* * * I N S T R U C T I O N S * * *
For Study Hall - Computer-Assisted Instruction
(Version 4.0 of the file named instr.doc, released in July, 2006
Bill McGinnis Software
P. O. Box 2543
Alexandria, VA 22301
U. S. A.
with material already written, you don't need all of this.
to write study files. If you only want to use Study Hall
Just go to "How To Load And Run Study Hall," below. Also
read "The Drill Screen Menu."
STUDY HALL - Computer-Assisted Instruction
Version 4.0 - July, 2006
INTRODUCTION TO STUDY HALL
STUDY HALL is a completely free, Public Domain, uncomplicated,
highly-flexible, widely-useful way for you to create and distribute
Computer-Assisted Instruction. With Study Hall and a PC, you could write a
study file tonight; and tomorrow, it could be run by almost anybody in the
world with almost any kind of a Windows or other DOS-compatible computer,
even a very minimal system.
You can write your own lessons and courses with any kind of editor or word
procesor which can produce plain text files. And you can link directly to
the Internet to supplement the materials which you yourself prepare.
OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY HALL SYSTEM
In Study Hall, the educational content is contained in "study files." A
study file is a plain text file, written on a word processor, following
the format requirements of Study Hall. The Run Module reads the study
file, then converts it into interactive form and presents it to the user.
So when you distribute the study files you have written, you would also
provide copies of the Run Module for the students to use to run your study
files.
Study Hall uses a very simple system of thirteen control characters,
contained within the text, to control the flow of information to the
student. These thirteen control characters are:
Three "screen definition control characters" - for READ screens, for DRILL
screens, and for QUIZ screens.
Ten "branch control characters" - GO TO, LOAD, QUIT, EXIT, IF SCORE IS
GREATER THAN, IF SCORE IS LESS THAN, IF ANSWER IS, IF ANSWER IS NOT; the
Q-link control character, which allows you to link multiple Quiz pages to
form longer quizes and tests; and the DOSCOMMAND control character, which
allows you to call up supplementary material as desired, including
material from the Internet, running in separate Window(s), at the same
time the lesson is in progress.
Each study file is organized, by you the author, into "screens" of
information. Each screen may contain as many as 20 lines of educational
content. Each line may contain as many as 80 characters. A study file may
contain as many as 1,200 lines of text and as many as 200 different
screens. A course may contain multiple study files, the number being
limited only by available mass storage.
There are three types of screens in Study Hall: read screens, drill
screens, and quiz screens.
In a read screen, the text is displayed on the monitor, and the student
simply reads it. In a drill screen, Study Hall presents drills for the
student, based on matched pairs of information provided by the author. In
a quiz screen, questions are presented, one-by-one, and the answers given
by the student are compared to the correct answers provided by the author.
At the end of each screen, the program needs to know where to go next. So
provision has been made to control branching automatically, in a manner
determined by the author of the study file. Automatic branching may send
control to four different destinations: 1) another screen; 2) another
study file; 3) the study menu; 4)the main menu of Study Hall.
Branching may be unconditional, or conditional, based on the current score
(of a drill or quiz) or on the most recent answer (to a question). The
student may always manually over-ride the automatic branching of Study
Hall by choosing to return to the main menu or to the study menu.
In addition, the DOSCOMMAND control character allows you to call up
supplementary material as desired, running in separate Window(s), at the
same time the lesson is in progress.
HOW TO LOAD AND RUN STUDY HALL
STUDY HALL is a DOS program which runs under the Command Prompt within the
Windows operating system.
First, make sure that all the files you need are available on the same
directory including STUDY.EXE (the program file), and AUTH.BMS (the
authorization file), plus any study files you want. The study files should
also be on the same directory because when Study Hall prompts you to
select a study file to use, it lists the files on the current directory.
Then navigate to that directory and click on STUDY.EXE, to launch STUDY
HALL. Or you can use the Command Prompt within Windows, then enter STUDY
to run the STUDY.EXE file. This will load Study Hall and start to run it.
