Use the various versions of this template to create a test useable by the whole class including your regular pencil and paper test takers, and your special needs test takers. This template has two kinds of multiple choice slides. One is a text based multiple- choice test, and the other is picture based. In both cases, selections made by the test taker are recorded by visually enhancing the choice that was made. The slide show can be saved to preserve the test taker's choices. Recently, I've added support for fill-in-the-blank type exercises.

The first question slide you will see is text-based can be edited to your purposes, and duplicated as you wish. The second question slide demonstrates how you can use a picture as a visual aid for a text-based question. The third question slide is an example picture based slide. You can duplicate slides, delete any unwanted slide, or rearrange the slides in the Slide Sorter View. See the how-to notes below for more information on modifying these slides so that they look good and work properly. The last slide has an option for saving the test.

Note: The best thing to do with the following link is to right click on it and select the "Save Target to Disk" option for viewing with PowerPoint. If you have Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office products, and you just click on the link the slideshow may load, but it may cause an error. If that happens, just click the "end" option.

Here is a version 2 sample of the multiple-choice test supports a 2-switch scan.

A Windows Only Scanning Objects Multiple Choice Test Template (Updated)

 After you load the show view it with PowerPoint. Make sure to view the show using both the oval and the right-arrow scan indicators. You can decide which scan indicator works best in which circumstance. Unfortunately, at this time you cannot switch scan indicators between slides.

To understand the discussion below, the following links may be helpful.

On the Setup Slide a new field provides for entering the test taker's name that will be used to identify the test when it is saved

When the user makes a choice the selected scan indicator's Action Setting initiates a macro that highlights some text in the text-based test, or places a thickened border around a picture in the picture based test. In the template these settings have already been established for both kinds of slides, with two different shaped scan indicators.

With the text-based test you just need to edit the text to reflect your set of questions and answers, and you are done. With the picture based test, you need to delete the existing pictures, paste your pictures in left to right, top down order, and set the line in the Format Picture settings of the pictures to Automatic (see more below.)

Text based multiple choice indication:

The text-based answers are put in special AutoShapes called Custom Action Buttons. If scan indicator is set so that its Action Setting causes a macro called Answer1 to be initiated on a mouse click, this will cause the text in the first Custom Action Button to be intensified. The other custom action buttons are selected using macros called Answer2, Answer3, Answer4, or Answer5.

Picture based multiple choice indication:

Similarly for picture-based slides, if a scan indicator is set so that its Action Setting causes a macro called pict1 to be initiated on a mouse click, this will cause the first Picture Frame to be surrounded by a thick red border. The other pictures can be selected using the macros called pict2, pict3, pict4, pict5, or pict6. Be sure to set the line in the Format Picture settings of every picture to Automatic.

Fill-in support allows you to define phrases that can be inserted into blanks. A typical fill-in slide will have Custom Action Buttons with text in them, and empty Flowchart Process Boxes that will serve as the blanks. The Flowchart Process Boxes should have their borders set to a bright color to facilitate highlighting. For point and click users the first Custom Action Button (in creation order) has its Mouse Click Run Macro Action Setting defined as putAnswer1. Similarly, the second Custom Action Button has its Mouse Click Run Macro Action Setting defined as putAnswer2, and so on for up to 6 Custom Action Buttons. Also, the scan shapes Mouse Click Run Macro Action Setting should also be set to the same macro as the Custom Action Button with which it is associated. For your scanners, the scan shapes' Mouse Click Run Action Settings should also be defined the same way as the Custom Action Button that the scan shape is associated with.

I use a text box that has a lot of spaces around the word 'blank' where I then position the empty Flowchart Process Box. This configuration creates the fill-in a sentence appearance, and is expected if you want to use the readFillIn macro described below.

When the user clicks on a Custom Action Button the putAnswer macro sends the text from that Custom Action Button to the first Flowchart Process Box, or to the Flowchart Process Box that has its border highlighted. The next Flowchart Process Box will then have its border highlighted automatically.

Pictures can also appear in the Flowchart Process Boxes as the result of clicking a shape with a putAnswerN macro Action Setting. To do this, there needs to be a second line of text in a Custom Action Button that is the name of a picture file. The picture file must be in the same directory as the PowerPoint slideshow. When the putAnswerN macro is executed the named file, if it exists, is put into the highlighted Flowchart Process Box. You can set the fill of the Custom Action Button to the same picture to compliment the effect. To do this right-click on a Custom Action Button and select Format AutoShape from the menu. Select Fill Effects form the Color item of the Fill section. Click on the Picture Tab and then click the Select Picture button to browse to the desired image.

Other useful macros include hilightNextFillIn which advances the highlight to the next fill-in box.

Another macro called readFillIn which plays a sound file defined for the Mouse Click Play Action Setting of a Text Box, or, if it is a version 3 scan shapes slideshow, has the Microsoft Agent read the text contents of a Text Box. ReadFillIn assumes that there is only one fill-in box per text box and reads the text box that relates in creation order to the highlighted fill-in box. If the 2nd fill-in box is highlighted then the 2nd text box is read, assuming it exists, and so forth. You can have more than one fill-in box for a single text box, but there should only be one text box on the slide. In this case the single text box contents will be read.

Support for fill-in-the-blank type exercises can be added to older scanning shapes templates, or any PowerPoint slideshow. Current versions of the scanning shapes templates already have the fill-in support modules. However, if you want to add fill-in support to an existing scanning shapes slideshow, or are building one from scratch you will have to import the Visual Basic module fillInSupport.bas.

If you want to fiddle with the color, position or actions associated with scan indicators, view the slideshow. On the Setup Slide set the scan shape type to the type of scan shape you want to edit (oval or right-arrow.) Click the Show button to reveal the scan shapes. Finally, hit the Esc key to exit to the editor where you can make changes. Be sure to click Hide the next time you view the slideshow.

With the picture-based multiple choice slide, you can delete the pictures I have included for illustration. Behind each picture is a reference box that shows you where to move and size the pictures you insert into this slide. To ensure that the scan indicator refers the proper picture, insert your pictures starting at the upper leftmost position, and insert more pictures in left to right order. If you rearrange the pictures by dragging them around, you can reset their ordering by right clicking on a picture that is out of sequence and selecting the Order option. Then choose Send Backward to make that picture congruent with an earlier scan indicator, or choose Bring Forward to make it congruent with a later scan indicator.

Each picture must have a border visible for the visual enhancement effect to take place. After inserting your pictures, hold the shift key down and click on every picture. Right click on one of them and select Format Picture from the menu that appears. Click the Colors and Lines tab. Set Line to Automatic. Click OK

The last slide includes a shape whose Action Setting is set to activate the macro SaveTest when the mouse is clicked. This, of course, saves the slideshow in its current state with the name of the test taker from the setup slide followed by the date as the file name.

You can print out your slideshow for your paper and pencil test takers, and, you can put up to 6 slides (questions) per page. Select the Print item of the File menu. Inside the Print dialog box you will see "Print what" at the bottom of the box. Select "Handout (6 slides per page)" from the drop down menu.