Month: January 2020

Twine for Authoring Interactive Content

Are you interested in creating interactive, choose-your-own-adventure content?

There are many tools, but I recommend that you consider Twine – an open-source solution that is easy to get up and running with. Twine can be used to deliver text-based or media rich stories/projects or it can be used as a planning tool for projects that are delivered via other platforms.

“Twines” or  your stories/projects are created by building links between various passages. Passages are segments of your narrative that either lead the reader to specific choices they can make or they provide explanations of choices they have previously made.

You do not need to download and install the Twine application, nor do you need an account to use Twine online. My recommendation is to use Twine in the browser because it is fast and works great.

Save and archive your work right from the Story List page to make sure you never lose a thing!

Get started!

  1. Click the “+ Story” button
  2. Name your Twine
  3. Double-click the initial passage to start editing
  4. Enter your beginning narrative
  5. Add links to other passages by using “[[” at the start of your link text and “]]” at the end of your link text, click to view more options
  6. Use the “whiteboard” view to rearrange your passages
  7. Click play to start your Twine
  8. Refer to the Guide for more information about formatting and other features in Twine

Recommendations

  • Save your work often – you can save copies of individual Twines by going to the Story List > click on the gear icon > choose the “Publish to File” menu item; import your work by going to the Story List > click on the “Import From File” link under the main menu
  • Consider starting with just the main narrative from start to finish or perhaps one of the main threads of the narrative if you plan on multiple endings, then work on the various branches or additional narratives
  • Proper planning prevents poor performance – this adage definitely applies to creating branching narratives! Focus on perfecting the architecture of your narrative before adding all of the additional formatting, media and “polish.”

Closing

One possible application of Twine that I’m working on is to help author Analytic Decision Games (ADGs), that our faculty have developed to run in class and for other audiences.

Canvas Roster Export for CATME

I just became aware that I’ll need to update our PSU CATME Site.

There are a few videos that need to be either removed or replaced.

I’m more concerned about the next task which is updating our information to assist users with exporting Group membership information from Canvas. I could have sworn that the Canvas Export Grades feature included Group information, but I may be wrong since there is a Canvas Community post that addresses this.

At the bottom of the comments is a post by Lucy Bamwo with a creative workaround:

Currently, there is no way of exporting groups out of Canvas. However, you could set up a group assignment (assign marks to whole group) 0 point, non-submission assignment, place in 0% weighting group and make sure that it has no due date and the grade posting policy is set to manual. You can then score the group with a number in speedgrader and then export the csv from the gradebook. You will then be able to sort them into groups by the group score given.

I didn’t see that information until after I requested Brian Daigle from our Production Team to create a script that would pull the Group information using the Canvas API. I found this information and attempted to apply it to our needs, but didn’t have success. I reached out to Brian because I know he has experience using the Canvas API. In a couple of hours, he had a working Python script that I helped to fine tune to match the input parameters that CATME looks for. While this approach is the most effective solution we have so far, it does require the user to be able to use Python and have the related Canvas module installed.