Soon, there will be a title screen, and then you go to the Main Menu. Or,
you can enter STUDY/xxx or STUDY/xxx/yyy, where xxx is the name of a study
file and yyy is the name or number of a screen within study file xxx. In
these cases, Study Hall will start to run, will bypass the main menu, will
load the study file specified, and will start at the screen specified, if
any. If no screen is specified, Study Hall will load the study file, then
prompt the user to begin running it.
Main Menu
1. STUDY!
a. Introduction To STUDY HALL
b. Instructions
c. Load A Study File Into STUDY HALL
d. Shell To DOS
e. Change Colors On Screen
x. Exit
(Select by letter or number)
Before you can start to study anything, you need to load a study file into
Study Hall. If you choose menu selection 1 before a study file is loaded,
you will be prompted to load a study file from among the files listed on
the current directory. Then you will continue to the Study Menu. Or you
can use selection c to load a study file, then continue to the STUDY!
Menu, which looks like this . . .
Study Menu
1. START STUDYING AT THE BEGINNING OF THE STUDY FILE
2. START STUDYING AT A PARTICULAR SCREEN
3. RESUME STUDYING AT SCREEN LAST STUDIED
4. LOAD A DIFFERENT STUDY FILE
a. Display A Numerical Listing Of Screens
b. Display A Particular Screen
c. Display The Screen Last Studied
d. Browse Through The Screens Sequentially
e. Shell To DOS
m. Go To Main Menu
(Select by letter or number)
Selections 1 through 3 put you into the study mode, and program control is
surrendered to the screen specified. Selection 4 lets you change study
files.
Selection "a" gives you a summary view of all the screens in the current
study file. It permits you to relate the name of any screen to its number.
(Screens may be specified in Study Hall either by their name or their
number. Their number is determined by their physical sequence in the study
file, with the first screen being #1, the second being #2, etc.)
Selections "b" through "d" permit you to view the screens, as they are
written, including control characters, without surrendering program
control to the screens you are viewing.
Selection "e" lets you temporarily leave Study Hall to go to DOS, (Command
Prompt) perhaps to copy some files, or call up a directory, or run a
supplemental program, or go to the Internet. Then when you are finished
with that, you exit the command prompt and return to the study menu.
(There is also a Shell To DOS on the main menu.)
Selection m gets you out of the study menu and back to the main menu.
THE DRILL SCREEN MENU
When you are in the study mode, and Study Hall encounters a drill screen,
you will be offered the Drill Screen Menu, which looks like this . . .
Drill Screen Menu
1. Display The Drill Screen You Are Now On
2. Display Or Change Drill Screen Controls
3. Begin The Drill
4. Skip This Drill And Go On To Next Screen
m. Go To Main Menu
s. Go To Study Menu
(Select by letter or number)
If you select 2, you will be given the chance to modify the various drill
screen controls which control the timer, the order of presentation, the
scorekeeper, the degree of inclusion, and the left-side/right-side
priority of stimulus and response. These controls permit the student to
conduct the drill in the manner he prefers.
PREPARING TO WRITE A STUDY FILE
For our present purpose, let's assume that you want to write a study file,
for your own use or for the use of others. Let's further assume that you
have already prepared a flow chart of your screens, so you already know
what you want each screen to accomplish, and you already know the
branching routes for each screen. Let's further assume that you have a
suitable word processor, one which can export and import text files in the
ASCII format.
Your task now is to write the actual screens, using the Study Hall control
characters to control the interactive flow of information to the student.
Each screen has three parts: 1) the screen definition control character,
2) the body of the screen, and 3) the branch control character(s).
The screen definition control character defines the beginning of a screen,
gives a name to that screen, and identifies which type of screen it is . .
. Read, Drill, or Quiz. The screen definition control character is located
at the top of each screen.
The body of the screen contains the educational content of the screen:
text, in the case of a read screen; drill pairs, in the case of a drill
screen; and questions & answers, in the case of a quiz screen. The body of
the screen occupies the middle part of the screen.
