Virtual Materials Toolset: Tutorial 4: Manual Data Capture – UnitusTI Help Center

Introduction

Creating the slides

General steps:

Introducing Variables

Designing the Variables

Configuring the Variables

Capturing Data during a Session

The Manual Data Capture Tool Bar

The Session Summary

Final Considerations

Additional resources

Introduction

In the previous tutorials, we learned how to design and create different types of Slides to populate or customize our Packs.

But creating the content is only half of the task that VM can help you with:

After creating or choosing a Pack, you will sit with a learner to execute a Session. Typically, sessions can have one or more learning objectives (or targets). While the Learner interacts with the material, the user is able to answer questions regarding these targets, questions like the following:

Did the learner achieve each target?
How was their performance? How many mistakes did they make before arriving at the correct answer?
Did the learner need prompts to discover the right answer? Were there prompts?
How was the general behavior of the learner during the session? Were they engaged or distracted?
Did something outstanding happen during the session worth recording? For example, the learner arrived nervous to the session, or the caregiver requested to pick up the learner earlier than usual.

VM offers a complete system to record the answers to all the previous questions and more.

Like the previous tutorials, we will create a diagram to design our Pack.

Creating the slides

The Pack for this tutorial will comprise three Slides, each presenting a sample card on the top with the symbol for a number, and in the bottom, three cards in a row with number’s names (one with the correct answer and two random comparisons).

Below there is a short description of the steps. Please refer to tutorial 3 for specific details on how to create the Slides.

General steps:

Create ten Cards with the layout 5 “Only Label”. Use the digits from 1 to 5 as labels for each one.
Create ten Cards what the layout 5 “Only Label”. Use the words “one” to “five” as labels for each one.
Create a Deck called “Number Names” and copy the cards with words into it.

The following screenshot displays how the screen with all cards should look like.

And the content of the Deck “Number Names” will look like the image below.

For each slide, follow these steps:

Create a slide with the layout “Three Comparisons”.
Select one of the symbols cards for the top Card (the sample). Mark it as “anchored”. For example, “1”.
Mark the top card as “anchored” and uncheck “selectable”.
Select one of the bottom cards and assign the card that matches the symbol in step 2. For example: “One”.
Mark the remaining two Cards as Random Cards, linked to the “Number Names” deck.
Mark all the bottom cards as “selectable” and uncheck “anchored”.
Select the option “Shuffle on Load” for the slide.

The screenshot below shows how the “New Slide Wizard” looks during the creation of the slide.

And the slide should look like the following image:

And finally, the list of Slides will look like the next screenshot:

Introducing Variables

The variables’ purpose is to store session data in VMT. Therefore, similar to the design of the slides, we should allocate some time to think about what data we want to store to configure our Pack’s Variables.

We will first present an overview of Variables and then continue with the design of the variables for our Tutorial:

In order to create Variables, please click on the “Variables - Manage” option on the top menu bar as the following image highlights:

By default, the list of variables is empty. So let’s use the “New” button in the bottom-left corner to create a new one. Enter the name “Session Note” when asked.

A Variable has different options, depending on its type. The two more important options are the “Data Type” and the “Scope”, the screenshot below shows where they are.

The “Data Type” indicates WHAT you want to store. Whether It is a true/false variable, a number, or a text?

VMT offers the following seven Data Types:

Boolean (true/false)
Counter (numeric, increase/decrease)
Range (numeric, slider)
Text (Text Note)
Simple Choice (List with only one possible selection)
Multiple Choice (List with multiple selections)
Timer (Duration in seconds)

For a detailed description of each type, please refer to the VMT User Manual .

“Scope” indicates HOW MANY TIMES (during a Session) you want to create a record for the variable.

