Integrating Technology in the Second Language Classroom

Jean LeLoup & Bob Ponterio 
SUNY Cortland 
© 2017

PowerPoint Multiple Feedback Slides

The setup

Here below we see a group of slides. The first slide is an introduction. There are two questions (slides #2 & #7) offering 4 possible answers. When the student clicks on an answer, we want to jump to the slide that provides the appropriate feedback for that particular response. Great job! or No. From the negative feedback slides, we want to return to the question slide, but from the Great job! slide, we can go on to the next question. Of course, we never want to accidentally fall through to a feedback slide inappropriately as this would certainly confuse the student. Instead, we want to skip over those feedback slides to whatever comes next. To accomplish this, we will turn off the default PowerPoint feature that moves to the next slide whenever the mouse is clicked. Instead, we will create Action Buttons that explicitly jump to our desired location.

(If you wish to save time, here is a template containing some partially completed sample slides. Download it and copy the parts you wish to use from there to make your own.)



Here is how we prevent accidentally falling through to another slide. We will use only Action Buttons to move from one slide to another. To turn off the default behavior of PowerPoint, we go to the the Animations ribbon. Under Advance Slide, turn off On Mouse Click by unchecking this option. Then click on Apply To All so the transition will be applied to all slides in the presentation. Now we need to use Action Buttons for all slide transitions. With this method, we do not need to hide any slides because nothing will happen automatically. However, we do need to be sure to place appropriate Action Buttons on each slide to control the program flow.


On the question slides, we can use Action Buttons covering the answers to jump to the appropriate feedback slide. We also need to adjust the transparency of these Action Buttons (right-click / Format Shape / Transparency). transparency

From the wrong answer feedback slides, we make buttons that jump back to the Last Slide Viewed. We place the correct answer feedback after all the wrong answer feedbacks, so we can use a button that goes to the next slide, the next question.

hyperlink to last slide viewed

 

Taking it up a notch with popups

Here is a copy that uses animations to turn a Callout Shape into a popup for each wrong answer. Insert / Shape / Callout will insert a callout shape (text bubble) for each wrong answer.

We can set it up so that only a right answer moves on to a feedback slide. Using animation effects, the shape with the specific feedback text for each different wrong answer appears, delays for a second, then fades out. This is triggered when the student clicks on the action button over each answer.

Of course, you could also provide correct answer feedback within the slide instead of in a separate slide if you wish.

Download a copy of the PPT presentation with popups here.


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