Teach and instruct items are those that present key concepts to learners.This is content that your learners will see as instruction while working through your Cerego set. Your learners can also access these items from outside the set.There are two types ofTeach and Instruct items: PDFs and pages.
Upload PDF
Upload a PDF into a Teach and Instruct item and place it where you'd like in the learning path. This can be useful to give your learners convenient access to manuals, guides, or required readings in the same place as the rest of their course.
Make a Page
Complex image diagrams, bulleted lists, and text explanations can all be presented easily within Cerego Teach and Instruct items. The Make a Page option lets you quickly and easily create your own custom resources for learners, and make them available in the same place as everything else they are learning. For example, you can provide an overview of the learning objectives, or interesting context for the rest of your set. A page can include any combination of text, images, and embedded media.
Embed material
You can also directly embed media, such as videos or slide presentations, as separate items or within a single item. Just give your media a title and use the following guidelines to insert an embed link for one of the formats we support:
Teach and Instruct items are shown to learners only once, but are always available to the learner and are never graded or scheduled for practice over time.
If you’d like information to be presented but not practiced, add it as an Instructional Item. PDF, text, video, slideshows, and more are all supported for this item type.
Quiz Items
In Create, there are four ways you can assess a learner’s understanding of material presented in Teach and Instruct items. These are represented by three different Quiz item templates:
- Question & Answer items
- Sequences
- Diagrams
Each quiz template is equipped with a variety of features to help you create content quickly and easily. Once your items are in action, learners will continue to benefit from Cerego’s personalized review schedule.
Question & Answer (Q&A) items
Writing Q&A items should be familiar territory: Most of the quizzes, tests, and exams that we’ve taken in our lives use this format. This item template is the most versatile quiz item in Cerego and can be used to present the following types of questions to learners:
- True/False questions
- Multiple Choice questions (questions with 1 correct answer)
- Select All That Apply/Multiple Select questions (questions with more than 1 correct answer)
Whether you’re writing unique content for the first time or leveraging an existing bank of items, the Q&A template is designed to make Cerego easy, fast, and friendly for the content you’re already using and allows for the following features:
- Auto populate answers: Once you enter your correct answer, the Smart Answer pop up will useNative language technology to provide suggestions for distractors (wrong answer options) that can automatically be inserted for the question you are writing.
- Explanations:You can insert unique remediation and feed back for each answer option
- Images:You can insert images with the question stem and with each answer option.
- Audio:You can insert audio files to support or explain each step
- Attach instructional items:You can also link relevant instructional items to Q&A items. These will be presented to learners after they answer the question.
Manual Q&A Item Creation
The general process for manually creating Q&A items is simple:
1. Select the Q&A item template.
2. Insert your question stem.Write your question in the “Ask a question box”
3. Populate your answer options. Here, you have two options:
a. Manual entry: Insert your correct answer or answers manually.
b. Automated answer options: After you enter a correct answer, the Smart Answer tool will pop up with auto-generated answer options. You can click the plus symbol next to each response to add it to your item. You can also choose to hide suggestions if you have particular options you’d like to insert manually.
4. Enter your rationales/feedback for each option. You can insert descriptions in the“Explanation” boxes that explain why the correct answers are right, and why incorrect answers are plausible, but ultimately incorrect. You do not have to enter feedback for each option in order for the item to function properly.
Even though feedback for the Q&A item isn’t required, timely and unique feedback that explains why an incorrect answer is incorrect can greatly enhance learner understanding of important concepts you are presenting.
5. Identify correct answer(s). Be sure that you select the check box to the left of each answer option to denote the correct answer or answers.
6. Attach instructional item. At the bottom of the item template, you can choose to attach one or more instructional items within the set you are creating.Learners will then be able to review relevant instructional items after they answer the item.
After you’ve entered your Question, Answers, and optional Explanations, your item will automatically save. You can choose to preview the item by clicking the “Preview Item” button in the top right corner or click the green plus button in the bottom left to create your next item.
Automatic Q&A Item Generation
The other way you can begin to create Q&A items is by creating them from a Make a Page item:
1. Create a Make a Page Item. See theMake a Page Item article for more information on this step.
2. Click on underlined words. After you create a Make a Page item, Smart Create will provide underlined words as possible Q&A items. Click on an underlined word to create a Q&A item based on that concept.
3. Populate item. Follow steps 2–5in the Manual Q&A Item creation article to appropriately populate your item. The Smart Create tool will populate some fields, including automatically attaching the base instructional item.
Sequences
Sequence items can be used to teach anything that occurs in a specific order. This might be:
- Steps in a process
- Ordered lists
- Timeline of events
Learners will be asked to drag the steps of the event into the appropriate order. Because of this, it is important to note that sequence items should only be used when there is only one correct order for events.
Whether you’re writing unique content for the first time or leveraging an existing bank of items, the sequence template is designed to make Cerego item creation easy and fast. Sequence items allow for the following features:
- Unique Title: This allows you to name your process, ordered list, or timeline. It is a required element when populating Sequence items.
- Images: You can insert images with each step in the process
- Audio:You can insert audio files to support or explain each step
The general process for creating Sequence items is simple:
- Name your item.Begin by typing the title of your Sequence item into the Title box. This should sum up the information presented, such as “Events Leading Up to the Civil War” or “The Scientific Method.”