Session Scope: it is used to record only one variable for the whole Session.
Pack Scope : it is used to record one data point for each time that you load the same Pack during a session (Remember that during Local and Remote Sessions, you can load the same Pack multiple times).
Slide Scope : it is used to record one data point for each Slide in the Pack. If the Slide is loaded multiple times, the application will save only the last record.
Step Scope : it is used to record one data point each time a slide is loaded. If the same slide is loaded multiple times, then multiple records of the same variable will be saved (as different slide steps).

Designing the Variables

To clarify the concepts of Data Type and Scopes , let’s revisit the questions about the data we want to collect in this tutorial:

Question 1: Did the learner achieve each target? (True/False type)

Question 2: How many mistakes did she make before arriving at the correct answer? (Counter Type)

Question 3: Which prompts were used? (Multiple Choice Type)

Question 4: What was the behavior during the session? (Simple Choice Type)

Question 5: Additional session notes (Note Type)

Scopes can be defined as follows:

It seems we need to answer Question 1 once per each Slide (Slide Scope).
We may want to record Questions 2 and 3 answers per slide attempt (Step Scope).
Questions 4 and 5 seem to be required only once for the whole session (Session Scope).

Configuring the Variables

Equipped with our design of Data Types and Scopes, we can configure the variables for our pack.

First, we will set up the variable for Question 5, its data type is the “Session Note”, and its Scope is “Session”:

For Questions 2, Scope “Step” and data type “Counter” (Note that the “Show on all slides” option is checked, and the counter starts at zero):

For Questions 3, use “Multiple Choice” data type and scope “Step”.Next, you have to provide the list of prompts, as the following screenshot shows. You can do it by clicking on the button “Add” next to Options:

Analogously, for the “Single Choice” data type of Question 4, this one has Session Scope:

Finally, create the Variable for Question 1, its data type is “True/False” and its scope is “Step”:

Capturing Data during a Session

Launch a Local Session in Test mode (it does not associate the data with any actual Learner) to test the configuration:

Close the Current Pack to go to the Home Screen.
Then, click on “Launch Session”.
Check the “test session” checkbox and click on “Local”.
A new tab will open. Once it loads, open the Pack “Tutorial 4: Manual Data Capture”.

The Manual Data Capture Tool Bar

In the Local Session window, you will find the “Slides” and “Data” buttons in the bottom-left corner.

With these buttons, you can change between the Slides Preview and the Manual Data Capture Toolbar.

The Slides Preview is the default option:

If you click in the Data option when no slide is selected, you will see only the Variables for the Session and the Pack Scopes:

Let’s write something in our Session Note Variable, save the changes, load the first slide and go back to the Data Toolbar. The animated image below has a demonstration:

You can verify that when a Slide is loaded, the content of the Data Toolbar also includes the Slide and Step scopes:

Each scope has a color, and you can filter the scopes on the left side of the Data Toolbar.

Notice that the session variables are available for edition here. So, let’s update the values of all the variables and load the same slide (using the button “Save and Reload”); the animated gif below shows a demonstration:

At this point, we are on slide “Slide 1”, but we are at the second step (check the step on the left side of the bar).

While session variables had preserved their values, we can see that Step Variables (the variables that are in light green) show their default values because they are ready to capture new records for step 2:

Ultimately, we are going to load another slide and then finalize the session (see the gif below for a demonstration):

Now, we are in Slide 2, at Step 3:

To finalize the Session and generate the Session Report, click on “Session - Finalize” as the following gif displays:

The Session Summary

The final report includes a section per Scope; Session and Pack scopes are presented first (check for the results of the “Session Note” and “Attitude” variables).

Then, per Pack loaded during the session, the summary reports the variables with Slide and Step scopes.

In the example, you can see the three steps that we executed, the first two for “Slide 1” and the number three for “Slide 2”. In the Data column, we can trace the change in values of every variable.

Final Considerations

Careful design of Data variables is vital for analytics, both to follow the learner’s progress over time and to compare the performance of multiple learners over the same variables.
A good tip for reusing variables is creating a Pack to hold all the variables you want to use across your sessions and then importing the variables to copy the configuration easily.