I have a situation whereby when a student clicks the "Hint" tab while doing a hotpot crossword they seem to be penalised for doing so. For example if there were 10 clues in the crossword and a student got all 10 answers correct but hit the hint button once for each clue (10 times in total) they would get a score of 90% even though they got all the answers correct and should in theory be awarded a score of 100%. How do I ensure that if students get all of the answers correct that they receive a score of 100% even if they used the hint function? I don't see an apply penalties option anywhere.
Hi Frank,
I'm afraid Hot Potatoes JCross doesn't have any options for changing the way the scoring works. Although you think that students should not be penalized for getting hints, many teachers, and - more crucially - the creators of Hot Potatoes, do.
I personally agree with the penalization of hints, as it prevents students just clicking Hint, Hint, Hint, Hint ... to get all the correct letters of an answer and therefore 100% for each question and then the whole quiz, without having known or throught about a single correct answer.
If you would like to give free hints in crosswords, you will need to modify either the html file for the crossword quiz, or the source templates for JCross.
- locate the html file of your quiz and open it with a text editor
- locate the "function ShowHint()" function
- locate the following line within the "ShowHint()" function:
State[CurrGap].HintsAndChecks += 1; - "comment out" the above line, by adding two backslashes, thus:
// State[CurrGap].HintsAndChecks += 1; - save the file and close the text editor
That should fix it!
Gordon
Hi Gordon,
That's really useful to me too. And so nice of you to give a technical solution that you don't agree with pedagogically.
I think it depends on the kind of students you're working with. I've been lucky enough to mainly work with adults who actually want to learn English - not just get a good score - so it doesn't seem right to penalise them if it's a learning exercise and not a test. Maybe they just don't know the word or maybe they do but need the first letter to find it - I know I sometimes do.
I assume it'll work for the other apps and not just JCross?
Cheers,
Glenys
> I assume it'll work for the other apps and not just JCross?
Well, something similar will work for all types of Hot Potatoes exercise, although exactly which line of code to modify will probably be slightly different, depending on which app is being changed and the scoring modification that is requried.
best regards
Gordon
That's very helpful Gordon, thank you.
Regards,
Frank