rebuilding a text without any clues at all would be quite a challenge...).