The branch control characters determine where the program goes after the
current screen is finished. Control can be sent, by the author, to another
screen, to another study file, back to main menu, or to the operating
system of the computer. Branch control characters are located at the
bottom of the screen, below the body of the screen.
When Study Hall has completed the body of a screen (the educational
content), it then looks to the bottom of that screen for a branch control
character it can execute. If it cannot execute the first branch control
character, it then tries to execute the second one, etc. As soon as Study
Hall finds a branch control character it can execute, it does so, and
program control then passes to the specified destination. The maximum
number of branch control characters per screen is 9.
SCREEN DEFINITION CONTROL CHARACTERS
The beginning of each screen is defined by a "screen definition control
character." There are three types of screen definition control characters,
corresponding to the three types of screens in Study Hall: read screens,
drill screens, and quiz screens . . .
a. The READ type: Syntax is << bbb-R >>
b. The DRILL type: Syntax is << bbb-D >>
c. The QUIZ type: Syntax is << bbb-Q >>
. . . where bbb is the body of the name of the screen and -R or -D or -Q
is the suffix, denoting the type of screen.
A screen definition control character must begin with << and end with >>.
A screen definition control character must begin in the first column in
its line, at the very left. Study Hall looks at each line to see if it
contains a screen definition control character. If Study Hall does not
find << in the leftmost position, it concludes that this line does not
define the beginning of a new screen. Study Hall then goes to look at the
next lines.
The screen definition control character must fit on one line. It cannot
run over onto a second line. It may be a maximum of 80 characters long
(the maximum length of a line, in Study Hall).
This is how Study Hall parses a screen definition control character into
the name of screen and type of screen . . .
Screen Definition
Control Character Name Of screen Type
<< intro-D>> intro-D drill
<< first quiz - Q >> firstquiz-Q quiz
<< study me first - R >> studymefirst-R read
<< go here first-Q>> goherefirst-Q quiz
<< begin-D>> begin-D drill
Please note that spaces are always squeezed out within a screen definition
control character, except that the two characters in << and the >> must
have no space between them, so as to be recognized when Study Hall scans
the line. Capitalization (case) is disregarded.
The last line of a screen is considered to be the line immediately before
the first line of the next screen. So if screen number 3 begins at line
24, then the last line of screen number 2 would be line 23. (The maximum
is 20 lines of educational content per screen.)
THE BODY OF A READ SCREEN
The body of a read screen is very simple: it is text, just like in a
textbook. In a read screen, you (the author) present the material you want
the student to learn as text. You may also create "character graphics."
Character graphics are graphic illustrations based on the printable
characters of your computer, such as --- and ___ and *** and |. This text,
including character graphics, is stored in ASCII form, which is the most
universal way to store computer text.
If you want to include other kinds of graphics, or sound or slides or
video in your lessons, you can prepare these items separately, by other
means, and use Study Hall to refer to them, just like you would do in
person, in the classroom. For example, this might appear on a read screen
. . .
"Please turn on the VCR and play tape number four."
Or, you can issue a command from within your study file, using the
"doscommand" control character (more on this later.) With doscommand, you
can command the operating system to automatically run an outside program,
then return to the next Study Hall screen. If you want to do it, you can
develop the most sophisticated graphics or sound or animation imaginable
in an outside program. Then you can control the operation of this program
from within your study file.
THE DOSCOMMAND CONTROL CHARACTER ALSO LETS YOU LAUNCH YOUR INTERNET
EXPLORER AND LINK TO ANYTHING YOU CAN FIND ON THE INTERNET! So you can
send your students out to the Internet to read about a subject, and then
you can use STUDY HALL to emphasize certain parts of the subject and
provide drills and quizzes.
