Demonstration: Dictation item type

A Dictation item asks the respondent to transcribe the content of a sound track or a video.

I have several items in my Cinéquiz-français quiz, including a dictation that can easily be recognised by its icon that represents a loudspeaker. I click on this item entitled Court Métrage “Nelligan. Profils et regards.” Émile Nelligan was a 19th century Québec poet.

Under the Content tab, I wrote the title of the item, and then the text in which I ask the respondents to listen to the short film and to write down the poem that they hear, in the answer field.

Under the text, in the Correct Answer input field, I put my transcription of the poem, which serves as the basis for the correction of the dictation. In order to avoid problems with the correction algorithm, it is best to use short dictations. A long text can be divided into shorter sections, which can be placed into separate dictation items.

Farther down, I can write feedback messages. The Positive feedback and Negative feedback fields should be used to give more meaningful feedback than just Correct answer or Incorrect answer, since this information will be given automatically when the respondent submits the item for correction, whether or not you have written feedback. By clicking in these text boxes, icons appear that will allow you to format your text.

Let’s now see what is under this Add-ons tab. In the top part of the window, there are two fields where I can insert additional information. They can be used for clues, extra help or additional information about the subject of this item. In this case, I used one the fields to indicate the source of the video that I used for the dictation. I even added a hyperlink to the CCDMD product page that contains this video.

A dictation always requires the presence of an audio file in order to hear the text. And so, I must insert either an audio or a video file in the section Media in the header. When I move the mouse over Add a video, a pop-up menu offers me two choices: choose either a file that is already in the library or import a new file from my computer.

Now I click on the Parameters tab. I leave the weighting default setting at one point. Farther down, I choose not to start the media automatically. In this way, the respondent can start it when he or she is ready. I also choose to allow the solution to be displayed.

One parameter lets me indicate how many points will be deducted for each word wrongly spelled; I wrote 0.05. You can use the value of your choice, but note that it is important to adjust the weighting in relation to the number of words in your dictation, in order to avoid cases where the respondent receives a note of 0 after having a single error in a long dictation, or 9/10 for a short sentence full of mistakes!

A final parameter lets me indicate whether I want the correction to take into consideration upper and lower case letters, as well as punctuation. Check one or the other of these options if you want these types of errors to be counted in the correction of the dictation.

Now I check the Web preview of my Dictation item.

The Solution button appears because, if you recall, I chose this option in the Parameters. If I click on the Solution button, the text of the dictation will appear in the lower part of the screen, under the heading, Solution.

The Submit button gives feedback that corresponds with the transcription that the respondent wrote in the field under the media:

  • if the respondent did not write anything, the message Incomplete answer will appear in yellow in the lower part of the screen;
  • if there are no errors in the dictation, the message Correct answer will appear in green, followed by positive feedback, if I had written feedback for this item; 
  • if there are errors in the dictation, the message Incorrect answer will appear in red, followed by negative feedback, if I wrote negative feedback. And finally, the text of the dictation appears with the spelling mistakes in red and underlined, red underlining indicates missing words, and words in red between square brackets to show extra words.

There you go! You are now ready to create your own Dictation item!