Design Guideline 3: Explanations and Tasks
Short, clear and personal style
Try to write your explanations and questions in a short, clear and conversational style. Use the term ‘you' within the text and try to address the students directly.
Small number of questions
Limit your number of questions or tasks per Activity to three or four to avoid excessive scrolling. If you want to ask more questions, create a new Activity.
Use specific questions
Avoid general questions like ‘What is always true about X?' and make clear what the students should do, e.g. `What happens to X when you move Y?'. We recommend that your students should take notes while they work with a Dynamic Activity (e.g. provide an Open Question task on the Activity, allowing your students to directly take notes or answer questions). If you want your students to write down their observations or answers on paper, say so on the Activity.
Refer to your applet
Your text should support the use of your interactive figure. For example, try to explain a new term by referring to your figure instead of using an isolated textual definition. Additionally, you can color certain keywords to match the formatting style of the object they refer to. This makes the text easier to read and helps your students to find corresponding representations of the same object.
Your audience are learners
If you want to provide information for other educators (e.g. lesson plan, solutions) do so in the metadata of your Activity (e.g. description in the 
Activity Settings). Your students should not be distracted or confused by such information.
Demonstration figure
If your interactive figure is meant for presentation purposes only, it might be better to have no tasks or questions on the Dynamic Activity. If you include text, it should be understandable for students as well.
Activity Settings). Your students should not be distracted or confused by such information.
Demonstration figure
If your interactive figure is meant for presentation purposes only, it might be better to have no tasks or questions on the Dynamic Activity. If you include text, it should be understandable for students as well.