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Surveyor II

## Have Mathquill in Fill in the Blank Question?

In Classic Quizzes I could do this:

In New Quizzes, it doesn't seem to have this feature. It can do it for the stem, but not the statement. I did find out that pasting the latex code will show the faction in my item bank view, but not when used in a quiz. Now, typing it as 5/2 isn't so bad, but if I made it an equation (e.g., finding the integers that 5/2 + 2/3 is between), that can look messy.

In Classic Quizzes I even made multiple paragraphs with multiple blanks and had math equations, I would hate not to be able to do that.

I am not asking for students to be able to enter formulas, I am asking if I can have them as part of the answer.

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3 Replies
Navigator II

I am not completely sure what you're asking about. Unfortunately, we only have New Quizzes enabled in our beta instance and it's Saturday, and I can't even test anything right now. I'm going to throw out a bunch of stuff, hoping I answer your question. If I don't, can you please clarify exactly what it is that you're wanting to happen.

You can create a multiple fill in the blank questions, but they are not a separate question type, they're built into the regular fill in the blank questions. This lesson from the Canvas Instructor Guide explains how to create a multiple fill in the blank question: How do I create a Fill in the Blank question in New Quizzes?  See the Create Blank Space section about 1/3 of the way through.

One thing I've noticed is that with New Quizzes, I've been unable to use variable names that include a number in them (this was for formula questions, it may not be an issue with fill in the blank questions), but you might try [a] and [b] instead of [number1] and [number2]

As far as getting in the math, you mentioned being able to paste LaTeX, so it sounds like you're aware of the $$and$$ delimiters that need to go around any math. You could enter this into the question stem and it would look properly formatted. $$\frac{5}{2} + \frac{2}{3}$$

What it sounds like you want is what confuses me the most. Your title says you want MathQuill in the Fill In the Blank Questions. Then you say you can put it in the stem. That's what I described above. It's available.

The confusing part is your last sentence (emphasis mine)

I am not asking for students to be able to enter formulas, I am asking if I can have them as part of the answer.

You cannot put anything other than plain text into the answer of a fill-in-the-blank question. It was this way with Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes. You have never been able to put a math equation in a fill-in-the-blank answer.

Are you using the word bank or dropdown version of the questions where they get to pick their answer from a list or are you using the open entry version where they have to type it? If you're using the open entry version, then it would not do you any good to enter a formatted mathematical expression into the answer because the students could not enter it.

In any of those cases, since you're asking for the nearest integer, you wouldn't need 5/2+2/3 to come out looking proper in the answer. Answers would be 3 and 4.

Using multiple fill in the blanks was often a hack for mathematics due to the lack of support for multiple numeric response questions. Canvas' solution with New Quizzes is to use a stimulus question where you have the question and then add two numeric response questions under it. That will get Canvas to understand it as numbers instead of plain text. In your example, plain text is sufficient for entering an integer, but there might be other problems a little more advanced that need that functionality.

The problem with the stimulus question is that you lose the ability to randomly select them from a bank and so every student will get the same question.

Surveyor II

I was looking into the Stimulus option, looks promising.

Sorry for the confusion of what I meant, I want the math formula as part of the question (and not just the stem), so having 5/2 shown as a fraction. When I paste/type the latex code into the statement zone, the fraction does show up correctly when I view it in my item bank, but when students go to take the question, they are shown the actual latex code.

The Stimulus would be a roundabout way and not as clean compared to the classic quizzes, so for the example question it would be:

content: [number 1] $$<\frac{5}{2}<$$ [number 2]

Numeric #1: [number 1] < 5/2

Numeric #2: 5/2 < [number 2]

Not being able to make them part of the bank is not great, as I previously in classic quizzes made a question group for this particular problem (so it changed from 5/2, 7/2, 9/2, etc.) and many others.

Navigator II

Thanks for the clarification. You're correct that you cannot include the formatted number in the statement (using Canvas' vernacular) but you can in the Question Stem.

One work-around would be to put it in the question stem and then use "expression" or "value" in the question. It's not ideal, but it may work.

Question stem: Which two integers are nearest the expression $$\frac{5}{2}$$ ?

Statement: The nearest integer less than the value is [a] and the nearest integer greater than the value is [b]

Then you get the benefit of multiple answers, which allows you to bank them (there are no question groups in new quizzes).

What I would suggest though, is perhaps taking a different approach that could greatly simplify the process while giving better results. You would get two questions instead of one, but you could make each of them worth half the points.

The bold is for emphasis to show changes.

Create a formula question instead of a fill in the blank question.

What is the nearest integer less than $$\frac{a}{b} + \frac{c}{d}$$ ?

Then generate random values for a, b, c, and d, making sure b and d > 1 (to avoid a denominator of 1 for prettiness and definitely avoid division by 0).

As an answer, use the floor command from the formula quiz question helper functions

floor(a/b+c/d)

Now, repeat that question but change it to be the nearest integer greater than the expression. Change the formula to be

ceil(a/b+c/d)

The downside (?) is that students would have to compute two values for comparison rather than one. However, that's not such a bad thing as it gives them extra practice.

You then don't need a bank of questions at all because it's a formula question and has lots of generated values already.

If you really only want one question about this, then you put it both of them in a bank and pick one of them. The students will randomly get a less than or a greater than.