Creating Hot Spot Items

Hot Spot items require students to select one or more clickable regions on an image. A rectangular border appears around each region the students select.

For example, a Hot Spot item could show a map of the United States and ask students to identify where Washington D.C. is located.

1.To fill out the template, in the Compose Item Prompt section, replace the sample text with the content for the item's question. You can use the toolbar in this box to format text and insert media elements.

2.In the Upload Image and Set Hot Spot Region section, upload an image for the item.

a.Click Upload Image.

b.In the Image Properties window, click Browse Server. Then do one of the following:

• If the image you want to use for the item is already available in the File Manager window, select it and click Add to Item. You can use the search bar in the corner to search for an image by its file name.
• If the image you want to use is not available in the File Manager window, click Upload File and select an image file from your computer. Then select the image and click Add to Item once the image is uploaded. The image must be 600 x 600 pixels or smaller and under 1.5 MB. The file may take a moment to upload.

c.In the Image Properties window, click OK.

3.To create the selectable regions on the image, do the following:

a.Click the image once to set the first corner of the selectable rectangle, then click one more time where you want to set its opposite corner (do not click and drag). A red box appears, but this will not be visible to students.

b.Optional: To move a selectable region, click that region and drag it to the desired location on the image.

c.Optional: To copy a selectable region, click that region's box and then click Copy. A new region with the same shape will appear. You can click and drag that region to the desired location.

d.Optional: To remove a hot spot region, click that region's box and then click Delete.

4.Optional: To add additional selectable regions, repeat steps 3.a–d.

5.In the Construct Answer Keys section, enter the item’s highest possible score in the Maximum Score field.

6.Optional: To limit the number of hot spot regions students can select at a time, enter a value in the Maximum Selections field.

7.To create the answer key for the item, do the following:

a.In the Point field, enter the score for a correct (or partially correct) response.

• If a sample response is already entered, you may need to unselect that hot spot first.

b.In the provided response area, click the image regions that students would need to select in order to earn the score entered in the Point field.

c.Optional: In the Explanation field, explain why the entered response is worth the score you specified.

8.Optional: If the item has more than one correct or partially correct answer, you can click beside the Point field to create additional answer keys. Repeat step 7 for each answer key you add.

a.Optional: To remove an answer key, click in the tab for that answer key.

9.Optional: If you want to provide a description of the scoring criteria to view in reports for the item, mark the Include Scoring Description checkbox. Then fill out the Description and Exemplar fields that appear.

10.To save the item, click Save above the template.