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Populate each step.After you name your item, fill in each step of your process.Be sure to be descriptive and to differentiate between similar steps. If you are creating a timeline, do not insert the dates for events, as this will give away the correct answer order.
Insert images and/or audio.As you populate each answer, you can attach images that will be presented next to each step. This can be helpful if your sequence includes certain actions or can be represented by certain symbols.
After you’ve entered each step in your sequence and attached any relevant images and/or audio, your item will automatically save. You can choose to preview the item by clicking the “Preview Item” button in the top right corner or click the green plus button in the bottom left to create your next item.
Sequences function best when they include between 4–6 different steps, depending on the amount of information in each step.The more complex each of your steps are, the fewer steps you should probably have. If there are too many steps, it may be difficult for the learner to view and understand each step.
Diagrams
Diagrams (called Regions items in earlier Cerego Create versions or HotSpot items in other test banks) are image-based items in which learners select a portion of an image to answer a question. They are a great tool for teaching visual identification and part-to-whole relationships. Some examples of things that work great as Diagram items are:
- Anatomical images
- Diagrams
- Charts
Whether you’re writing unique content for the first time or leveraging an existing bank of items, the Diagram template is designed to make Cerego item creation easy and fast.There are only two features ofDiagram items:
- Image-based:All of your questions will be based on a single image.
- Customized hot spots:You can either highlight portions of the image with an ellipse or rectangle shape or draw your own unique shape.
The general process for creating Diagram items actually begins outside of Cerego:
1. Create or find your image.Depending on your subject matter, you may need to create or find the image you’d like to ask questions about.
When you are preparing and choosing your image, be sure to remove any labels or items in the image that might give learners hints to the right answer. Also, make sure there isn’t more than one correct answer in the image.
For subjects that do not lend themselves to images, you can easily create simple charts that can be used to ask questions.
2. Upload your image.After you have prepared the image you’d like to use, login to your Cerego set. After you select the “Diagram” template option, you will be immediately be taken to a page where you will upload the base image for questions.
3. Fill in the question.After you upload your base image, Cerego will take you to your Diagram authoring screen for your first question. Here, you can write your question in the box provided.
Make sure each of your questions is distinct and that there is one clear right answer in the image. Diagram questions only allow one correct answer per highlighted area.Highlighting an area more than once for multiple questions will result in the learner being told an appropriate answer is incorrect.
4. Highlight the right answer. After you write your question, use the provided highlight tools to draw a shape around an area of image you’d like your learners to identify. You have three tool options:
a. Draw: Use this tool to create a custom shape.To do this, connect the dots around the target area (you can also drag them once they have been placed).
b. Ellipse: Use this tool to draw a circle around a correct answer (you can also the circle once it has been placed).
c. Rectangle: Use this tool to draw a rectangle or square around the correct answer (you can also drag the rectangle once it has been placed).
5. Add another question and highlighted area. After you complete steps 3 and 4 for a question, you can click on the “Ask another question about this image” link at the bottom of the screen.This allows you to add another question and highlighted area to your base image.
We recommend you have 3–5 questions per base image, depending on the complexity of information you are presenting. Less than 3 highlighted areas may yield a question that is too easy. More than 5 highlighted areas may be too complex.Make sure your highlighted areas do not overlap. Overlapping regions do not allow learners to clearly select one answer.
Arrange Items into a Learning Path
After you have created items in your set, you can use the side nav to move items into a different order, if needed. Reordering your items customizes your set’s learning path, which helps you achieve your instructional goals. All you need to do to rearrange items on a learning path is:
1. Have more than 1 item created in your set.
2. Click the item you want to move in your side nav bar.
3. Hold and drag item to a new position.
When you build and customize a learning path, consider you're learning objectives and how the learner will work through the learning path. For example, does one instructional item need to have multiple assessment items to fully test a learner’s knowledge? Which instructional items might need to be presented first in order for learners to be successful on the assessment items that follow?
Determining Your Learning Path and Item Templates
Determining which items you use and how you arrange your learning path will vary based on your subject matter, the complexity of your core concepts, and your learning objectives.In general, we recommend you keep the following to make best use of Cerego for mobile eLearning:
- Identify your learning objectives first.The first thing you’ll want to do is determine what you want your learners to know after they review your material. This is often achieved by creating learning objectives.Learning objectives also help you gain a better understanding of the complexity of your concepts.
- Present foundational concepts first.After you determine the core concepts that learners should master, you’ll want to think about and plan the best way to present material to the learner.Evaluate which of your materials are foundational and should be presented and assessed first. Considering this will help you begin to determine your learning path.
- Keep sets small. Keep in mind that Cerego is primarily a mobile learning platform. As such, it is best to limit sets to1 or 2 learning objectives (10-50 items). Keep in mind that Cerego will prompt users to revisit the sets over time. Therefore, it is important that you only include “essential”knowledge. This helps learners see the value of the practice.
- Teach first, then assess.It can be most helpful to present core concepts using Teach and Instruct items first.This will help you introduce and explain concepts to learners. Following Teach andInstruct items with Quiz items helps learners practice and apply the core concepts they’ve just learned.