THE BODY OF A DRILL SCREEN
The body of a drill screen consists of matched pairs of information,
called "drill pairs." Each drill pair has a left side and a right side,
separated by a slash (/). A drill pair may link any two concepts that can
be expressed briefly in words separated by a slash (/). Study Hall
converts your drill pairs into extensive drills for the student.
A drill pair may not be longer than 80 characters, and it may not occupy
more than one line in the study file. More than one drill pair may be
placed on the same line, if they all will fit completely on that line. A
drill pair may not carry over from one line to the next. Different drill
pairs on the same line must be separated by at least four spaces. The
maximum number of drill pairs possible in any one screen is 50.
Here are examples of drill pairs, linking historical events and their
years:
Battle of Hastings/1066 Columbus discovers America/1492
U. S. Constitution written/1787 Civil War begins/1861
World War II ends/1945 JFK elected president/1960
The possible uses for drill pairs is almost infinite: States and their
capitals; departments and their managers; countries and their capitals;
countries and their leaders; inventions and their inventors; mathematical
equations and their names; substances and their chemical formulas; events
and their dates; paintings and their artists; battles and their generals;
words and their definitions; names of bones and their locations in the
body; baseball players and their batting averages; books and their
authors; and so on.
THE BODY OF A QUIZ SCREEN
The body of a quiz screen consists of questions and their answers.
Questions begin with "Q:" and answers begin with "A:." When Study Hall
encounters a line in a quiz screen beginning with "Q:," it prints that
line and the following lines, as part of the question, until it encounters
a line beginning with "A:." A line beginning with "A:" is the answer line.
There may be many lines in a question, but only one line in the answer. So
there is always plenty of room in the question to include any explanatory
material you desire, along with the question itself. NOTE: The initial
"Q:" is not printed, but is replaced by " ".
Study Hall disregards capitalization and spaces in
answer lines, so "U. S. Government" is the same as
"U.S. Government is the same as "U.S.Government" is the same as
"u. s. gov ernment." Study Hall also disregards periods at
the right end of an answer line, so that "b" is thesame as "b."
Quiz screens are particularly useful for the following types of questions:
multiple choice, true or false, fill in the blanks. They also work well
with ordered lists and column matching. (See the study file named tutor
for examples.) Quiz screens will not work with essay questions, unordered
lists, or partial lists.
Quiz screens can be linked together, using the <*Q-link*> control
character, so that the questions on several quiz screens are treated as
part of the same quiz. (See the discussion of Branch Control Characters,
below, for instructions on how to link quiz screens.) The maximum possible
number of total lines for quiz screens linked together is 200.
Study Hall keeps score on quizes, continually providing the cumulative
score, and permitting conditional branching based on the cumulative score.
Study Hall also keeps track of the last answer given, and permits
conditional branching based on the last answer given.
Here are some examples of questions on a quiz screen . . .
Multiple Choice Questions
Q: 1. Who was the third president of the United States (please enter your
selection by letter)?
(a) Abraham Lincoln (b) Thomas Jefferson (c) Bob Hope (d) John Quincy
Adams (e) Andrew Jackson
A: b
True or False Questions
Q: Please answer the following questions, T or F (true or false).
1. According to the text, Christopher Columbus discovered America. (T or
F)
A: T
Q:
2. In geometry, regarding triangles, the square of the hypotenuse is equal
to the sum of the squares of the other two angles. (T or F)
A: F
Q:
3. "Iambic pentameter" is a term commonly used in the study of psychology.
(T or F)
A: F
Fill In The Blanks Questions
Q: Please fill in the blanks.
1. The Union general in the U. S. Civil War who later became President was
_____________. (Last name only)
A: Grant
Q: 2. The President of the Confederacy in the U. S. Civil War was
__________. (First and last names)
A: Jefferson Davis
Q: 3. The chairman of the convention which wrote the U. S. Constitution
was ____________. (First and last names)
A: George Washington
Q: 4. Please complete the following slogan from the Revolutionary War
period in U. S. history: " Give me liberty or ________." (three words)
A: give me death Remember that Study Hall compares the answer entered by
the student with the correct answer provided by the author, following the
A:, disregarding spaces, disregarding capitalization, and disregarding a
terminal period (.). If the answers are the same, then the answer is
considered to be correct; otherwise, incorrect.
