interaction – Onlignment Archive

Interaction in online media – a summary

The following table provides a summary of the four types of online interaction that we have explored in this mini-series of posts. For fuller descriptions, click on the links.

Type of interaction	Examples	Applications
Selecting	Multiple-choice questions Making selections within images Making selections within audio-visual events Rating scales Hyperlinks Menus	These interactions are easy to set up, easy for the user to work with and easy for the application to act upon because the user is constrained in what they can select by the options that are made available. However, they do not allow the user a free choice and, in when used for assessment, test only for recognition of a right answer, not recall.
Supplying	Text input Numerical input Spoken input Drawing	Here the user is given much more scope to make their input without the constraint of selecting from a list. These interactions are easy enough to set up but very hard for an application to act upon intelligently without extensive programming (think of all the code that’s used to process a search query). When used for assessment, all but the very simplest one word or numeric answers will need to be reviewed by an assessor.
Organising	Matching Sequencing	These interactions are much less frequently used generally in online applications but have a very definite role to play in interactive learning materials.
Exploring	Scrolling Zooming and panning Audio and video transport controls Stepping backwards and forwards through a sequence of items Rotating a 3D image Moving an avatar in a 3D space	The purpose of these interactions is not to gather information that the application can process, but rather to provide the user with an opportunity to search within a space or body of content. These interactions are engaging and immersive, and so have a valuable role to play in more user-centred online learning resources.

Interaction in online media – exploring

And so to the last in our series of posts examining the various ways in which users can interact online. In case you missed them, you might want to look first at the introductory post for this series, Interaction in online media and the posts covering the three other forms of interaction – selecting, supplying and organising.
The fourth category – exploring – is somewhat different, in that it is much more user-centered. The purpose of the interaction is not to gather information that the program can process, but rather to provide the user with an opportunity to search within a space or body of content. The following examples should make this clear:

Scrolling a document or menu, using scroll bars, a mouse wheel or a touch gesture.
Navigating within an audio-visual resource, such as an animation, video or audio file. This could include rewinding, fast forwarding or viewing in slow motion, typically accomplished with a transport bar.
Zooming or panning a large image such as a map or, on a mobile device, the contents of a document.
Stepping back and forwards through a slide show.
Rotating a 3D image, such as a model of a piece of equipment.
Moving an avatar in a 3D world using keys or game controllers.

All of these interactions put the user very firmly in control – they determine what they see and how. And if we put all this in an adult learning context, you can soon see how exploring is going to be more engaging and more immersive than any number of multiple-choice questions and navigation buttons.

Interaction in online media – organising

We continue our exploration of the ways in which users can interact with online media by looking at those interactions that require users to sort and connect items on the screen.
In case you missed them, you might want to look first at the introductory post for this series, Interaction in online media and the posts covering what are undoubtedly the two principal forms of interaction – selecting and supplying.
Organising is not so prevalent as a mode of interaction but you’ll definitely need to use it from time to time, particularly in online learning materials and assessments.
Matching
Matching interactions require the user to identify related pairs in two sets of items. Typically one of the sets is made up of concepts and the other of attributes which characterise those concepts, for example:

Match these animals with their natural habitats.
Match these regions with their primary economic outputs.
Match these books with their authors.

Matching can be accomplished with drag and drop interfaces or by selecting matching items from a drop-down list. Most e-learning authoring tools provide one or both of these options. Note that the lists don’t have to have an equal number of options.
There are two ways in which these interactions can work: you can have the user make all the matches and then submit their answer as a whole, or you can deal with each match as a separate answer, rejecting the mis-matches and providing feedback. The former is better suited to a mastery test; the latter to learning by having a go.
Sequencing
In this case, the user places a number of items in sequence, whether that’s their logical order (ordering) or their order of importance (ranking):

Place these steps in their correct order.
Place these events in time sequence.
Place these risks in order of seriousness.
Rank these authoring tools in order of preference.

