Exercise Converter

The Microsoft Word macro ExCon.dot is now available for Word 6 on the Macintosh or Word 6/7 for the PC. If you are using Word 97/98, you should install an earlier version so that he macro will work. Unfortunatey a macro is not available for both versions yet, sorry.

Download the file ExCon.dot from the directory pub/cdf1 using FTP or Fetch from the address verb.linguist.pitt.edu (username is anonymous, password is your email address) and transfer the file to the "Templates" folder (for the Mac, normally in the Word folder contained within the "Microsoft Office" folder; for the PC, normally in the "MSOFFICE" folder). Then, open a new file using the template called "ExCon". This will enable word to be able to find the macro and make it available for writing documents.

The converter may be used by creating a document using the ExCon template. This sounds confusing, but in actuallity one just needs to open a document using the template itself. This is done by going to the "File" menu, clicking "New" and then selecting "ExCon". If ExCon is not in the list, you will need to check that it has been put in the correct folder (should be "Templates") and that it is called "ExCon.dot". Remember, the macro can be used to convert word documents to HTML (Web) irrespective of whether they contain multiple choice or other type of exercises. The following details the procedure used to format a document for multiple choice exercises (descriptions for the pull-down list and yes/no types to follow).

Multiple Choice Exercises

You should compile the multiple choice exercises in the newly created document (or copy them from another document), but either way the ExCon document template must be used as detailed above. Ensure that each response for each multiple choice question is on a separate line; use the [return] key to make this happen. The format of each answer must be the student prompt followed by the teacher response; use a single space to separate these items. The length of the student prompt and teacher response can be as long as necessary so long as a single [return] key follows the teacher's response. The next step is to highlight each of the teacher responses with a particular style. Highlight the first response to a question using the mouse and then select the "multichoice_qn_begin" style; the text should change to red. Select the last teacher response for the question and select the style "multichoice_qn_ultimate"; the text should change to blue. Then, repeat this for all intermediate responses (if any), selecting the style "multichoice_qn_regular". This process is further repeated for all other questions. Here is how a typical document might appear.

When complete, save the document then select the "Save As (Web)" option under the "File" menu. This should produce a little menu enabling the name of the document to be selected (this will appear at the top of the Web browser - in the window shade, also known as the title bar). The document can then be converted and the resulting web page is given an extension ".htm" (i.e. the file will have these four characters at the end of the filename in place of ".doc"). This file is now is web format and can be transferred to a normal web site for use.

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