Using Otus to Create a Transcription Exercise

Will it be clunky?  Yes.  Does it work?  Also yes.

Today I'm going to walk you through how to create a short (keyword here) transcription exercise in Otus.  Here are the graphics I am going to use today:
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 One thing that I would say may be helpful is to put the note name as part of the graphic.  You might need to play with the size of the images a bit to get this to work. (Since the original post I've updated the graphics to be all the same size - you can get the full sets on this post: notation graphics)

To begin, create your question in the Item Bank.  You will want to use the "Cloze with drag & drop" option under Fill in the Blanks (Cloze).  Next, delete all the example text in the Template markup.  Using the image button add the treble clef to the markup.  You will want to set it to prevent scaling so it doesn't mess with the size of our images. 

Now select insert response from the editor.  The button should look like an r with a dotted square:

Now, insert the barline graphic just as we added the treble clef.  My barline graphic is a little low, so you may want to open an editor and take away a few pixels from the top.

You will want to repeat the previous two steps for all the measures you want to have.  Mine looks like this so far:

Now that we have that done, let's upload the images of the notes.  By default, it has two options. Choice A and Choice B.  I'm going to use the + ADD button to make three more.  Go ahead and delete the text in the first two, we won't need it.  Just like we added the previous two images, go ahead and upload the images we need. 

Now that those have been added, at the bottom you will see essentially a preview of the question.  Here is where you will need to put the answer.  I un-check the "show drag handle" option since the image makes it unnecessary.  You will also need to check "duplicate responses" in case you have notes used more than once.  So I'll go ahead and just put in my answer here:

 Lastly, and before we forget - we need to add the audio example!  You can either put it into finale, or record the excerpt right into Otus. Find the box at the top of the page under "Compose question".  Type in some directions and then use the Simple Feature button to upload or record the audio.  I prefer to use the bar player type for this.

  We're almost done!

We need to change a few of the options, so scroll to the bottom and click on "More options".  Make sure that it is selected to be "Exact Match" under scoring type.  You can leave spaces blank - so if you add a half note and then leave the next beat blank, that will work when they go to check the answer!

You can change where the note bank is for the question under Layout.  Response container position will change this.  I like to put mine above, but as long as you are consistent it should be fine wherever you put it.  Under Response Container (global) set the width to 55px and the height to 250px.  That will make sure they are big enough for the images - the containers themselves can grow with the image, but this way they appear the right size to begin with.  If you are using this for practice, you can select the check answer box and Unscored/Practice under Scoring.

Finally, hit the save button at the top of the page!  If you haven't yet titled the question, it will prompt you to do that before you leave the question again.

Here is what our question looks like:
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