1. Types of interactive exercises
Now that you've learned about the components of an exercise, let's talk about the different types of interactive exercises.
2. Exercise types
Interactive exercises are what makes DataCamp more effective than merely reading a book or online tutorial. We are continually expanding our repertoire of exercise types, but this lesson describes the ones currently available. We have six types of exercises: Multiple Choice, Multiple Choice with Console, Coding, Iterative, Sequential, and Drag and Drop exercises. Let's have a closer look at each of the different exercise types.
3. Multiple Choice exercise
The simplest kind of exercise is a Multiple Choice exercise, which you're probably familiar with by now. In this type, the learner chooses an answer to a question but doesn't do any coding. Note only one correct option can be provided. Multiple Choice exercises can be used to validate the understanding of a concept.
As we pride ourselves on "learning by doing", a course should only have a few multiple choice exercises, ideally 3-5 depending on how many other conceptual type questions are used.
4. Multiple choice with console
While a Multiple Choice exercise doesn't allow the learner to write any code, Multiple Choice with Console does. Typically, you will ask the learner to write or run some code, look at its output, and then choose an answer from the list provided.
5. Coding exercise
Coding exercises are the most common on DataCamp. These require learners to write and submit code in a single step. If the code you want to teach learners is clear and linear, without intermediate steps, this is likely the best type of exercise for you.
6. Iterative exercise
Iterative exercises combine several sub-exercises into one. The parts of an Iterative exercise are independent and are intended to let learners practice a skill several times. For example, in a SQL exercise, you might ask the learner to first select countries.
7. Iterative exercise
Then select film certifications.
8. Iterative exercise
And then film roles.
9. Sequential exercise
Sequential exercises are good for code that builds on itself. This allows learners to view the code output of one step before proceeding to the next step.
10. Sequential exercise
In this exercise, for example, the query is being built up one step at a time.
11. Sequential exercise
This allows the learner to become comfortable with the underlying challenge in each step.
12. Mixed Sequential exercise
A cool feature of Sequential exercises is that you can mix exercise types. For example, you can first add a Coding step to show the learner how to write the code.
13. Mixed Sequential exercise
And then add a Multiple Choice with Console step to have them interpret the results.
14. Drag and drop exercises
Lastly, we have three different types of drag and drop exercises. These can be a useful way to test comprehension in more depth than a simple multiple choice question, and are especially helpful for conceptual topics.
There are three types of drag and drop exercises; classify, order, and parsons.
15. Drag and drop: classify
In a drag and drop classify exercise, learners sort items from a list into two or more groups, by dragging cards from a stack and dropping them onto the correct target zone.
This can be useful for binary distinctions such as true vs. false or Python vs. R, but can also be used in up to 4 buckets.
16. Drag and drop: order
In this type of exercise, learners will drag items presented randomly into the correct order.
For example, this exercise type can be used to ask learners to order a sequence of tasks related to A/B testing a workflow.
17. Drag and drop: parsons
Parsons problems similar to the order type of drag and drop exercises.In this exercise type, learners are presented with jumbled up lines of code and are expected to put them in order by dragging and dropping them onto the target zone.
18. Let's start exercising!
Now that you know the different DataCamp exercise types at your disposal, let's try some out!