New Activities
Two major new activities are included in Composica 7 – Sort and Matching.
Sort
Engage and assess learners by having them sort a group of items. Items are sorted by dragging them (via mouse or touch) from one position to another as the other items animate out of their way. As with all Composica activities, there are no rigid limits on the number of items, their positions, their content, or their look.
Sort comes with powerful features, which can be combined, including:
- Cyclic Order – Sometimes a group of sort items doesn’t have a specific start or end. As long as items are internally in order, it makes no difference which of them comes first and which comes last because their order is cyclic. For example, all of these are correct: <egg–chick–chicken>, <chicken–egg–chick>, <chick–chicken–egg>.
- Bidirectional Order – Sometimes a group of items doesn’t have a specific direction. It is correctly sorted both forward and backward. For example, both of these can be correct: <small–medium–large>, <large–medium–small>.
- Interchangeable Items – Sometimes the order of two (or more) items within a group isn’t material, they can be correctly positioned either before or after one another. For example, both of these are correct (making a salad): <chop vegetables–salt–pepper–serve>, <chop vegetables–pepper–salt–serve>.
- Custom Feedback – React to specific (partial or entire) sort orders the learner submits.
Matching
Engage and assess learners by having them identify pairs of items. Pairs are identified by drawing a line (via mouse or touch) from one item to another. Here too, there are no rigid limits on the number of items, their positions, their content, or their look.
Matching also comes with many robust features, including:
- Shuffling – Shuffle the items in neither, one, or both groups.
- Dummy Items – Add distractors to challenge learners even further.
- Full Control – Customize every detail of the drawn lines, including their color in different states, type, width, and even origin on a per-item basis.
- Custom Feedback – React to specific (partial or entire) pairings the learner submits.
Project-level Find and Replace
Search capabilities within Composica projects have expanded to include:
- Find in Content – Search for a word/phrase within the content of each document in the project.
- Global Replace – Replace every occurrence of a word/phrase with another word/phrase throughout the entire project.
- Find by Title – Search for a word/phrase appearing in the title of a document.
- Find by Tags – Search tagged documents for a specific set of tags.
Authoring
Project Manager
A live preview of the project is included in Project Manager. The preview pane can be collapsed/expanded and is synchronized with the currently selected document. Changing any value in the manager immediately shows how it would affect the project without having to save.
Audio Recorder
The built-in audio recorder has been rebuilt using a Flash backend, and so Java is no longer required. It is much more responsive and easier to operate.
Also:
- Yes/No property values can be toggled with a single click and display as a check box in the properties grid.
- The Decoration property has been replaced by three separate properties – Underline, Overline and Strikethrough – which allows for combinations of several decorations.
- A Regroup option appears in the context-menu of previously grouped elements.
- Hovering colors in the ribbon’s palettes shows a live preview.
- Administration allows batch assignment of projects to a specific group using the Projects button in the Groups tab.
Courses
PDF Publish Options
Publish to PDF includes three new options, allowing to reveal Hot Spots, Hot Words, and/or Closed Captioning in the output PDF.
Gradient Backgrounds
Gradients can be assigned to the window’s background, by choosing a second color in Run-time Properties. Along with gradients a box-shadow has been introduced around the course content.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Any clickable element can be assigned a keyboard shortcut, further improving accessibility. Almost any key combination can be used.
Also:
- Drag Drop activity includes an option to leave the drag item where it was dropped, without aligning it to the drop item.
- Hint elements can be set to only reveal themselves after a specific number of attempts.
- When a SCORM 1.2 session ends the course sends an “incomplete” status (instead of “failed”) if any tests in the course haven’t been taken yet.
Compatibility
- Flash elements can show an Alternate Image when Flash is not available (e.g. in mobile devices).
- Mind Games can redirect to a standalone document when Flash is not available (e.g. in mobile devices).