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Importing ClassAction Questions into PowerPoint

Many ClassAction users have requested the capability to import questions into PowerPoint so that think-pair-share can be more fully integrated with their lecture. We believe that some important ClassAction functionality – choosing questions spontaneously based upon student performance, access to feedback mechanisms, etc. – is lost when using questions in this manner. However, we also believe that "the customer is always right" and have moved to provide this capability. All interactive functionality contained within a question – choosing different options, running animations, etc. – is retained when a question is imported into PowerPoint.

A discussion of the capability is provided on the Adobe website at Using Flash movies in PowerPoint. Adobe makes it clear that this functionality is an unplanned consequence of how ActiveX controls work and it is untested and unsupported. Although there are documented instances of "flaky" behavior, importing Flash movies into PowerPoint works very well the vast majority of the time on a PC. We are not aware of a method for accomplishing this on the Macintosh.

The screenshots on the Adobe site and the Indezine site illustrate the method for PowerPoint in Office 2003. Screenshots for the Office 2007 version of PowerPoint can be found on the Microsoft and flashppt sites. Additional troubleshooting information can be found at flashgeek.

The most common difficulty we have experienced is moving PowerPoint files between computers and having PowerPoint no longer recognize the embedded flash files. We believe that this is due to different versions of the ActiveX controls on the two computers. Thus, we normally retain the Flash files in the same directory as the PowerPoint (even when they are already embedded) so that the Flash files can be quickly imported once again on the second computer when the problem arises. Thus, it is preferable to import the Flash files on the same computer where you plan to use the PowerPoint so that this will not occur.

ClassAction questions in individual files may he found here. This page is at an early stage of development and will be evolving over time.