Using “Hot Potatoes” to Create Interactive Exercises

I. What is “Hot Potatoes”?

The “Hot Potatoes” is a suite of quiz/drill-authoring software created at the University of

Victoria, Canada. It includes five applications, enabling you to create interactive exercises:

 multiple-choice and short-answer quizzes (JQuiz)

 gap-fill exercises (JClose)
 matching exercises (JMatch) (two types: standard and drag-drop)
 jumbled-sentence or jumbled-word exercises (JMix) (two types: standard and
drag-drop)
 crosswords (JCross)

II. How can you download and register “Hot Potatoes”?

This software is free of charge for non-profit educational users who make their exercises
available on the web. However, if you are working in a commercial context, you need to pay
for a licence. You can download “Hot Potatoes” version 6.0.4, self-extracting, auto-installing
zip file at http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/hotpot/#downloads.

Whether you are commercial or otherwise, you need to register the programs. You have
to fill in a form on their website http://142.104.133.52/admin/register.htm and then get a
registration key from them via email. You will need to use your personal key to unlock all the
features of the programs. When you receive the key, simply start one of the Potatoes (any one
will do), then click on the Help menu and choose Register. Then you can enter your User
Name and Key.

III. Do you need to know HTML or JavaScript to use “Hot Potatoes”?

No. All you need to do is to enter your data – texts, questions, answers, etc. The program
will create the webpages for you. However, the programs are designed so that almost every
aspect of the pages can be customized, so if you do know HTML or JavaScript, you can make
almost any change you want to the way the exercises work.

IV. Three Steps in Making an Exercise:

1. Entering data (questions, answers, and texts) and save it as a data file.
(JQuiz: .jqz / JCloze: .jcl / JMatch: .jmt / JMix: .jmx /JCross: .jcw)
2. Configuring the output (preparing the button captions, instructions, and other
features of your Web pages)
3. Creating a Web page (compiling your exercise into a HTML or DHTML page)
and save it as a .htm file and view your exercise in your Web browser.

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Step 1: Entering data

In this part of the tutorial, we're going to make a multiple-choice exercise using JQuiz. The first stage
is to enter the questions and answers for your exercise. First, start the JQuiz program. You should see
an interface like the one below. If your interface looks more complicated than this, it's probably
switched to advanced mode; in that case, just click on Options / Mode / Beginner Mode.

Look at the picture below, and type in the information:

1. Type the title in the title box.
2. Type the question in the question box.
3. Make sure that "Multiple-choice" is selected in the drop-down list box to the right of the
question. This defines the type of question you want to make.
4. Type the answers in the boxes on the left
5. Type the feedback in the boxes on the right, but you can leave blank and use the automated
feedback given by the program.
6. Check the "Correct" checkbox next to the correct answer.
7. Once you have entered your data, you need to save it, in case you want to change it later. Each
of the Hot Potatoes programs saves data in its own special file type; for example, in JQuiz, the
files end with the ".jqz" extension. It is important to save your data, since the programs cannot
reload Web pages to make changes; the only way to change your Web pages is to reload the
data file, make your changes, and then regenerate the Web pages.

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Step 2: Configuring the output

The configuration information is a collection of pieces of text, including instructions for doing the
exercise, button captions, and link URLs, which are unlikely to change much from one exercise to
another.

When you looked at the example multiple-choice exercise, you might remember that the exercise had a
title, a subtitle, and some instructions at the top of the page. The title of each exercise is likely to be
unique, so that's part of the data. However, the subtitle (e.g. "Multiple-choice exercise") and the
instructions ("Choose the correct answer for each question") may be the same for most similar
exercises, so these are part of the configuration.

You can get access to all the configuration information by choosing "Configure Output" from the
“Options” menu. The first tab, labeled Titles/Instructions, holds the exercise subtitle and instructions.
Type some text in, as in the example below, then press OK. Then you click on the other tabs and make
changes when needed. As the tabs show, you can change feedback, button captions, and link URLs,
appearance (i.e. colors, font face, and font size), a time limit for the exercise, and order of the questions
and the answers. When you have made your changes, press "OK" to go back to the main screen.

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Step 3: Creating a Web page

The final step is to create a Web page from your data. All you need to do is click on Create Web page /
Web page for v6 browsers from the File menu, then give your page a filename. The program will tell
you that it has produced a file, and let you view it in your Web browser.
The next thing you’ll have to do is upload that file to your Website.

The Hot Potatoes include tools for inserting images, animations, audios, videos, and links into your
pages. If you get really ambitious, you can even edit the source files used as templates to create the
exercises, changing the whole appearance and even the functionality of the Web pages you produce.