Data tables receive student measurements or short observation statements and occur on Experimentation procedure pages. The input cells of these tables may contain numeric or alphabetic characters.
They appear in Data Collection in the Experimentation tab and can be added to lessons through the Question Customization tool or the Custom Lesson Authoring tool.
1. Select "Data Table."
2. Fill in the following table elements.
- Full Name: Number and name the data table. (such as "Data Table 1: Plant Measurements".)
- Short Name: Shortened name that will display for students in the data table dropdown on their exercise page. (such as "Data Table 1".)
- Compose Question: Add instructions for the students. Briefly describe how students should use the data table. (Be sure to bold this text if you want to make it look like Science Interactive-authored questions.)
- Add the number of rows and columns that will contain student data.
- Check the appropriate boxes if a header row and/or header column are needed. These selections will use a row and/or column to be the headers, so be sure to account for that when entering your numbers of rows and columns.
3. Select "Generate Data Table."
4. Edit the column and row headers by replacing the automatically generated "Text" in each cell.
5. In the "Correct" tab, enter the answers for each cell.
6. Make any adjustments to the "More options" menu that you desire.
These advanced settings are optional don't impact the general use of a Data Table.
- Penalty Points: SI does not currently use this item.
- Contains Math: Yes or No. Enabling will give students the ability to add some math symbols, superscripts, and subscripts.
- Maximum Length (characters): SI's setting is 1000 to ensure the student has enough space to add answers. This is important for data table answers that are text instead of numeric.
- Stem numeration: SI does not currently use this item.
- Case sensitive: SI's setting is No.
- Multiple line: SI's setting is Yes.
- Browser spellcheck: SI's setting is No.
- Font size: SI's setting is Normal.
- Special characters: SI's setting is No. If Yes is selected and used in conjunction with "Contains math," students will get access to the following characters:
- Response container (global): Leave everything blank except Input type. Select Text or Number depending on the information the student will be entering.
- Response container (individual): Don't add.
- Details: (SI typically does not use these fields for Data Tables) Acknowledgments, Distractor rationale, Rubric reference, Stimulus, Sample answer, Distractor Rationale per response.
7. Select "Save" on the top right of the page.
This will return you to the main Exercise page.
8. Scroll down the Exercise page to the Data Table and assign the table a point value.
If you make no changes, the Point Value will default to 1.
9. Scroll to the bottom and select "Save" to save the completed Data Table.