Again these interactions can be accomplished with drag and drop interfaces or by selecting numeric positions from a drop-down list. Another possibility is that the user selects an item and then uses up and down arrows to re-position that item in the list. Most e-learning authoring tools will support at least one of these.
We have one form of interaction left to review and that’s ‘exploring’.

Interaction in online media – selecting

A few weeks ago, in Interaction in online media, I explained why I believe that interaction is so fundamental to our online experience, how it helps us to navigate, to configure, to converse, to explore, to provide information and to answer questions. I also described four basic mechanisms for interacting online – selecting, supplying, sorting/connecting and exploring. I said I’d go into these in a little more detail, so I’m starting now with selecting.
There are many forms that selections can take, some extremely commonplace, some more rarely deployed:
Multiple-choice questions (MCQs)
In this familiar format, the user is presented with a question stem and picks an answer from the options provided. Typically the stem is presented textually, but may be more elaborate than this, using images, audio or video as required. The options are also usually textual, but could as easily be pictorial. Some examples:

Santa Cruz is the capital of La Palma. True or false?
Which of the following countries is a member of the European Community?
Tick those items on the list which best represent how you feel about working with customers?
Click on the picture of the person you would select for the position.

The simplest questions ask the user to make a binary choice – yes or no, true or false. Multi-choice questions give a wider range of alternatives, typically between 3 to 6, from which the user chooses one option. With multiple selection questions, the user can choose more than one option from the list.
MCQs can be used as polls, where the objective is simply to gauge opinion, or as elements within learning materials and assessments. When the objective is to check knowledge, then well-constructed MCQs certainly can be valuable, although they can only assess recognition (of a fact, an instance of a concept, a cause or effect, a place or position, etc.) rather than the ability to recallthe same. Generally speaking, recognition will always be easier than recall. If the user needs to be able to recall something specifically to carry out a task effectively, then an MCQ (or any other interaction involving selection) will not test this adequately.
MCQs can also be used to challenge the user to make critical judgments, to think for themselves:

What would you do if you were …. ?
What do you think was the cause of … ?
How could … have been avoided?
How would you remedy … ?

Ideally the user should be provided with a response that is tailored to their particular choice. This could take the form of some immediate feedback, but could also result in the scenario being taken to another stage with further decisions for the user to take. Branching scenarios may sound complex, but in fact they are just MCQs sequenced conditionally in this way.
Pictorial selections
In this case the user is asked to select one or more parts of a picture, for example:

Identify the tibula in this diagram of this skeleton.
Where on this map of Europe is Estonia?
Identify the safety risks in this photograph.

As you would expect, these interactions are extremely useful for assessing any knowledge that has a spatial element.
Event selections
Another interesting variant is to ask the user to stop an audio track, video or animation when they spot something in particular, for example:

Press the stop button when you har jargon used unnecessarily.
Click on the pause button whenever you spot a good example of non-directive questioning.

This format, while more technically complex to implement, could play a valuable role in checking whether users can recognise particular behaviours or circumstances. It could also be implemented with a group in a virtual classroom, perhaps by asking participants to click the ‘raise hand’ button, or something similar, when they spot something occurring in a piece of audio or video.
Rating scales
Here the user is presented with a series of statements and is asked to rate each one against a pre-defined scale. This scale may expressed numerically (1-5, 1-10, etc.) or using labels (strongly disagree, disagree, etc.).
Hyperlinks
We all know what these do. A hyperlink, whether textual or pictorial, navigates the user to a different resource or a different part of the same resource. Links can be displayed separately or embedded within textual content.
Menus
Menus provide a more structured means for navigation and for accessing the various features available within a resource. Menus can be activated as simple lists, rather like multiple-choice questions, as scrolling lists, as rows or columns of buttons, as drop-down menus, as tabs, or as hierarchical trees. Menu selections can also be made by voice recognition.
All sorts of devices can be used for making selections, including keys, a mouse, a touch screen, or the user’s own voice. Whatever the device, the user is restricted to choosing from predetermined options, a constraint that is lifted when we take a look next time at the second form of interaction, ‘supplying’.