Virtual Material Toolset: Tutorial 5: Interactive Wheels for Data Capture – UnitusTI Help Center

Introduction

Content Design

Thinking about the content creation

Thinking about Data Capture

Content Creation

Creating Decks and Cards

Introduction

In Tutorial 4 we learned how to use Variables to perform Manual Data Capture during a Session.

In this tutorial, we will learn about a special component, called “Interactive Wheels”, that can be inserted into Slides along with Cards and that offer a new level of interactivity for the Learner.

This is how an Interactive Wheel looks like:

The main usage of Interactive Wheels is selection of either single or multiple options. But they offer other features:

Can support nested levels . It means you can create trees of categories to refine the selection.
During Remote Sessions, both the Learner and the Teacher can interact with the wheel.
Can be connected to Variables, and it means that we can capture data in an automated way, in addition to the Manual Data Capture explored in the previous tutorial.

Note: In September 2021, Interactive Wheels is the first of a series of new functionality designed to automate the data capture process and enrich the interactive experience in your Packs. Please stay tuned for new features in the future!

Content Design

As with the other Tutorials, let’s start with a simple design of what we want to achieve:

In this Pack, we want four slides devoted to practice the classification of animals. We want two kinds of exercises: Display a single picture of an animal (one sample) or display pictures with multiple animals on them (multiple samples).

We also want to provide two levels of difficulty: for small children we are interested in the recognition of general categories like “Mammals, Reptiles, Birds..”. For Learners of a more advanced level, we want them to recognize not only the general category, but also something more specific, like “Mammals - Marsupials” for the picture of a Kangaroo.

This is the list of subcategories that we are going to use ( we pick just a few items for each subcategory for the sake of simplicity, it is not a comprehensive list at all ):

Mammals

Marsupial
Primate
Rodent
Cetacean

Reptiles

Crocodylia
Sphenodontia
Squamata
Testudines

Birds

Galliformes
Anseriformes
Mirandornithes
Columbimorphae

Amphibia

Apoda
Urodela
Anura

Fish

Agnata
Chondricthyes
Osteichthyes

Thinking about the content creation

To keep the demo simple, we will provide two Decks of Cards:

Deck “Animal” will contain cards with a single picture of an animal.
Deck “Animals” will contain cards with multiple (2 to 4) pictures of different animals.

We will use Random Cards to provide random content to our slides, linking them to each Deck according to the need.

We will create two interactive wheels:

Simple Wheel will have only one level with the general options (Mammals to Fish)
Nested Wheel will have a sublevel for each top level, with more detailed options.

Thinking about Data Capture

Interactive Wheels can be linked to almost all the available Variable Types (with the exception of Timer), and the Capture Behavior may change depending on if the Wheel is configured for multiple or single selection.

Note: Please have a look at the User Guide for a detailed description of all the possible configurations of Wheels with Variables.

For the Slide 1 (General Categories with One Sample) it looks like the Variable Type that best fits is “Simple Choice”, because there is a limited number of options and only one can be selected at a given time.

For Slide 2 (General Categories with Multiple Samples) We have the same limited number of options, but we want to allow multiple options selected. The Variable Type for this case is “Multiple Choice”.

Finally, for slides 3 and 4 we are going to use the Variable Type “note” because we have a potentially large set of options and in the case of Multiple Samples we want to list all the options selected.

Content Creation

With our design completed, it is time to create the actual content. We will create Cards, Decks, Variables, Wheels and finally the Slides, in that order.

Creating Decks and Cards

We start by creating two decks: “Animal” and “Animals”:

For the Deck “Animal” We are going to create one card per general category, each card will contain both the picture and the name of the animal:

For the Deck “Animals” we will create three cards, each one with a mix of pictures of animals from different categories:

Note: Please refer to the tutorial 2 to review how to create Cards.

Creating Variables

If we recall the tutorial 4 , in order to create variables we need to consider not only the Type but also the Scope.

To keep our design simple, we will use Scope = Step for all our slides. It means we are going to keep a detailed story of each attempt each time a slide is loaded, even if the same slide is loaded multiple times.

This decision makes sense as we plan to use Random Cards in our slides, and that means that each time a slide is loaded its contents will look different.

This is the design for our variables:

Variable Name	Type	Scope	Description
General Category	Simple Choice	Step	A list of five items for simple choice. Intended to be used with the slide # 1.
General Categories	Multiple Choice	step	A list of five items for multiple choice. Intended to be used with the slide # 2.
Specific Categories	Note	step	A text note to record either a single category or multiple specific categories. Intended to be used with the slides #3 and #4.

