Writing Your Own Responses

Writing Your Own Responses

Once you've seen an item and its responses, you'll be given a choice. You can either

press (i.e. don't respond), and go on to the next item

or add a response of your own.

You can respond as many times, or as often, as you like. Think of an item as a conversation, or a round-table discussion, about a particular topic. At the end of an item, you'll see a "response box" that looks like this:

Enter your response in the box, or a file.

it now.

to next item

To add a response, just click in the bordered rectangle (the "text box" with the little scroll bars) and type your response. This box will act like a very simple word-processor. You can use the backspace and delete keys to correct mistakes, and the mouse and the browser Edit menu bar to cut and paste text.
Just like a word processor, your text will "wrap" in the box as you type. Anywhere that you press Return or Enter will be treated as the start of a new paragraph. (It's always a good idea to press Return twice to start a new paragraph.)
Once you are finished with your response, press one of the Post buttons. This saves your response, and adds it to the item.

Post + View saves your response and displays the item again, with your response added at the end. This is a good idea if you're writing a long or complicated response; if it doesn't look right, you can edit it.

Post + Go saves your response, and immediately takes you on to the next item or page.

Advanced Response Options

The word-wrapped button is actually a pull-down menu; it controls how your text is treated. Click on it to see your choices. The "literal" choice will display your text exactly as you typed it, in a fixed-pitch font. The "HTML" choice interprets your text as HTML code, and the "CML" choice is a special, expanded version of HTML.
The Attach button lets you attach files on your PC directly to your response. You can attach any kind of file, including plain text, graphic images, binary files, and so forth.

Try Caucus!

This is the end of the Caucus tutorial. While there are many more capabilities and features in Caucus, the point of the tutorial is to give you enough background and context to make sense of the features. From here you should proceed to the Caucus Center, and join the Demonstration or some other conference, and try out the various features.
Each page has a button near the top; click on it whenever you need assistance, or want to know more about the page you're on. From the Help button, you can also see this tutorial again, at any time.