Quiz screens can also be used by the author as a menu for the student, to
permit the student to select what he wants to do next within the course.
In these cases, the answer line takes this form: A: ?. This tells Study
Hall that there is no correct answer, but the answer is a matter of
choice. These answers are not computed as part of the score.
Here is an example . . .
Q: Now that you have finished reading Chapter One, what would you like to
do next (enter your selection by letter)?
a. Read it again.
b. Do the drill for chapter one.
c. Take the quiz for chapter one.
d. Take a break
e. Other
A: ?
BRANCH CONTROL CHARACTERS
Branch control characters are located at the bottom of each screen, below
the body of the screen. Branch control characters determine where program
control goes after that screen is finished: to another screen, to another
study file, to the main menu of Study Hall, or to the study menu.
There may be as many as nine branch control characters at the bottom of
each screen. There is only one branch control character per line, and it
must begin in the first position on its line, all the way to the left. If
not in left-most position, the character will not be read by Study Hall.
Study Hall will start with the first branch control character, and try to
execute it. If it cannot, it then tries to execute the second one, and so
forth. As soon as a branch control character is executed, program control
passes to its next destination. If no branch control character can be
executed, Study Hall advises you to fix the study file and try again.
Study Hall generally disregards capitalization and spacing in branch
control characters, except that the <* and *> must be together in order to
be recognized when Study Hall scans the line.
These are the ten branch control characters used in Study Hall:
Unconditional Branch Control Characters - (SIX)
GO TO, LOAD, QUIT, EXIT, Q-LINK, and DOSCOMMAND
a. GO TO: Syntax is <* go to xxx *>
xxx is the name or number of any screen in the current study file.
Examples: <* go to first screen-R *> <* goto 3*>
This is the character you will be using most of the time, either by itself
of as part of a conditional branch control character. This is the basic
way you move from screen to screen.
If Study Hall sees a numeric digit in the leftmost position of a screen
name, it will go to the screen of that number, rather than the screen of
that name. It thinks <* go to 3rd quiz-Q*> means <* go to 3*>. So don't
begin your screen names with a numeric digit.
b. LOAD: Syntax is <* load xxx *> or <* load xxx/yyy *>
xxx is the name of a study file, in MS/DOS form.
yyy is the name or number of a screen within study file xxx
Examples: <* load history-1.txt*> <* load c:\study\history-1.txt *> <*
load presidents.txt/firstscreen-3-R *> <* load cats.txt/4 *>
This the way you use two or more study files together: the first one loads
the second, and the second one loads the third. And you can jump into or
out of a study file at any screen you want.
c. QUIT: Syntax is <* quit *>
QUIT returns control to the main menu of the Study Hall program. At the
end of your course, the final instruction on the final screen would be <*
quit *>, taking you back to the main menu of Study Hall.
d. EXIT: Syntax is <* exit *>
EXIT leaves Study Hall altogether and erases it from memory.
e. Q-LINK:
Syntax is:
<* Q-link *>
<< screen-name-Q >>
Example:
<* Q-link *>
<< last-page-Q >>
Quiz screens may be linked together, so that the questions on more than
one screen are included in one quiz. In order to accomplish this linking,
use the <* Q-link*> control character at the bottom of any quiz screen to
be linked with another quiz screen following it in the study file. The
Q-link character must be directly abovethe screen definition control
character for the following quiz screen, at the very leftmost position in
the line.
When Study Hall encounters the <* Q-link *> control character, it treats
the next quiz screen as if it were a continuation of the one before it.
Quiz screens may be Q-linked together until their total number of lines
equals 200, the maximum number of lines possible in one quiz.
