Grouping CTAT Flash components as a Movie Clip

As an alternative to specifying a list of CTAT component names to the CommGroupingComponent, you can group CTAT components in a Flash movie clip in order to perform an action on all of the components, such as hiding and showing them.

  1. Create a grouping of components by creating a movie clip.
    In Flash, select the components (Shift + click) to be grouped and choose Modify > Convert to Symbol
    Leave the default type "Movie Clip" and enter a name for the group (e.g., "movie1"), and press OK.
  2. Give the newly grouped components an instance name.
    Select the group of components on the stage and enter an instance name in the Properties panel (e.g., "movieGroup1").
  3. Place a CommGroupingComponent on the stage and give it an instance name (e.g., "group1").
    In its Target MovieClip parameter, enter the instance name of the grouped component movie clip ("movieGroup1").
  4. Create a step in the behavior graph that will function as a tutor-performed step to hide or show the grouped components.
    You can create a blank step by clicking on a state in the graph and choosing Add Blank Step.
    In the Edit Student Input Matching dialog for that step, enter the following in both the Demonstrated Value and Matcher Input columns:
    Selection: movieGroup1  (this is the instance name of the grouped components)
    Action: SetVisible
    Input: TRUE or FALSE  (true shows the group, false hides the group)
    In the same dialog, at the bottom, set the "Actor" for the step to Tutor (unevaluated), and the "Trigger" to On previous link.
  5. Try the tutor in Test Tutor mode. Performing the step before the new tutor-performed step should trigger the hiding (or showing) of the group of components.

You may notice that returning to the start state does not reset the visibility of the hidden components. There are a couple workarounds for this, but the easiest thing to do during authoring is to close the previewed Flash movie and run it again (Control > Test Movie).