[ARCHIVED] 80-character limit in Filling the Blank category?

[esl302sp19]

While making a quiz using Filling in the Blank, when I enter correct answers, which are often longer sentences for the type of quizzes I give, I receive warnings that my answer keys are over the 80 character limit. When I ignore it, my answer keys are cut short. Student answers are marked wrong even though they give the full long correct answers. Is there a way to increase the limit to longer than 80 characters? 80 is awfully short. Would be nice if this restriction is lifted.

Somewhere I read about people talking about this restriction being lifted. That discussion was a few years ago, but today, April 26, 2020, 80-character limit is still restricting my longer answers.

Please help. I really like the Filling the Blank feature but would love to make it work for short as well as long answers. Thanks.

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hi  @esl302sp19 ...

Are the possible answers (especially the long answers) required to be absolutely correct?  For example, are students typing in terminology (such as medial words which can be quite lengthy at times)?  In my opinion, having fill-in-the-blank answers with really long text opens up the gates for errors.  Even one spelling mistake or one too many presses of the space bar can make a normally "correct" answer "incorrect".  Checking this Guide, How do I create a Fill-in-the-Blank quiz question?, it does indicate that these question types are limited to 80 characters.

I hope this helps a bit, Dongmei.  Sing out if you have any other questions.  Stay safe...be well.

[Keromar]

Hi Chris, this is true for some questions but when I ask to encrypt a small image or enter a digital signature, the answer will be longer than 80 characters and there is no possibility for typing errors as the encrypted text or the digital signature is copied from another program.

[Chris_Hofer]

@Keromar ...

You may know that there is little to no work being done any more to current Classic Quizzes within Canvas.  Instructure is now focusing their time on New Quizzes ... as this will be the quizzing interface that everyone will be using in the near future.

Classic Quiz Sunset Timeline - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

The link that I provided (above) back in 2020 was a Guide to the Fill-in-the-Blank question type for Classic Quizzes: How do I create a Fill-in-the-Blank quiz question? - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com).  However, here is the Guide for the same question type in New Quizzes: How do I create a Fill in the Blank question in Ne... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com).  You can see that the steps to create a Fill-in-the-Blank question in New Quizzes is slightly different.  And, there doesn't appear to be an 80-character limit as there is in Classic Quizzes.  I tried testing this in my own Canvas sandbox course.  As you can see, I have a string of numbers well over 80 in length:

So, if you are looking to use Fill-in-the-Blank question types in your own quizzes/tests/exams, you might try using the New Quizzes interface.  And, if you do not yet have access to New Quizzes at your school, I would recommend that you reach out directly to your school's Canvas administrator to see what their plan is for making the New Quizzes interface available to you and your fellow colleagues who also teach in Canvas.

Hopefully this will be of some help to you and others who are reading this.  Thanks!

[Keromar]

Thank you Chris. It was not easy to find conversations on the topic so that's why I hijacked your old post. Sorry for that.