Adapt Learning Community: Slider questions

Skip to main content

Hi all

I have a slider in my course, which I have a few questions about.

The course is generally aligned left, but I would like to make the slide bar in the slider component centered, but retail the left alignment of the text above and below it. Is this possible?

The next question is to do with the feedback. This slider doesn't have a correct answer. It's to get the learner to think about their options. But when you slide the slider and click submit, the feedback only has the title in it and none of the content.

Code is here:

Any help appreciated.

Simon

Hi Simon

Can't help you with the first question I'm afraid - CSS is not my strong point. But in answer to your second question, you're probably _canShowFeedback property to suppress feedback - but I also think you'd be better off using the confidenceSlider component since this version of the component is suited exactly to the functionality you describe. You can also use linkedConfidenceSlider with it later on in the module for instances where you want the user to be shown their previous answer and see if they would answer any differently - we generally use these before the content and after to get the user to measure whether the content has made the user feel more confident in the subject area.

Show parent | Reply

Thanks Matt, I'll give that a go.

Show parent | Reply

Well, installing the either the linked and straight confidence slider isn't working very well. It installs fine, but I get the statement about it not being compatible with my version of the framework (2.0), and do I want to install, to which I enter 'Y'.

It installs and then when I run grunt dev it gets all the way to the point of saying watching and then this happens:

Any thoughts Matt?

Show parent | Reply

My best guess from that screenshot is that you have installed linkedConfidenceSlider without also having installed confidenceSlider - the former has a dependency on the latter so you need to make sure you have installed confidenceSlider as well.

FYI, if you install using $ adapt install you will get the version from the adaptlearning github repository. We (Kineo) haven't used that one in some time, we always use our own versions. I think our 'linked' is the same but the main confidenceSlider is fairly different... These plugins are slightly odd in that, even though they live in the adaptlearning repo, they're not 'core' components so aren't actively maintained by the team.

Show parent | Reply

Hi Matt

I've installed both, and the grunt dev worked, but now all I get is the spinning wheel of death.

I assume this is because there is something wrong with the plugin, because when I place it in the course straight from the example.json, it won't load the course. (spinning wheel...).

This plugin is exactly what I need...is the Kineo one stable and can I get access to it?

Simon

Show parent | Reply

Should be stable, we've certainly used it fairly recently. You can get it from here: https://github.com/cgkineo/adapt-contrib-confidenceSlider

Just download and overwrite the files you already have.

Show parent | Reply

Hi Matt

That worked a charm for the confidence slider, thanks.

I tried it for the linked confidence slider (from the Kineo Github) but that returned the very frustrating spinning wheel of death. :(

I'll have to come back to it mid next week...

Simon

Show parent | Reply

Hi Matt

Is there an issue with the Linked Confidence Slider? All I get is the spinning wheel when I insert it in a course.

Simon

Show parent | Reply

We're using it on a project at the moment and it seems OK - though I notice it's using the version in the develop branch so I suspect you should switch to that.

It also looks to have been modified on the project to fix a couple of bugs where the slider 'handle' can become 'stuck' to the mouse under certain circumstances - as well as some accessibility fixes. I'll see about getting someone to push those changes back into our version for you.

We (Adapt OS) are actually looking to do a complete refresh of slider/confidenceSlider/linkedConfidenceSlider - basing the new code on rangeslider.js - we (Kineo) are just trialling it on a couple of projects first to catch and fix the most obvious bugs before we push it back to the Adapt OS version and release.

Show parent | Reply

I get the same "spinning wheel of death" as Simon when previewing a page containing the linked confidence slider component (without the linked confidence slider on the page, the confidence slider itself works well).

To help anyone who can provide troubleshooting advice, I installed both confidence sliders from the http://github.com/cgkineo fork rather than the core Adapt versions. I'm running version 0.17 of the authoring tool on version 2.0.10 of the framework.

Cheers

Stephen

P.S. Matt, what's the latest on the new slider you described above?

Show parent | Reply

Hi Stephen

The new version of Slider has just been through another round of testing and it looks like all the outstanding issues have been resolved. So I guess there's no reason why you couldn't go ahead and start using it right away, you'll find the updated version here for the moment.

I don't think it's had much in the way of RTL testing - but I get the impression that RTL support is no worse than in the current version.

If you do go with the updated version, you'll also need to use an updated version of confidenceSlider... I know one of my colleagues was updating that, let me just find out where he is with that... I do know that the plan was to remove the need to have a separate 'linked' version of it.

Show parent | Reply

The updated version of confidenceSlider can be found here (for the moment)

You no longer need to use linkedConfidenceSlider - you just need to add a _linkedToId in the .json to make it into a 'linked' version.

