Starter blocks

Elabora has few blocks, and each one comes in several forms. A block stands for one learner action and one shape of data: opening panels, following steps, exploring a picture, answering a question. Presentations only change the look: going from Tabs to Cards does not touch a single word.

This page follows the block list, family by family, with the entries as you see them: Text, Media, Layout, Interaction and Questions. It also says what ties them together: Transform into…, After exploring and the Opening layout. To add a block, see screens and blocks. The reasons behind these choices are in the learning science behind Elabora.

How they work

• Each entry is one thing you have in mind. You are looking for flip cards, a timeline, a matching exercise: each has its own entry in the list, with no indentation and no submenu. Entries marked with an ellipsis (Image…, Gallery…, Scrolling…) ask for your images first.
• The variants beside the preview are styles of that thing. Flip cards come as a Grid or One at a time; a Callout as Information, Tip, Warning or Important. Click the one you want and the block arrives that way.
• The inspector offers every presentation. Once the block is inserted, it keeps the block’s name (Panels, Sort, Steps…) and Presentation is the first setting in Properties, a choice in buttons. You go from Cards to Tabs, or from Pairs to Categories, whenever you like.
• Only the settings that apply show. A setting used by one presentation only (the title of an image with Text beside, the date of a Timeline) is shown for that presentation alone.
• Nothing moves. A block that shows one thing at a time (tabs, cards, steps) reserves the room of its tallest item: the page does not jump when the learner changes item.
• Calm by construction. No marker pulses, every movement has a quieter form when the learner asks for less motion, and tabs become panels to unfold in a narrow window.
• Searching by another name. The block list’s search field understands Rise’s names, and each one leads to its entry: “flashcard” and “flip” find Flip cards, “labeled graphic” the Interactive image, “process” Steps, “timeline” the Timeline, “matching” Match, “sorting” Categorize, “banner” the Image as a band.

Text

The family holds Text, Title, Lesson introduction, Callout, Statement, Divider, Equation, Quote and Persona. Quote and Persona close the family, under a quotation-mark icon.

Text has one more setting, Margin note: a remark that goes in the margin in a wide window and after the text in a narrow one. Callout comes as Information, Tip, Warning or Important.

Statement sets the one idea of the screen to remember in large type, as Large, Between rules or Over an image. It is Rise’s statement.

• Alignment: Centred or At the start.
• Over an image puts the text on the theme’s scrim, and the text’s contrast is measured against the picture behind it.
• The checks flag a statement that repeats a text of the same screen.

Quote (quote in Rise) gives the floor to someone: Large, Between rules, With portrait or Over an image. It starts with an Author and a Role to replace; With portrait and Over an image ask for the image first. In the inspector, a quote is a Statement that has an author: Author, Role and Portrait make a statement a quote, in all its presentations. Quotation mark, one more presentation, is only chosen there.

Divider marks a pause between two parts of a long page: Line, Ornament (the theme’s drawing), Number or Space. A Number counts the screen’s dividers; Count from 01 again restarts the count. Space is Small, Medium or Large. Screen readers skip dividers.

Lesson introduction, right after Title, is only offered on a screen without a layout: it gives it the Opening layout (see below). Persona is a picture, who they are and what they say: it asks for the image first.

Media

The family holds Image…, Gallery…, Compare two images…, Video… and Audio…. Each asks first for a file from your computer.

Image… is placed as Centred, Wide, Band (edge to edge), Text beside or Text over it (banner, image & text, text on image in Rise).

• Focal point: click the picture where its subject is. Crops (the band, a phone) keep it in view. Centre puts it back in the middle.
• Opens full size: a click enlarges the image in the player, with its caption.
• Text beside: Image side (Left or Right) and Image width (Half, A third, Two thirds), with a title and a text. Text over it and Band have a Height (Short, Medium, Tall). Keep the text over an image to a sentence or two.
• Band is an Edge to edge block: a block’s Width has four choices, Full, Wide, Half and Edge to edge. On a slide, the edge is the slide’s.

Gallery… (gallery in Rise) asks for your images, then lays them out as a Grid, a Mosaic or One at a time. Each image has its caption; Columns and Shape set the grid; Opens full size opens images large, with previous and next. One at a time never turns by itself.

Compare two images… is a slider that wipes from one image to the other, before and after. In the inspector it is the Gallery, and its Presentation offers all four: Grid, Mosaic, One at a time and Before and after.

Video… and Audio… have not changed: see images, video and audio.

Layout

The family holds Stack, Columns and Do / Don’t.

Stack shows contents that follow each other in the same place.

