Hints and Explanations

In a practice quiz or pretest, it can be valuable if the student can get a hint before answering a question, or request an explanation of the correct answer after answering. The AppletQuiz applet will do these things.

The most-recently-added features of AppletQuiz (version 3.0) make hints and explantions even more flexible - without complicating their basic use. You can now:

specify the default sizes of the hint and explanation windows for all questions
individually customize the size of any hint or explanation window to accomodate larger (or smaller) information.
link the "Hint" and "Why?" buttons to other web pages which open automatically when the student presses the button.

Basic use of hints and explanations for your quiz is a two-step process:

Add the SHOW_HINTS parameter to the applet tag on your web page.
Add the hints and explanations to your question file.

The SHOW_HINTS Parameter

To enable hints in your quiz, add the following parameter to the applet tag in your web page:

<param name="SHOW_HINTS" value="YES">

Here, "YES" means that a hint/explanation button will be added to the button panel in the quiz window for questions that contain hints and/or explanations. This button will not appear with questions which do not contain hints and/or explanations.

The other possible value="NO", which means that no hint button will be displayed, whether or not questions in the question file contain hints and/or explanations. In other words, value="NO" has the same effect as no applet parameter at all. This is the default behavior.

last update May 12, 1999 by JL Stanbrough (jstanbro@venus.net)