Show parent | Reply

Thanks Matt

Simplifying to just one Confidence Slider seems to make good sense. Unfortunately, after installing both new Sliders in the Authoring Tool, and adding the new Confidence Slider component to a block, I received the following error when I attempted to edit the Confidence Slider:

constructorFn is not a constructor

Does this mean anything to you Matt? Perhaps it is not yet compatible with the Authoring Tool?

Show parent | Reply

No I'm sorry, I've not seen that before.

Generally speaking, all that's required to make a plugin Authoring Tool compatible is to include a file called properties.schema which defines what configuration information the plugin requires and where in the various bit of .json that information should go. I see this plugin has one - but it is quite out of date. I'll get my colleague to update it for you.

Show parent | Reply

Thanks Matt, I see the properties.schema has been updated, but now the plugin upload fails with "Error: Failed to parse schema for package adapt-contrib-confidenceSlider" when I try to upload it from the Authoring tool.

Show parent | Reply

ah, there were a couple of missing commas in properties.schema - should be fixed now

Show parent | Reply

Well now I can install the component OK, but when I add a Confidence Slider to a block and generate a preview I get "Error generating preview, please contact Administrator." Any ideas? I've tried re-installing. So close!

Show parent | Reply

OK, I've had a colleague take a quick look at this and it seems to be to do with the way the authoring tool excludes components you're not actually using.

Basically confidenceSlider is set up to expect some of the LESS variables from contrib-slider to be present... so if you're not actually using contrib-slider in your course, it won't be included and therefore the LESS compiler will fail due to missing data.

For the moment, there isn't an easy way round this - except to find an excuse to use the main contrib-slider component within your course.

Show parent | Reply

Here's an update Matt:

I've installed the latest framework and authoring tool (2.0.11 & 0.2.0) into my Vagrant VM and uploaded the rewritten Confidence Slider. The good news is the slider works as expected (well better than expected, I love the way the linked slider displays your original selection). The bad news is that when I navigate away from the page containing the sliders and then attempt to return, I get the spinning wheel of death :-( Any idea why this might be?

Show parent | Reply

Hi Stephen

Difficult to say as you haven't given me much to go on ;-)

What browser were you using? It is specific to just that browser or does it happen in others? What exactly is the 'Spinning wheel of death'? Running from a web/local server or LMS? Any errors in the console? Did you configure the confidenceSliders any differently from the example.json? (text changes are not important)

I just set up a quick test using the out-of-the-box framework with the new confidenceSlider installed. I added two instances of this component at the end of co-10 and set the second to be linked to the first. I then ran the course from an LMS in both Firefox and IE11 - but didn't have any problems when navigating away and back to page co-10.

Show parent | Reply

Side-by-side confidence slider screenshot Finally got the new Confidence Slider working Matt, but it required me to delve into the framework (probably not a bad thing). Getting it working in the Authoring tool running in a Vagrant VM eluded me (I might return to it when the new code is committed to the AdaptLearning repo).

Thanks for your help.

Show parent | Reply

Time for an update. The new Confidence Slider works perfectly in a course developed in the framework (v.2.0.11) and I can now successfully add the slider component to a course built in the latest Authoring Tool (running on my on server). (As an aside, oddly, to successfully preview the course for the first time, I need to add the contrib-slider to the course. Once the course has been previewed I can then remove the contrib-slider and the course continues to preview correctly.)

The behaviour of the two different versions differs however. Once I have submitted values using the sliders, the framework-generated course displays feedback and allows me to navigate back to the page successfully, however, the Authoring Tool-generated example will not display feedback and will not let me return to the page (the page loading gif just spins ad infinitum).

When I look at the developer tools in Chrome I can see an error, which when expanded suggests it's an issue with feedback:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'text' of undefined

_getThresholdFeedback	@	adapt.min.js:60
_getFeedbackString	@	adapt.min.js:60
setupFeedback

I tried to make sure the AT version matched the framework's json as closely as possible, but ran into the following issues. The AT has no ability to set _canShowFeedback, and, perhaps because of this, feedback does not display in my AT-authored slider demo. The Add button, that presumably, allows you to set thresholds for more nuanced feedback, does not work either. The error in the console is:

Uncaught TypeError: i is not a constructor

Could these AT issues just be errors in the properties.schema?

Show parent | Reply

Just an update to the update ;-)

I've downloaded the Authoring Tool-generated course source code and edited it directly in the Framework to add in threshold values. Low and behold the course now works as expected and I can re-visit pages once values have been set using the sliders.

Show parent | Reply

Could these AT issues just be errors in the properties.schema?

Yes - in fact it's a known issue: https://github.com/chris-steele/adapt-contrib-confidenceSlider/issues/1

Show parent | Reply