And here are the detailed configuration for each one of the Variables:

General Category (Simple Choice):

Please note that we didn’t check the option “Show on all slides”. This is important because we want our variables to be used only in specific slides.

General Categories (Multiple Choice):

Specific Categories (Note):

Creating Wheels

Wheels are created in a similar way than Cards: they can exist outside of Slides, and can be inserted in multiple slides.

To create our first wheel, let’s click on the menu option “Widgets - Wheels”. A empty screen will appear, with a “new” button in the bottom-left corner:

We are asked for a name for the Wheel (“Simple Wheel” in this case) and then a wheel with a single level and three options is created by default:

The default wheel offers three options and our design needs five. We can edit the existing three options and later we will add two new options.

By clicking on any option, we can change its label , value and color. Here we are changing the first option to match our first category: “Mammals”. Notice that we set the value to “mammals” (lowercase) to match the options in the variables that we created earlier:

It is important to keep in mind that the label is the text that appears next to the wheel, visible for the Learner; while the value is the data that is going to be stored in any linked variable.

Note: The value is mandatory as long as you are interested in recording data. It may have a value different to that of the label, depending on the data type selected and the final usage of the data. For example, a wheel can be used to represent emotions (happiness, sadness, rage..) and each label can be associated with a numeric value (like happiness = 10, sadness = 5, rage = 1). By doing this, you can map this wheel to a range variable and convert the qualitative input from the Learner in quantitative recorded data.

Please check the user manual click here for more information and examples.

After we have edited the existing three options, we will add two more to complete our design. Here we can see the addition of the fourth option:

This is the final result for our “Simple Wheel”:

For the second wheel (“Nested Wheel”) we will clone the first wheel we made because the first level is the same, and then we will start adding sublevels for each category.

The following animation shows the cloning process:

In order to create a sub-level, we have to click on the desired parent option and then click on the button “add sublevel”. Notice that an extra curved segment appears in the selected options. It is a visual indicator that the option has a nested level. You can click in the segment to visualize the nested level, and click in the center of the wheel to go back:

Now what rests is to add the pending sublevels and edit and add options to each sublevel until we match our initial design. This is the “Nested Wheel” once completed:

Creating Slides

With all our Cards, Decks, Variables and Wheels in place it is time to create our first Slide! These are the steps to perform:

Use the New Slide Wizard (button “new” in the Slides screen).
Select a layout with a single card.
In the layout content screen, indicate that the card will be a Random Card linked to the Deck “Animal”.
Finish the wizard. The Slide Editor will open.

Select “Objects - Insert Wheel” in the menu.
Move and resize the Random Card and the Wheel until they fill the screen side by side.

Click on the Random Card. Uncheck “selectable” on the left (we want that the Learner can only click on the Wheel, not in the card itself).

Select “slide - variables” and check “General Category” (As all our variables have unchecked the “Use in all slides” fields, we need to indicate in each slide what variables we are interested in).

Select the Wheel and check “single” for selection mode and “General Category” for variable :

The process is the same for the other slides. The only differences are what Deck we link to the Random Card, and what Wheel, what Selection Mode and Variable we will use with the wheel. These are all the configurations required:

Slide	Deck	Wheel	Variable	Selection Mode
Slide 1	Animal	Simple Wheel	General Category	Single
Slide 2	Animals	Simple Wheel	General Categories	Multiple
Slide 3	Animal	Nested Wheel	Specific Categories	Single
Slide 4	Animals	Nested Wheel	Specific Categories	Multiple

Testing the Slides

We can launch a Local Session to test our Pack. In the following video, we will visit each slide once and interact with the wheel to see how the Automatic Data Capture is working:

You can see how for the first two slides, the multiple and single choice Variables are updated automatically when some option in the wheel is clicked.

For the last two slides, the Note stores the values in a similar way, creating a list separated by commas in the case of the wheel with multiple selection enabled.

Final Considerations

Interactive Wheels can be used with different data types, not only Note, Multiple Choice and Single choice. Explore the user manual and imagine different uses for Data Types like Boolean, Counter and Range.
Remember that the Automatic Data Capture feature works also during a Remote Session. It means that the Variables can be affected for the Learner in the remote connection, even as he can’t see the Variables bottom bar in his screen.