Overview of the Free highlight task

The Free highlight task type lets learners draw their response onto an image. This task type requires a facilitator or coach to mark it.

Image of the Free highlight task with the planet earth on a black background and the moon drawn in yellow.

When should I use a free highlight task?

Free highlight works well for easy-to-draw annotations (rather than full words).

Example 1: Drawing forces

Example free highlight task which asks learners to draw (on an image showing the Earth and moon) an arrow to represent the size and direction of the force the moon exerts on the Earth.

Example 2: Multi-coloured mark up

You can also add multiple colours so learners can mark up different aspects.

Example free highlight task which asks learners to draw (on an image of construction foundation formwork) where the rebar should be added (red) and where the mesh should be added (green).

Example 3: Draw on a quadrant

You can use Free highlight to ask learners to draw where certain things exist on a spectrum or quadrant.

Example free highlight task which asks learners to draw (on an image of a Nolan chart quadrant) initials for various political figures (e.g. Karl Marx, Donald Trump).

Example 4: Venn diagram

You can also use Free highlight as a kind of reverse-sort, where instead of putting the items into categories (as you would in a classification task), a learner draws a Venn diagram over the top of the items to make the categories.

Example free highlight task which asks learners to draw (on an image with facts about Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton) a circles in blue (Galileo) and red (Newton) to show a Venn diagram of shared and distinct facts about these scientists.

Remember, with image mark up activities you need to work a little harder with alt-tag descriptions for images to provide a text alternative for them, and make the image accessible for screen readers.

How do I create a Free highlight task?

All tasks load with an example task to give an idea of what each field is for. To add your own task details, you can type over the existing content in the fields or select Clear task content, to start completely fresh.

Clear task content button on right of task element below task type choice.

Standard fields

This task has the standard fields/options that all tasks have.

At the top:

Question: Where you set the main question/task which tells learners what to answer or do.

And at the bottom:

Hint: Add a hint to give pointers or clues to give learners extra guidance to complete the task. Learners can choose to See hint so it allows them to get this help “on demand”.
Feedback: Add feedback to give learners an automated response when they submit the task. See Writing feedback for tasks for pointers and ideas.

In between the top and bottom standard fields we have the following areas and fields.

Adding the image

Upload a picture using +Add in the image preview area. Next add in alt text and choose the line colour the learner will use to draw their answer.

If you need help choosing a line colour check out a colour tool, such as https://www.hexcolortool.com/, which will give you the correct rgb formula for the colour you want.

Allocating a marking template

As this task is manually marked, be sure to choose a marking template to set the options facilitators have available to mark and/or add feedback.

The Text highlight task

The Label with dropdown task

The Select hotspots task

The Label with drag and drop task

The Label with annotations task