At the bottom of the last screen in the quiz, please use the other branch
control characters to go to the next destination desired.
f. DOSCOMMAND: Syntax is <* doscommand xxx *>
xxx is any legal MS/DOS command. Study Hall preserves the spacing within
each DOS command, so commands which require spaces between elements will
work properly.
Examples: <* doscommand dir *> <* doscommand qb/b/ah *>
<* doscommand copy instr.doc prn*> <* doscommand format *>
DOSCOMMAND creates a DOS shell, then executes the MS/DOS command you
specified with the xxx. After executing the command, STUDY HALL then
returns to the next screen in the study file.
This is an extremely powerful command, because you can summon all the
power of the user's computer from within your study file. You can issue
commands to run exec files (.exe), com files (.com), and batch files
(.bat), as well as any other legal DOS command. This allows you to run
other computer programs, as needed, from within the Study Hall
environment, then return to Study Hall at the next screen.
Conditional Branch Control Characters - (Four)
IF SCORE IS GREATER THAN, IF SCORE IS LESS THAN,
IF ANSWER IS, IF ANSWER IS NOT
a. IF SCORE IS GREATER THAN:
Syntax is <* if score is greater than xxx then YYY *>
xxx is a specified integer percentage value of the current cumulative
score, and YYY is one of the following commands: GO TO, LOAD, QUIT, EXIT,
Or DOSCOMMAND. Examples:
<* if score is greater than 99 then go to third screen -R *>
<* if score is greater than 80 then quit *>
<* ifscoreisgreaterthan75thenload c:\study\hist-1.txt *>
<* if score is greater than 50 then goto 5 *>
<* if score is greater than 90 then doscommand congrats.bat *>
Study Hall compares the student's current score to the score specified by
the author. If the student's score is greater than the score specified,
then the command is executed. If not, Study Hall looks to the next branch
control character. Scoring begins anew with each new quiz.
b. IF SCORE IS LESS THAN:
Syntax is <* if score is less than xxx then YYY *>
xxx is a specified integer percentage value of the current cumulative
score, and YYY is one of the following commands: GO TO, LOAD, QUIT, EXIT,
Or DOSCOMMAND. Examples:
<* if score is less than 50 then go to review again-R *>
<* if score is less than 90 then load suplmnt.txt *>
<* if score islessthan 10 then quit *>
<*ifscoreislessthan40thengoto3*>
<* if score is less than 50 then doscommand c:\letters\notgood *>
Study Hall compares the student's current score to the score specified by
the author. If the student's score is less than the score specified, then
the command is executed. If not, Study Hall looks to the next branch
control character. Scoring begins anew with each new quiz.
c. IF ANSWER IS:
Syntax is <* if answer is xxx then YYY *>
xxx is a possible answer to the last question, and YYY is one of the
following commands: GO TO, LOAD, QUIT, EXIT, Or DOSCOMMAND. Examples:
<* if answer is d then goto second screen-R *>
<* if answer is George Washington then go to 4 *>
<* if answer is T then quit *>
<* if answer is Alaska then load alaska.txt *>
Study Hall compares the answer given by the student to the xxx answer
provided by the author. If they are the same, then there is a match, and
the command is executed. If not, Study Hall looks to the next branch
control character. xxx is not necessarily the correct answer.
d. IF ANSWER IS NOT:
Syntax is <* if answer is not xxx then YYY *>
xxx is a possible answer to the last question, and YYY is one of the
following commands: GO TO, LOAD, QUIT, EXIT, Or DOSCOMMAND. Examples:
<* if answer is not Civil War then go to 132 *>
<* if answer is not b then quit *>
<* if answer is not tibula then go to review bones-R *>
Study Hall compares the answer given by the student to the xxx answer
provided by the author. If they are not the same, then the command is
executed. xxx is not necessarily the correct answer.
* * * * *
HTML version of this page at http://www.StudyHall-CAI.com
Thank you for using Study Hall - Computer-Assisted Instruction.
Good luck, and Happy Study Files!
Sincerely,
Bill McGinnis
Sole Author of Study Hall
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