Quick Tip for Developing for Mobile Devices in Lectora

Recently, while developing a course for a client in Lectora 11, I came across an interesting dilemma. The client had requested that the course needed to be optimized for an iPad. The graphic designer had designed the multiple choice questions for the knowledge check in a manner that didn’t use radio buttons or checkboxes. However, the Lectora “Multiple Choice” question uses radio buttons or checkboxes. Radio buttons and checkboxes can be pretty small on a mobile device such as an iPad and not ideal for touch functionality. Even though those radio buttons or checkboxes can be customized, I wasn’t able to create the multiple choice question in a way that the designer had envisioned. So I decided to utilize Lectora’s “Hot Spot” question type as a solution. Here is an example of what I got from the designer:

If you create a question in Lectora, it requires you to have question text. Keep that in mind. However, since we are using the “Hot Spot” question, you don’t necessarily need to provide text for the choices since we want the user to be able to touch a particular area to make their selection. To create the question select the “Test & Survey” tab on the top ribbon bar, as shown here:

The “Hot Spot” question in Lectora requires a background image for the hot spots to be located. I decided to upload a transparent .png image, sized appropriately, to use as my background image. Next, you need to create the hot spots. You can do this within the Question Creator window, but it’s actually easier to resize them once you’ve created the question. Type the text of your question in the Question text box and create the number of choices you need. In my case, I only needed three. Make sure the rest of the question is set up as follows:

Go ahead and figure out what you’re going to do with the “Feedback” and “Attempts” tabs. Once you’re ready, press OK and your question will be created on your stage in Lectora. Now you will need to create the choices for your question and perform some additional formatting to make the question look good. I did this by inserting three text boxes containing the larger font size A, B, C and then three containing the text of each choice. I’ve also included a “Title” and correct/incorrect feedback. You can then select each “Hot Spot” button and resize it appropriately. I’ve set up this question to process immediately with the ability to only be attempted once. Upon the question processing, it runs the action group “Correct” if the user answered correctly and the action group “Incorrect” if they answered incorrectly.

When you publish your course, the question will look like this:

You might need to fine tune some things graphically to make your question look the way it should, but in the end, it will be much more accommodating for mobile devices in Lectora. You can also utilize this method for True/False questions and Multiple Response questions. By using the “Hot Spot” question, you can optimize multiple choice questions for touch functionality. Not only that, it looks so much better visually than using radio buttons or checkboxes. Win-win!