[ARCHIVED] Is it possible to have a word bank in new quizzes fill in the blank without dummy answers?

[JoshuaHarper]

I like the word bank option in new quizzes fill in the blank questions, and I think it could work well to replace some drag-and-drop matching questions I originally created in Moodle, but I am running into a problem. For each blank in a multi-blank question I have to include at least two potential answers, the right one and a wrong one (distractor). I understand if there were just one blank in the question why distractor answers are necessary, but I plan to have 5 or 6 sentences each with a blank to fill with a different verb form to be dragged from a word bank. I don't want to have 10 or 12 words in the word bank; I only want the 5 or 6 real answers, particularly since for this quiz there are only 6 relevant verb forms. It is frustrating to be forced to have twice too many options at the bottom of the box--not to mention distracting for the students.

Is there a setting I've missed to allow only one potential answer per blank if there are multiple blanks in the question? Or could that functionality be added?

If I could figure out how to do this--and if we could get RTF into these fill in the blank questions--I could do everything I need to do in my Greek quizzes. As it is now, I wish we had not switched from Moodle to Canvas because I am having to reinvent all the quizzes and tests I carefully created last year.

[kquintero · Accepted solution]

I had this same problem. I don't think there's a work-around but the best solution I've come up with is manually typing out a word-bank in the text-box below the "Question Title"

[kquintero]

 

[JoshuaHarper]

Yes, that would work. And the students could either type the answers or cut and paste (my quizzes are for Greek class, and not all the students are equally good at typing it). It is probably a better work around than my current compromise of having half the potential answers consist of a ".".

[PaulAustinTx]

I saw you note on the answers being in greek. That is good point. Im encountering a similar problem. I'd like to use the Word bank.  since that means students only need to recognized the answer, not generate it on the keyboard. But right now The answer for one cant be the distractor for another. If they choose the the Distractor, even though it is right, it gets marked wrong. 

[HeatherAhern]

@JoshuaHarper  Thank you for reaching out to your community for support! If I understand your question correctly, you are getting stuck with having to create extra answers that you do not want in a new quiz fill in the blank question using a word bank correct? You should be able to delete any extra "blank" spaces for answers and limit the number of options by clicking the trash can to the right of the answer box. Here is what it looks like if this is the style of question. you are using. Feel free to reach back out if you are still having some trouble.

[JoshuaHarper]

My question has multiple blanks (usually 8-12 blanks), but when I use the word-bank option it requires at least two answer options per blank. It defaults to 3 answer options, and I can delete extra answer options by clicking on the trash can, but if I delete all but one option per blank, then I get an error message when I go to save the question. What I would like would be to create a word bank with exactly as many words in it as there are blanks in my question. 12 blanks = 12 words in the word bank. As it is now, 12 blanks requires at least 24 options in the word bank.

[JoshuaHarper]

@HeatherAhern What's more, the word bank was not shuffling the answers among the various questions in the multiple-fill-in-the-blank question: they were all in order at the bottom of the box. And a student informed me that when he accidentally clicked on the blank without dragging an answer into position it showed him the two options just for that blank, which in this case were the correct answer and a period. So, I have switched the questions to open entry with a cut-and-paste word bank because the word bank is just not working correctly for me in New Quizzes.

That is, what I've been trying for now ends up looking something like:
[1] "answer 1"
     "."            (the period is because it won't let me have fewer than 2 options for each blank and a space reads as no answer)
[2] "answer 2"
     "."
[3] (etc... up to 10 to 16 blanks)
Word bank: "answer 1" "." "answer 2" "." ...    (no shuffling and at least twice as many answers as there are blanks.)

What I would like for it to do is the following (ideally formatted in a table with RTF):
[1] answer 1    [2] answer 2    [3] answer 3   [4] answer 4   (etc. up to 10 or 16 blanks)
Word bank: "answer 2" "answer 1" "answer 4" "answer 3"

Sorry, I would have included screen shots, but I've already edited all the quizzes.

[Denham]

Exact same issue for me. Seams really silly to not automatically make the answers for the other blanks in the question the distractors. Distractors should be at the question level, not at the blank level in a multiple blank option - especially since all the word banks for each question are all sitting together in that bar below anyway.

I looked at doing the drop down option to remove the typing, but given I have 1 word that is used twice that doesn't clearly convey that an answer exists twice (because in the drop down one  is 'wrong' even if it's the same word.)

Ideally I would like the ability to do the 'exact' spelling and have it match either option in the case where an option is duplicated as well.

[AmandaDevries]

@JoshuaHarper  

Were you ever able to find a solution for this? Currently in the same situation where I want there to not be distractors in the question and I want to answers to shuffle so they are not in order for the word bank.  I have yet to figure out how to do this if it is possible.  If you (or someone else) has figured this out, any insights would be appreciated. Thanks!

[JoshuaHarper]

@AmandaDevries

No permanent solution yet. The best workaround (as suggested by others in this thread) is to make a word bank yourself as part of the question text and have students cut-and-paste (or type in) the correct answers in each blank. I'm not impressed by New Quizzes--these little quirks make it much less useful than it is touted as being.

[jmattern]

I wholeheartedly agree. While New Quizzes does seem to have the potential to be a powerful tool, the fact that it is missing some elements that seem "common sense" make it only marginally better than the old quiz tool, in my estimation. The word bank is a prime example of this. I would guess that the majority of teachers who use word banks use one word per "blank" (i.e. 5 word options for 5 blanks). To *have* to include an additional distractor for each possible answer runs counter to this.

[MichaelHarnett]

Possible workaround for this:

Open New Quizzes.  Select Stimulus.  I type a paragraph with 10 blanks spaces in it as the Stimulus.  Then when Attach Question pops up, select Matching as the question style.  Assign an answer for each of the 10 blanks.  Scroll to the bottom and check Partial Credit.  Enter (in this case) 10 points as the value of the question.  This way students will get credit for each blank they fill in correctly.