[ARCHIVED] Fill-in-the-blank Quizzes: PLEASE implement multiple answer attempts for misspellings

[lotter]

If the fill-in-the-blank answer is photosynthesis and the student answers photosynthisis, it is Autograded wrong. 

I just don't have time to put in all of the ways that students can misspell that word, plus, it is marked as correct if I put that misspelling as acceptable.  

Please implement a "Wrong, try again"  response on those fill-in-the-blank answers (giving us the option of how many times that repeats, perhaps zero in some cases).

Since I am going with 2 quizzes per class session, for 50 students, total perhaps 80 quizzes per semester, I don't have time to hand grade.

Thanks for a response.  I have bugged my CSUS tech people about this issue since Spring.

Best,

Don Lotter

CSU Sacramento, Biology

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

@lotter 

You'll be happy to know that more robust controls have been built into fill-in-the-the-blank question type in New Quizzes. Check out the Text Match section of  How do I create a Fill in the Blank question in New Quizzes? to see how to use Levenshtein distance to accommodate the use case you've described.

For future reference, Idea Conversations is where our members discuss requests for enhancements to Canvas functionality. You can read more about the process in How do idea conversations work in the Canvas Community? and How do I create a new idea conversation in the Canvas Community? —keeping in mind that our teams are no longer developing new functionality on the code base for Old (Classic) Quizzes, which is scheduled to be deprecated early next year.

[lotter]

Stefanie - Thank you so much. I will try to negotiate the bewildering array of forum sections to post to the correct one.

Don

[pcharles]

I am trying to understand the best practice for using these settings while writing a chemistry nomenclature question. I need a setting that would recognize the difference between vanadium(III) and vanadium(II), but accept Vanadium(II), Vanadium (II), vanadium(II), and vanadium (II).  Basically accept slight spacing and capitalization differences, but not differences like (III) and (II).  I tried "Close Enough" set to 1, but it seems to accept everything.   Similarly, I need it to recognize the difference between sulfate and sulfite, but allow capitalization in either.  I tried "Close Enough" set to 1, but it accept both sulfate and sulfite. 

I tried the contains option, but that is case sensitive in the same way that the exact option is.

So far, the only reliable way seems to be entering every possible combination.  

Any ideas?

Paul

[Nyssa73]

I think your best solution is going to be using a regular expression (or "regex"). It is one of the expressions in the drop-down options. For your example, if you want to accept Vanadium(II) but not Vanadium(III), regardless of spaces or capitalization, the regex you want to use is:

[ ]*[vV]anadium[ ]?\([iI][iI]\)

The acceptable answers for this regex are any leading number of white spaces (including zero), ignores the case for the "v", allows for zero or one space between the "m" and the "(", and accepts exactly two "i"s between the parentheses regardless of their case.

For example, "  vanadium (Ii)" works but "Vanadium(I)" doesn't.

Here is a link to a regex tutorial: https://www.regular-expressions.info/tutorial.html

Hope this helps.

[Nyssa73]

I would recommend using the Regular Expression option for matching. in your example of "photosynthesis", you could use a regular expression like:

[ ]*photos[iy]nth[ei]s[ei]s

This regular expression (or regex) allows for one or more spaces in front of the word, and all of the following spellings:

photosynthesis

photosinthesis

photosynthisis

photosinthisis

photosynthises

photosinthises

photosyntheses

photosintheses

Here is a good regex tutorial site:

https://www.regular-expressions.info/quickstart.html

Hope this helps,

Dr. B