Distractors in Categorization question

[tina_christophe]

We have a Categorization question. The categories are Subject and Verb. The correct answers are chosen. When displaying the distractors we want them to show in the order they display in the question stem, not by capitalized words alphabetically and then lower case words alphabetically. 

We want the option to determine the order of the distractors  - is this possible? Or does anyone have a suggestion on how to do this?

[Ron_Bowman]

@tina_christophe 

Not sure if this is what you want (I think I understand your question).

For the answers to your question you want your list to always be in the order you specify like the following:
Distractor#3
answer#1
This is answer #2
distractor#1
answer#3
distractor #2

The following may be a work around, but I do not know if you would be able to use it or if it would work with the type of question:

A_Distractor#3
B_answer#1
C_This is answer #2
D_distractor#1
E_answer#3
F_distractor #2

Or put Choice_A_ etc instead of just A_

[tina_christophe]

Thank you for the suggestion unfortunately that does not work.

I'm confused on how the options are loaded into the system unless once they are saved they cannot be edited in a way to re-alphabetize them (?) 

Here is a screenshot of the suggestion you offered I have saved the question and saved the quizzes and the options do not alphabetize by adding the A, B, C, etc.

[tina_christophe]

Ultimately we want the answer choices to be listed in the same order as the sentence is written in the question stem.

[Ron_Bowman]

@tina_christophe 

do you by chance have the shuffle answer box selected for the quiz?

I like the question format and what your ultimate goal is.  I wish I taught classes where I could make questions like that.

[tina_christophe]

No we do not 😞

[Ron_Bowman]

@tina_christophe -

I just played around with the categorization question some.  I had the same issue.  I fixed it whit just one categorization instead of 2 (more work if it would have worked).

I tried numbers instead of letters and that did not put them in order.  I think what I did (with one categorization) is that the view you see and the preview are different.

I took the problem view and saw what order the computer put the answers in and relabeled them in the correct order based off of the order shown.  I tried something with 2 categorizations.  I used numbers and set them up 1,2,3,4 for the first 4 parts - looked at the preview and saw that the order was 3,4,1,2.  So I relabeled in my question the sentence as 3,4,1,2 for each part of the sentence.   I went to the preview and  wouldn't you know it I got 1,2,3,4 - but now they have the wrong word order because the words in order were lablele 3,4,1,2

That got me to thinking and I have your solution(I hope)

The order at the bottom that you see is the order you type in the categorization result and the distractors.

So if I have a sentence  "The quick brown fox" and I want my categories to be noun and color.   Then the order I type in the sentence is distractor 1: The , distractor 2: quick, category color brown  and then category noun fox

I did that with leading numbers of 1_, etc.  So I went back and took the numbers off and it still displayed correctly.  Give the above a shot and let me know if it worked.

Ron

[tina_christophe]

Thanks for the suggestion - I believe what you are describing is the following:

I need to retype the questions from scratch:

1. enter the questions stem

2. enter the distractors and category answers - in the exact order as the sentence for example

The best day of the week is Friday.

Enter distractors 

The

best

Enter Category - noun

day

Enter distractors

of

the

week

Enter Category - Verb

is

Enter distractors

Friday.

If I enter in that order it will keep the correct order. 

[Ron_Bowman]

@tina_christophe 

Exactly - I did that and it worked for me.  Hopefully that is how it will work for you.  If you think about it, it sort of makes sense because it is easy to just store the information in the order it is typed in.  So if People want it organized like you do it is automatically done for them.  If people want it randomized it sort of does that as well - of course there is always shuffle answers.

Of course I do not know what happens if you go back and edit a question.

I looked through the help page: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-create-a-Categorization-question-in-New...

for categorization questions, and did not see anything on how the answers are displayed.  So I sent them a suggestion to add it to the page referencing this question.

[Ron_Bowman]

@tina_christophe 

Was the process I specified the correct solution for you?  I am curious to know if that is the actual process needed.

Ron

[tina_christophe]

The process did not work for me.

The screenshots below are the two times I created the question. For the bottom question on each screenshot, I typed in the correct answers first then the distractors. For the top question I typed items in the order you suggested. The order changed but did not appear as I had hoped. Ultimately, I would like the answer options to be in the same order as the original sentence - The best day of the week is Friday.

Regardless, typing in the order suggested did not work for me.

[Ron_Bowman]

@tina_christophe -

Well that is unfortunate.  It worked for me.  Did you try it without the numbers.  I just used the words.  Of course my trial was a shorter sentence.  I tried it again with longer sentences, and I got the same results you did.  It was such a good thought that made sense to a degree.  I may try some more playing around, but it would be nice to know how the information is actually stored - or determined to be stored.

I just looked for api information for new quizzes thinking that may provide some insight into how the informaiton is stored.  Unfortunately, there are no api calls for new quizzes at this time.

[tina_christophe]

@Ron_Bowman  Thanks for checking...

[Ron_Bowman · Accepted solution]

@tina_christophe 

In case you pick up on this question again (or someone else finds it).  I reached out to Canvas support to find out what the procedure was for the distractor order - and as expected their response was it was random.  Below is the full response, and as usual, the main point is to submit an idea request.  I would like to think that it would be easy enough to add a way to allow for the instructor to dictate the order of the distractors.  The default could be random, but then have a box to check to allow the order of the answers and distractors to be arranged as desired.

Canvas response 
"I believe this is working as designed. I believe it's randomized each time. 

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-create-a-Categorization-question-in-New...

I haven't received this question and I could not find an existing enhancement request in the community about it. If there is a request to change intended design, we have to build a case for it using a feature enhancement request. The instructor will want to add as much detail as to why the ability to set the order or to order alphabetically would be a valuable enhancement for instructors. 

You can copy me on the enhancement creation and I can make sure that it gets submitted to product. 

Let me know if there are any additional questions. "

So I would reach out to canvas support and/or generate the feature enhancement request.

I had a thought about some possible other questions working, but even if they were doable, they all randomized the possible answers.  So it appears that you are left without a solution to your specific question.