Other Types of Questions

Here are navigation links. The choices are multiple choice, drop down list, multiple select, true/false, matching, ordering, fill-in-the-blank, fill-in-multiple blanks, short answer, essay, and offline item.

When you Import Questions there are a lot of instructions. You can read them if you want. Some of the prompts that can be used with questions are IMAGE: and FEEDBACK:, but I've left them off below. Just know that they are available. You can add more answers, too. There's usually an Add More link just below the last answer. If you imported four answers and you just thought of another good one, Add More.

Multiple choice. We already know about multiple-choice questions.

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Drop Down List. You already know that I'm not a fan of drop-down list questions, but if you insist, import them coded as TYPE: MC. (I've tried DD, DL, etc. and none of them work.) Go into each Edit box and change the type to Drop Down List. You won't lose anything. A Drop Down List will save vertical space if you release All Questions in a test in case you need for me to say something nice about Drop Down Lists. Actually, there may be instances when Drop Down would be useful. In Single Question, you're using the mouse constantly, so what's the difference on clicking on a multiple-choice choice or clicking on a drop-down and dragging to the correct answer. Another feature might be if you've set All Questions and  there interrelationships between answers of successive questions that you'd rather that the student not see. The drop-down would hide the choices until the student clicked on the target.

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Multiple Select should be the next one, but it doesn't work for me if I want all my questions to be worth one point. Let me show you Fill in Multiple Blanks first. I'm going to import my question, so here's my template.

Q: What numbers are greater than one but less than five?
ANSWER: 2;PERCENTAGE: 33; VALIDIN: all
ANSWER: 3;PERCENTAGE: 34; VALIDIN: all
ANSWER: 4;PERCENTAGE: 33; VALIDIN: all
POINTS: 1
TYPE: FM
ANSWERBOXES: 3

In order for the student to earn one point, s/he needs to get all three correct. This is the only question type that you can load the percentage. Notice that I made one 34 percent so that it would add up to 100. Angel doesn't round up very well. When I import the question, there are going to be three answer boxes. (Can you understand that?) The number that follows ValidIn is a line number. If I put ValidIn: 1, then the answer 2 has to be in the first answer box. (If I was also doing ordering, then ValidIn: 1 would be how I constructed this questions.) If I put ValidIn: 2 for this question, then the student has to put "3" in the second box. If I put ValidIn: all, the for each line the the computer will look for a 2, 3, or 4. (If I have ValidIn: all, a student can't write 2, 2, 4, in case you're worried about that.)

I want to award a total of 1 point. If the student gets two out of three, the computer will record 66% for a 2 and 3 answer of 67% for 3 and 2 or 3 and 4. If I wanted to award one point for each correct answer, my percentage would be 100 for each line. The type is abbreviated FM. I need to tell the computer how many answer boxes to create. There are three correct answers so I'm asking for three boxes.

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Multiple Select. Multiple Select's format is like Multiple Choice except it has check boxes instead of radio buttons. When you work with radio buttons, only one can be highlighted. In Multiple Select, you can click several checkboxes and all that are check will have the checkmark. You have to check it again to dismiss the checkmark.

Here's my template ready to import. MS is the abbreviation for Multiple Select.

Q: What numbers are greater than one but less than five?
a. 2
b. 6
c. 3
d. 4
e. 8
ANSWER: a, c, d
POINTS: 1
TYPE: MS

Because Multiple Select awards points instead of percentages, this question is going to be worth three points. If I had a couple of questions that would be worth three points, I'll put in a Section Header to select one of the two, then do another Section Header to pick seven MC questions so that I wind up with 10 points.

There's a Grading Option. The default is Normal, so it's normal grading. Whatever is mark correct, gets the points. The next one is All or Nothing, so if the student doesn't checkmark only the correct answers, there are no points. The last is "Allow Negative." After you import the question, go into edit and make the point value for b. and d. minus 1. If the student answers a., b., and c. in this example, the score is one point.

There's also a Maximum Selections. Why? I don't know, but the default is Unlimited. If you have three correct answers and you set Max Selections to 2, you've doomed the student. What if you have 5 possible answers, three are correct, the Grading Option is Normal, Max Selections is set to Unlimited, and the student checks all five boxes. The student will earn three points. There's where you would want to set Max Selections to 3, which is the number of correct answers.

All the other options available in Multiple Choice are found here too.

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True/False. This is a drop-down box question, so I suggest multiple-choice format. If you are stubborn and insist on importing a True/False question, here's the format.

Q: Six is greater than five.
ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
TYPE: TF

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Matching. You can't import anything for a Matching question. You have to Add Question then click on Matching. Here's my stupid example. Since all these have HTML editors, you could create a question that has pictures for Terms and words for Definitions. Hey, if I don't have five terms, I don't have to use them. If I have three Terms and three Definitions, that's OK. Hey, wouldn't it be neat if I could have three terms and five definitions like you could do in a Multiple Select? Angel won't let me!


I took the quiz as a student, and here is what it looked like. The drop-downs were gray when I started, so I've already got my answers ready to submit. The Terms don't change; it's the Definitions that are scrambled. In this instance, not very much. My objection is that this question is worth five points!


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Ordering. Same problems as Multiple Select and Matching: too many points and no importing. This might be OK with chronology questions, Library of Congress call numbers, etc. with five or more items, but three numbers didn't fool me at all.


This is what the student will see.




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Fill-in-the-Blank. The computer will automatically grade this question, so you have to guess every possible correct answer a student might offer. The computer will have sound-alikes, but sometimes it doesn't register. For example, the computer would not give credit for msuci for music. Here's the format if you want to import:

Q: How much is one plus one?
ANSWER: 2
ANSWER: Two
ANSWER: Dos
ANSWER: The correct answer is 2.
ANSWER: The correct answer is two.
ANSWER: One plus one is 2.
ANSWER: One plus one is two.
ANSWER: How much is it? It's two.
POINTS: 1
TYPE: FB

Get the idea? Wouldn't it be nice if Advanced Options worked? You send this in as a Short Answer question, and you could put all the possibilities in there. If the question, when submitted, had any one of those answers, the computer would give the student credit for the question but let the instructor manually grade the rest. Wouldn't that be nice? I think so too.

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Essay. An Essay question is like a short answer, except you need a larger space for the student to write his/her version of the truth. I want to import, so I jotted down some ideas of what I thought the student's answer should contain. (This example is wrong, so let me explain it to you.)

Q: Discuss the numbers 1 through 10.
ANSWER: 1,4,7,9, and 10 have straight lines. 2,4,6,8,10 are odd; 5 is my favorite; odd numbers: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9; all of them add up to 55; backwards it's 10, 9, 8, 7,
POINTS: 1
TYPE: ES

The error is that you can use periods and commas, but semicolons are taboo. (Students can answer in semicolons, however.) You can't have any hard returns at the end of lines either. You can't have two ANSWER: lines, for example. Write your sentences and end them with periods. After you've imported the question, go into the answer box and do your hard returns or use your semicolons. If you ever have a problem importing a question, it will be the Essay question because of the length of the answer.

Here's what the student sees. If s/he writes more that the allotted space, the field turns into a scrolling field.


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Offline Item. The student will just see the questions. There aren't any spaces for them to write their answers. I'd say this is like a MSWord document or PDF file.

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Now we just sit and wait until a student takes our quiz.

If you're interested in a question that requires formulas, Angel has a Calculated Question Wizard. I don't know much about it, but I'll take you to what I do have. If you're not interested, I think a student has taken our bait. Let's go grade the quiz. If you are too tired to go on, I'll take you back to the Index page.