Columns (columns in Rise) puts blocks side by side: 2 columns or 3 columns. Each column says how many blocks it holds; Add a paragraph puts one more in. Widths: Equal, First wider or Last wider; Alignment: Top or Centred. On a phone the columns stack. With two columns, the third one’s content is kept but not shown.

Do / Don’t, right after Columns, is two columns already filled in: what to do in a Tip callout, what to avoid in a Warning callout.

Interaction

The family holds Accordion, Tabs, Flip cards, Myth or fact?, Steps, Timeline, Scrolling…, Interactive image…, Guided tour…, Character, Dialogue, Decision and Button. It is read by what the learner does.

Panels

Accordion, Tabs and Flip cards are three entries of one block, Panels in the inspector (Rise’s accordion, tabs and flashcards: accordion, tabs, flashcards). It groups titled items that learners open in whatever order they like.

• Presentation, in the inspector: Accordion (the default), Tabs, Cards or One card at a time. Flip cards are placed as a Grid or One at a time.
• Each item has a title, a text and an image. On a card, the front is the title and the image, the back the text.
• Think first: a prompt shown before revealing (“Before you turn each card over, say what you think is on the back”). It turns a click into recall: why, see think first and flip cards as retrieval.
• Say “Turn the card over” sets the cards’ hint.
• Tabs turn into panels to unfold in a narrow window. The checks flag more items than the presentation shows well (over 7 tabs, over 12 cards) and a tab label that is too long (over 24 characters).
• Myth or fact?, right after Flip cards, is a deck already filled in: the front asks, the back answers, with a prompt that asks learners to decide before turning. Searching “key words”, “vocabulary” or “glossary” finds Flip cards too.

Steps

Steps, Timeline and Scrolling… are three entries of one block, Steps in the inspector (process and timeline in Rise). It reads a procedure or a series of events step by step. Do not confuse it with the Process chart, which is read at a glance, with short labels.

• Steps: “Step 2 of 5”, previous and next, the keyboard’s arrows and a swipe; a step that has been shown counts as seen. Introduction and Summary open and close the series. It never moves on by itself. In the inspector, this is One at a time.
• Timeline: a vertical timeline, with a Date per event. Each event comes in as it reaches the screen.
• Scrolling… asks for your images first and makes one step per image. A figure stays in place while the texts scroll past; scrolling remains the learner’s own, never taken over. Figure: Each its picture, Layers (the images pile up) or Outlined zones (the view moves over a detail of Figure’s picture; each step has its zone, which you draw on the picture and move with the mouse or the arrows, Shift and the arrows resize it). Without scrolling support, or with reduced motion, each step’s image shows with its step. In slides, a check warns you that scrolling steps are out of place.
• Number the steps puts a number on each one. See steps, or scrolling.

Interactive image

Interactive image… and Guided tour… are two entries of one block, Interactive image in the inspector (labeled graphic in Rise). Each asks for the picture first, then puts markers on it that open what they explain.

• Interactive image…: By the marker, At the side or Under the picture.
• Guided tour…: the markers one after the other, in order. In the inspector it is a fourth presentation, Guided tour.
• Click the picture to add a marker; drag it to move it. Each marker has a title, a text and may have an image.
• Markers show: Numbers or Icon (Plus, Information, Question, Eye). Instruction: the sentence that says what to do (“Select each marker to learn more”).
• Markers are at least 44 px and never pulse; Escape closes a panel. In a narrow window they become a numbered list under the picture. A check flags markers that overlap on a phone, and another more than 8 markers.
• Why the words stay next to what they describe: words next to their picture.

Character, Dialogue, Decision, Button

Character shows a character of the course who says or thinks a sentence or two: Speech or Thought. Choose one among the course’s characters, or let Elabora create one. Bubbles for the sentences; Portrait left or right. For a real conversation with choices, use the dialogue.

Dialogue, Decision and Button (Primary or Secondary) have not changed: see events and dialogues.

Questions

The family holds Question, Picture question…, Question on a picture…, Numeric question, Fill in the blanks, Match, Categorize, Put in order, Reflection, Scale and Results. The player saves the answers with progress and announces them to screen readers. Whether a question is scored, and its feedback, are set in Properties, as for any question.

Question

Question is placed as Single answer or Multiple answers. Picture question… (the answers are images) and Question on a picture… (the answers are zones on an image) ask for your images first. They are three entries of one question: in the inspector, Presentation offers Text, Pictures and On a picture.

On a picture, click to add a Zone, drag it to place it. Screen readers hear “Zone 1”, “Zone 2”, until the answer is given, so the picture does not give it away.

