[New Quizzes] New Quizzes: Multiple Answers in a Formula Question

This idea is based on extending the Formula Question type to allow for multiple answers to be entered by students.

 

Currently, the Formula question type is fine for simple calculated answer questions that only ask for one final response from students. We have several instructors that would like to generate data based on ranges, but also to ask for several answers based on that generated data.

 

One example of this would be a financial statement or budget sheet. Instructors and Designers would like to generate random data elements for some parts of these sheets, but ask for multiple answers from the same set of generated data such as the following list of questions:

"What is the Inventory Turnover? What is the AR Turnover? What is the AP Turnover? What is the Inventory Period? What is the AR Period? What is the Operating Cycle? What is the Cash Cycle? What is Net Working Capital for 2013?"

Each answer is based on the same data, but uses different formulas to determine the correct result.

69 Comments
gpapkov
Community Member

Multiple Blanks question types are useful if each blank has a unique, unrelated answer.  My issue is with a question like "(x^2)-1=0 has roots [blank1] and [blank2]".  The answer is +1 and -1; however, at present, I need to write the question as "(x^2)-1=0 has roots [blank1] (smaller root) and [blank2] (larger root)".  I would like to set +1 and -1 as possible answers for each blank, but for the system to know that if -1 was put in [blank1], then [blank2] cannot be -1 too (and vice versa).    

coxmic
Community Member

And we are now 5 years later with no progress toward having this feature.

A basic quadratic formula question has two correct answers from the same question.

caw
Community Explorer

Add me to the list of people befuddled as to why this isn't a thing. All my (accounting) exams are structured this way - one setup and two to six questions based on the setup. I want my students to be able to retake the exam, but not with the same numbers they had the first time, and I can't give them a different setup for each individual question - the time required to process each setup would be ridiculous.

fhernan
Community Participant

Absolutely frustrated by the lack of this feature, which is essential in science and engineering. Formula questions are essentially worthless if we limit them to only one answer per dataset.

apetruska
Community Member

Agreed. This is a critical feature that is lacking.

muztobaahmad
Community Member

I need this feature badly!

vectorpotential
Community Explorer

Please implement this feature.

Also, why am I unable to give Kudos to this thread?

muztobaahmad
Community Member

This is extremely frustrating that this is not a feature till now. With 10 mins of searching I found more than 10 idea conversations (that are highly rated by many) started since 2015 that are requesting for this exact feature for last six years (at least).

I don't see any reason how this feature can take more than a few hours of coding effort from the development team.

I wonder if there is any vile reasoning behind this. For example, this feature would discourse instructors from using textbook publishers' platform (which gets integrated with canvas) that provides this exact feature of having unique problem solving questions with multiple parts for each student.

I really hope the Canvas authority will understand our frustration and allocate a few hours of development work for this feature.

Brazedowl
Community Member

I'm a physics teacher and many times our questions start with a prompt which includes all the values needed for the rest of the question. Example:

"Your 80kg teacher is standing on a uniform 15kg board that is supported by two ropes T1 and T2. The board is a total of 10m long and your teacher is 3m to the left of center. When rotated with a pivot at one end, teacher-board system has a moment of inertia equal to 2/3ML where M is the combined mass of the board and teacher and L is the length of to board."

From here they need to make decisions about what values to use, what formulas to pick to answer all the rest of the questions. Formula questions are great, but only allow for one answer.

If I break it out piecemeal with, separate formula questions, then I'm leading the student by the nose through the problem. It will be instantly clear what formula to pick, what concept to use, what values to use. It dramatically decreases the rigor of the question, AND it is not how the questions are presented on the AP exam. 

Two solutions would be allowing for multiple answers on one formula question, or defining the variables globally for the entire quiz so they could be shared between multiple formula calculations. I really like the second option more.

Yes. I have googled this. I checked the suggested similar questions. If there is an obvious solution I'm missing sure I'll take it. But this is something that many people have asked for as far back as the original implementation of formula questions.

fhernan
Community Participant

Status: "Open for conversation since 2015".

This is a bad joke.