Fill-in multiple blanks question limitations with respect to Blackboard

pcatasti
Community Explorer

One of several reasons why Canvas is such an inferior LMS to Blackboard is the almost complete unwillingness of the developers to keep improving their product.

Case in point: Fill-in multiple blanks questions.

In Blackboard, you can specify whether you want the answer to be matched as:

  • Exact match
  • Contains part of the correct answer
  • Matches a pattern that you specify

In Canvas, not a chance!

So, Imagine that an instructor wants to create a question about a confidence interval in a quiz. The first idea is to create a multiple-numerical answers question, but that would be too easy, right? Of course, there is no such question type available (to be fair, neither there is in Blackboard.)

So, the next best thing is to set it up as a fill-in multiple blanks question. Only, Canvas makes it soooo much harder than Blackboard, because unless you are incredibly strict about the allowed correct answers, you will always find some student who manages to mess it up in some unexpected way and still expect credit for it. Then, good luck with 'fudge'.

Fudge! Really, Canvas?

At least Blackboard allows for correct answers so long as they contain a certain string of characters, which works great for rounding issues. 

But Canvas? Maybe we will get an improvement when hell freezes over because all the developers have managed so far is to come up with the brilliant idea of New Quizzes, which is a brand new exercise in the logic of regress to a worse version than it was with Classic Quizzes.

I can't retire fast enough, apparently.

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