[ARCHIVED] Answering questions...

[mweston]

Fairly new to Cavans, I am trying to make a quiz that may have multiple ways of answering.  For instance the answer may be .5 and the student answers 1/2.  How do I do this?  Which question type must I use?

[Chris_Hofer]

Good morning,  @mweston ...

Normally, you'd want to use a Numerical Answer Question type: How do I create a Numerical Answer quiz question?.  However, I've not tested if fractions work with this question type (you can certainly try this on your own, though).  If that doesn't work, then you might want to try using a Fill-in-the-Blank question type: How do I create a Fill-in-the-Blank quiz question?.

I hope this helps, Melanie.  Sing out if you have any other questions about this for Community members.  Take care...stay safe...be well.

[James]

 @mweston  

Numeric response questions only accept decimal representations of the number (or an approximation of the number). They do not accept fractions or other symbolic representations like √5. There is some support for scientific notation. The correctness of the response is compared to the decimal form of the answer. There is also internationalization support, so if you're in a country that uses , for the decimal point and . for the separator, it would still work.

The fill-in-the-blank question type has been the long-recommended standard for math content, but it is a poor workaround.

In Legacy Quizzes, you have to allow for all of the multiple ways you want to accept -- exactly. 0.5 and .5 and 0.50 are different. You could have 1/2 but you could also have 2/4 or 3/6. sin(30°) or cos π/3 are also correct, but less likely to show up

In New Quizzes, there is a regular expression, so you could mark the leading 0 as optional, /^(0?\.50*|1\/2)$/

You can also allow for similar answers, but that is probably not appropriate in this case.

There is a feature idea open for allowing fractions in a response, although it's about formula questions: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/17209-new-quizzes-responses-in-fractions-for-formula-questions