Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Quest Log: "Elephants are minor details"

I have kind of left out some minor details. If you have been following this quest you should know by now what the different item types are (Question Banks, Subjects, Levels, Questions, Annotations, Templates and Quiz Items). I believe there has been some neglect in the second half of this list. So I would like to go over those now.

Annotations
These are rich text elements that allow the user to add notes, descriptions, narratives, ect. on the quiz. Pretty basic and straight forward.

Templates
Very similar to questions. When editing a template it is indiscernible from editing a question. The purpose behind templates is that when making a new question the user picks a template to base the new question off of. Basically it allows the user to enter in any common detail and keep DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself).

An example of this would be making the basic True/False setup of a question in the template and avoid typing it out every time they decide to add a T/F question. The user can also enter other details about the author, keywords, ...ect.

Quiz Items
In my last post I went over this item type in detail except for skipping out on the Lock/Unlock concept. This concept was in the works for a long time but was only recently implemented completely. When an item is added to the quiz it is "Locked" to the original item in the Question Bank. They are one and the same - "Our minds are one." Consequently editing one reference will be reflected on the other. This keeps the data centralized.

With locked items a quiz will only store the question reference. Because of this, quiz files are usually very small. Also this makes updating a single question in several quizzes very easy. Keeping DRY once again!

Unlocking an item breaks the mind meld, and the quiz item becomes its own. This is useful for when a small edit specific to a quiz is needed. Once a question is unlocked that lock cannot be restored. So take care when unlocking an item (don't worry though, there is a prompt window).

Besides the unlocking/locking business I think that the items are fairly straightforward and really easy to grasp. At the same time the user is empowered with versatility and is able to easily and quickly create quizzes (and question banks too!).

*saved game*

Note: "Elephants are minor details" is from the song Elephants As Big As Whales by PlayRadioPlay!

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