Adding Media, Polls and Moderator Notes to the Guide in Realtime

This article covers how to load media, add polls and moderator notes to the guide before an itracks Realtime session.

 

Quick links for this article

Question Preferences

Notes

Moving and Copying Questions

Importing from a File

Importing from an Activity

To load a moderator guide in itracks Realtime, first go to the Activities page and click into the activity you want to add a guide to. You will see the Guide option on the right.

Topics

To start loading your guide, create a Topic heading under which any number of questions can be created.  Questions cannot be added without adding a Topic first.

The topic is only seen by the moderators and not seen by participants or observers so it can be anything relevant to the person posting the guide.  As many topics as needed for your guide can be set up.

Click the Add Topic button to create a topic. 

After naming your topic, click the Save button to save.

Click the Cancel button to cancel the topic creation.

Once the topic is created, it can be edited by clicking the Edit button.

Insert topics above the currently created topic by clicking the Insert button.

Delete a topic by clicking the Delete button.

Questions

Once you have a topic, Questions can be created within that topic.  To add a question, click the Add Question button on the interface and it will open up the Question Information page.

Setting up a question requires you to do 3 basic steps: 

1. Select a Question Type
2. Enter in Question Text (and selection options as applicable)
3. Choose Question Preferences
    

Question Information

Question Type - This drop down box lets you choose what type of question you would like to set up.
 

Open Text - If chosen, will allow for the basic live chat question where people type into the chat interface with open end responses for Realtime text chat. 

For Realtime Video, this option is just like pointers to guide the Moderator through the discussion, open text questions cannot be posted to participants. 

Single Choice - If chosen, will create a single choice radio button list where participants can choose one of the options listed.

Multiple Choice - If chosen, will create a check box list where participants can choose as many of the options that they would like. 

Media Files - If chosen, will allow an image or video either preloaded into the media section, or directly uploaded here to be posted.

Links - If chosen, will allow for set up of a link to post to the group.

Dial Tester - This option will allow you to program a dial tester question

Type in or copy and paste the question text you would like to post in the Question Text area.

Options

This area only appears if Single Choice or Multiple Choice is selected from the Question Type drop down.

To begin there will only be one option area to type into.  New option textboxes will be added automatically as the bottom most text box is typed into. 

In the case of Multiple Choice questions there will be a column with the icon above it.  Selecting a checkbox in this column will make the option(s) you selected here unable to be selected with other options. 

If Randomized is selected under the Question Preferences there will be an additional column with the icon above it.  All items selected in this column will randomly be presented to the participants.  To anchor an option in place, simply deselect the checkbox in this column.

Click the Delete button to delete the option. 

 

Question Preferences

Uninfluenced - If the Uninfluenced check box is selected participants will not see each other’s answers until they respond to the questions themselves.

Randomized - When selected, the options for the closed ended portion of the question will be randomized if they are selected to do so. This option only appears for single choice or multiple choice questions.

Media display type - This option only appears if you have a multimedia question.  In the drop down box here there are three options.

Open in a new window only - Allows the participants to only see the image, video or link in a new window.

Inline only - Allows the participants to only see the image, video or link inline in the designated media share area.

Open in a new window and inline - This is the default option.  If chosen, the image, video or link will appear in the media share area and there will be an option, via a button, to open the stimuli in a new window. 

Once the question is created, you can edit the question by clicking the Edit button.  You can also insert above currently created questions or move or copy the question by clicking the Insert  button or delete a topic by clicking the button.

Notes

Notes are notes for the moderator’s eyes only.  Notes are not able to be displayed to the participants and are not able to be posted to the discussion area or seen by observers. 

To add a note, click the Add Note button and type in the note that needs to be added to the guide.  

 

Moving and Copying Questions

Each question has a that allows you to Insert, Move, or Copy a question or note.  

• Inserting a question adds a new question above the current question it was clicked on.
• Inserting a note inserts a new note above where you clicked.
• Copy or Move will allow you to copy the question to a different place in the guide (the original question remains where it is), or move it elsewhere.

To copy or move, click the Copy or Move option. Once this is done you will get your guide with additions of Copy and Move buttons after each item.

Click the Copy Here buttons to make a copy of the question into the spot you selected or click the Move Here button to move the location of the question to a new location in your guide.

Importing from a File

To import the guide from a file click the Import button and select the From File option.  Click the Next button to continue.

On the next screen will be an area to upload a file containing your guide into the board.  To do this effectively, begin by downloading the example template via the Download Example File link.

Fill in the file retaining the columns that are in the template file.  Here is an outline of what goes in each column.  A test guide is set up for you as an example when you download.

Topic Name	Question Type	Uninfluenced	Question Text	Poll Option Text	Poll Option Randomized	Poll Option Exclusive Choice
Topic Name	Discussion Note, Open End, Single Choice, Multiple Choice	True or False  (or blank)	Question Text	Poll options, 1 per row	True or False (or blank)	True or False (or blank)

Once the template is filled in, save it and return to the import area.  This time, select and upload the file.  When doing so, the current guide can be replaced by clicking the Replace Existing Moderator Guide checkbox when loading.

Click the Import button to load the guide.  If you had selected Replace Existing Guide, you will be asked to confirmed, with the warning that the action is irreversible. Select Yes or No.

The final page will show you the Results page.  If anything had failed to load it would send a warning here.

Importing from an Activity

To import the guide from another activity in the same project click the Import button and then choose From Activity. Click the Next button to proceed to the second step. 

On the second page, select an activity to import the guide from. When doing so, the current guide can be replaced by clicking the Replace Existing Moderator Guide checkbox when loading.

Click the Import button to complete the import.  If there were issues with the import, the Results page will tell you if there were issues or if the import failed.