Fill in the blanks

Fill in the blanks (fill in the blank in Rise) has learners recall words in their sentence: Typed, Menus or Word bank.

• A blank is written between double brackets: [[answer]], with other accepted answers after a bar: [[DNS|DNS server]]. Select words and click Make a blank: they become one.
• Extra words adds distractors to the menus or the word bank. Accept without accents makes typing tolerant.
• Word bank: learners choose a word, then its blank. Dragging works too, as an extra, with a mouse.
• The score is the share of blanks right. Write feedback for a wrong answer: a check reminds you.

Match, Categorize, Put in order

These three entries are one block, Sort in the inspector (matching and sorting in Rise; putting in order does not exist there). Its Presentation has three choices: Pairs (each item has Its match), Categories (each item has its Category) and Order (Items, in the right order: learners see them shuffled).

• An item, like a target, has a text and may have an image.
• Learners choose an item, then where it goes. Dragging is an extra for those with a mouse; in Order, buttons move an item up and down.
• Each item placed right counts: the score is the share of items right, and it is passed to the LMS. Why tap first: drag and drop: tap first.
• A check flags items and targets that do not fit together.

Reflection and Scale

Reflection asks a question learners answer in their own words. Scale has them place their view or confidence on a scale. In the inspector it is the same block, Reflection, as a Free answer or a Scale.

• Longest answer and Field height set the field. An expert’s answer shows so that learners can compare. Offer “My answers” lets them download what they wrote.
• Scale: From and To, with Lowest means and Highest means (“Not at all”, “Completely”).
• A reflection is never scored. It counts as done once saved, and its answer stays with progress.

Opening

Opening is a screen layout, not a block: the screen opens on its title, a lead paragraph and the reading time. The simplest way is the Lesson introduction entry of Text, offered on a screen without a layout. Otherwise, choose it in the screen’s Properties, on the Layout row (Opening): a section of the same name sets its presentations and texts.

• Presentation: Title (the title alone), Band (the title over an image, edge to edge), Side by side (the title and lead beside the image) or Cover (the image fills the first view, the title over it).
• Eyebrow stays empty so that the player writes the section and “Lesson 2 of 6”. Lead paragraph: a sentence or two on what the lesson brings. Reading time shows or hides the page’s duration (“6 min”), computed from its words, media and narration.
• An opening also has room for a question asked before the lesson, a question or a reflection, unscored: it primes the lesson. See think first.
• One opening per lesson page, on its first screen.

Recipes

Recipes are Rise’s ready-made designs: blocks already filled in, where all that is left is to write. Here they are entries like any other, with no indentation and no mark: you find them next to what they are made of.

• Do / Don’t, after Columns: two columns, what to do and what to avoid.
• Myth or fact?, after Flip cards: cards whose front asks and whose back answers.
• Lesson introduction, after Title: the screen opens with its title, a lead and the reading time.
• Persona, last in Text: a picture, who they are and what they say.

They are not new blocks: once inserted, a recipe is retouched like any other blocks. Your AI can add recipes of your course’s own.

Transform into…

A block’s … menu, and right-click, offer Transform into… when the block can become something else: another presentation, or another block that keeps the same items. The menu lists the targets by the block list’s names (Match, Flip cards · One at a time…), each with a sentence saying what is kept, what is lost and what starts empty. You see it before choosing. A target the block cannot take is greyed out, and hovering it says why. The block keeps its identifier, and one ⌘Z undoes the transformation.

The entry is absent when the block has no target.

After exploring and Optional

A screen with steps can wait until learners have explored what is above. In the screen’s Properties, the Steps section says how each step Opens: besides With “Continue”, After activities and By an event, there is After exploring. Continue then waits until the blocks above are explored (every panel opened, every card turned, every step seen) and their activities done. Until then the button is there but locked, and says what is left (“2 panels left to open.”). On a slide, Next waits the same way.

Optional: does not hold back what follows, in a block’s Properties, takes the block out of that wait: a transcript, an extra detail. The setting only shows on a screen that waits for exploration.

Opening is not understanding: put a question right after (see revealing is not practice).

What to ask the agent

Your AI knows these blocks and their presentations. It can add them, change the presentation, and turn content into an exercise without rewriting a word:

On screen 3, turn these panels into flip cards, then add a Sort exercise with the same pairs.

Give the introduction of lesson 2 an Opening layout, with a band image and a question before the lesson.

Make “Continue” wait until the four cards of screen 5 have been turned, and make the transcript optional.

The technical details of each block are in Blocks and Components, the decision in D63.