New quizzes: Fill in the blank with interchangeable blanks

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As a language teacher, I would love the possibility to have interchangeable blanks.

For example, in the following ESL quiz, the students have to listen to a clip and write down which items the speakers would buy. The students should write down five items, but they don't always do so in the correct order, so they end up losing marks for no reason. The only option right now is to "specify correct answers" and add all items to each blank. Unfortunately, this means that if students were just to write the correct answer "blankets" five times, they get a full score.

Steph_30_0-1622988526093.png

It would be useful if an "or" option could be created, which allows the answers to the blanks to be interchangeable.

(I'm not sure if this has been suggested already, since I could not find anything similar on the ideas forum. My apologies if it has.)

6 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Moderating

@Steph_30 

Thanks for sharing this idea. Have you confirmed that when students select the same answer for all five blanks, they are receiving full credit? I ask because according to the documentation ( How do I create a Fill in the Blank question in Ne... ), a student who fills in or selects two of four correct answers would receive a score of 50% on the question. 

Steph_30
Community Contributor

@Stef_retired 

Thanks for the quick reply!

There is indeed no problem when the students can select answers (word bank/dropdown), but it does not seem to work that way when students have to write the answers themselves (open entry). My colleagues and I often create tests where spelling matters, so this question type is the most useful to us.

Here's another view of the test mentioned above, which I completed as a test student to check what happens. If I just choose the "open entry" and only use "contains...", the answers must be given in the correct order:

Steph_30_0-1623167512831.png

 

I've done the test again, this time editing it so that there is a "specify correct answers" for each blank, containing each of the five possible answers (i.e. blankets, map, compass, provisions, tent). If I write the same item in multiple blanks, I still get a full score.

Steph_30_1-1623167530110.png

 

I understand this form of question is necessary for certain "open entry" tests (e.g. completing a sentence/text/summary/...), but it would be nice, if possible, to have a "complete the blanks" option where the order of the answers is irrelevant. Is there a way to create this, apart from resorting to an essay question?

Many thanks in advance!

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open
 
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open
 
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

@Steph_30  I freely confess that we're stumped. We feel like there should be a way to accomplish this using existing functionality, but so far, we haven't come up with a solution.

We'll definitely move this idea forward for broader discussion, but we're going to do additional testing at the same time to see if we can come up with a solution.

ProductPanda
Instructure
Instructure
Status changed to: Archived
Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.