[New Quizzes] Multiple Numerical Blanks

It would be a wonderful addition to allow multiple numerical blank questions.  Essentially take the numerical answer question and cross it with the fill in multiple blanks type of question.  Many instructors have questions that contain multiple parts. 

35 Comments
Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

 @john_williamson ‌

I think our community will need more information about your idea before they can vote on it.  What is the problem you are seeking to solve?  What are the use cases for your idea?

It sounds like you are suggesting a modification to a question type, but I'm not sure!

James
Community Champion

 @Renee_Carney ‌,

This has been a request that has popped up more than once in the Community. Normally the answer is to send people to the modern quizzing engine, which has been replaced by Priority: Quizzes.Next‌.

I believe the last time I saw it was related to having a table of numeric answers -- here's one of them https://community.canvaslms.com/message/48648-numerical-answer-in-table-cell , but it's more than that.

In my classes, I ask students to find a confidence interval, which contains a lower limit and an upper limit. Right now, I can only ask for one of those unless I want to mess with the fill in multiple blanks, but there are issues associated with that like 2.40 is different from 2.4 or 2.400 in a text question, and 2.39999 would definitely be wrong as a fill in the blank, but okay as a numeric question.

I imagine what  @john_williamson ‌ is asking for is the same thing -- to allow multiple numeric response items in a single question. Don't read too much into the cross with multiple fill in the blanks -- that's getting at the how it's done rather than the bigger picture. His suggestion was that it could be setup the same way that multiple drop downs or multiple fill in the blanks are, but when Quizzes are redone, there may be a completely different (and better) way to accomplish that.

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

Thank you, James.  This description will help our community to better understand what they are voting on!  I'll move this back into the voting stage.

John, you can edit your post to clarify your original idea if you like.

john_williamson
Community Contributor

James,

You hit the proverbial nail on the head with your description.  Smiley Happy

siouxgeonz
Community Contributor

good to know this isn't possible at this point -- I was going to try to figure it out! 

jhattaw4
Community Novice

I agree with the need. It would be great to have the abiliry to ask multiple questions using a single set of generated variables. It would also make equation question entry easier if you can use the answer from one question as input in the next question.

robert_byng
Community Explorer

Agree that  @James  has it right. 

Would like to ask that the rectangles used by Canvas to locate the numerical answer input be 'place-able' like the text box entries. I use them to ask for coefficients of the equations students must derive.

For example: Ax^2 + Bx + C. I could just ask for A, B and C, but it makes more sense to the student to have a rectangle to fill in so the equation they derived on their paper reads the same on Canvas.

kwesterb
Community Novice

I voted up on this idea, as I can definitely see a use for this.  However, what I would REALLY like to see is a question type that allows me to combine multiple drop-downs, fill-in-the-blanks, and numerical blanks all in one question, much like the CLOZE question type found in other LMSs (such as Moodle).  I created a lot of questions in this format for my Physics class when we were using Moodle and would like to see that capability in Canvas (it is ideal for conceptual-followed-by-computational type questions).  I'm hoping to see this question type will appear in the updated quiz engine.

ronmarx
Community Contributor
matthew_roberts
Community Participant

I would be really interested in seeing this option added for formula questions as well. I would love to have students give coordinate answers, or solve quadratics. As an algebra II teacher this would open up a lot of possibilities!