Using Dynamic Content and "Try Again" in Your Assessments – Learnosity Product & Developer Help

A guide to setting up the Try Again functionality for Questions API and Assess API.

What is the Try Again functionality?

Try Again allows students to ask for another set of data for the Question they are attempting. In this case, they can click the Try Again button, and they will be given the same format of Question again, but with different values, which requires a different answer (it could be any part of the Question). The dataset of Question variations uses the existing Dynamic Content functionality.

Figure 1: how selecting Try Again changes data in the current Question

Note

Try Again only is only compatible with a subset of Questions. The supported list of Questions is:

association
choicematrix
classification
clozeassociation
clozedropdown
clozeformula
formulaV2 [Deprecated]
imageclozedropdown
imageclozeassociationV2
mcq

1. Create an Item with Dynamic Content

For instructions on this step, please refer to this Help site article: What is Dynamic Content?

2. Configure Items API

Setting initialization options

In order for Items API to generate the dynamic data and add it to the Question JSON of each Question, you need to add the following in the initialization options:

initObj = {
    "dynamic_items": {
        "data_table_seed": "SOME_SEED", // optional
        "try_again": {
            "max_attempts": 5, // required, max 10
            "random": true // optional, false default
        }
    }
}

Code example: Items API initialization

For the initObj object, we have two variables of interest, dynamic_items and try_again.

For the dynamic_items element, we can set the sub-element try_again: random element to to true. This will cause to the user to be given a randomised sequence of data rows when clicking Try Again.

For the try_again variable, max_attempts is a required variable that sets the number of times the user can click Try Again. The maximum number of tries that can be specified is ten.

Variable	Type	Default	Required?	Description
try_again: max_attempts	integer	If the number of dataset rows is less than the defined max_attempts, then that Item will will use the number of rows available.	Yes	Sets the number of times the user can click Try Again. Dataset rows are processed sequentially by default.
try_again: random	boolean	false	No	Changes the initial loading of data rows from the original author dataset to be random (when true). This controls how the data from the dataset is captured and brought down to the page.
data_table_seed	string	If not defined, the random seed will use the value of the current session_id.	No	A randomising seed that will be used to generate a sequence of data rows given to students clicking Try Again.

Table: variables specified in the Items API initialization object

Note: When using Try Again random: if you have 50 rows in your data set and you have random: false you have, for example, max_attempts set to 7, then only the first 7 of the 50 rows of the data set are captured and rendered for the users. If random is set to false, there is no reason to add any more rows to the data set at authoring time. If random is set to true, then any user can get any seven rows from the dataset and not necessarily the same rows. A seed of the rows in each session is stored, so that they can be restored in resume mode.

The Try Again button

The Try Again button will allow the student to view the Item with a new set of data from the dataset created for it.

By default, this button is already available using the "horizontal" and "horizontal-fixed" regions presets.

initObj = {
    "config": {
        "regions": "horizontal" // Or "horizontal-fixed"
    },
    "dynamic_items": { ... }
}

Code example: regions layout preset override

If you are not using one of the regions mentioned above, to show the Try Again button on screen, it must be added to a region. See the Assess API documentation for more information on region configuration.

initObj = {
    "config": {
        "regions": {
            "bottom-left": [{
                "type": "try_again_button"
            }]
        }
    },
    "dynamic_items": { ... }
}

Code example: region configuration

Public methods

If you prefer to avoid using the default Try Again button, you can control the Dynamic Content directly through our public methods.

But to be able to do that, you will need the Item's reference. Once you know which Item you want to access, you will have four methods at your disposal:

itemsApp.assessApp().item('ITEM_REF').dynamic.previousAttempt();

itemsApp.assessApp().item('ITEM_REF').dynamic.nextAttempt();

itemsApp.assessApp().item('ITEM_REF').dynamic.currentAttemptIndex();

itemsApp.assessApp().item('ITEM_REF').dynamic.totalAttempts();

Code example: Items API public methods for Try Again

In the example above, ITEM_REF refers to the unique reference for the Item in context, with the Question(s) that the student is answering.

Method	Description
previousAttempt()	Load the previous attempt data row.
nextAttempt()	Load the next attempt data row.
currentAttemptIndex()	Returns the index of the current attempt.
totalAttempts()	Count the total number of attempts so far.

Table: public methods for building custom navigation with Try Again in Items API

Public event

An event listener is provided that can be used to trigger your own functions.

itemsApp.on('dynamic:item:changed', function () {
    // Do something
});

Code example: listening for an event when a dynamic Item is changed

Caveats

The Dynamic Content and “Try again” feature is not compatible with Adaptive assessments.