Question Types
The types of Questions currently supported by the Lesson module are:
Multichoice This is the default question type. Multichoice questions
are popular questions where the student is asked to choose one answer from a
set of alternatives. The correct answer takes the student further into the
lesson, the wrong answers do not. The wrong answers are sometimes called the
"distractors" and the utility of these questions often rely more
on the quality of the distractors than either the questions themselves or their
correct answers.
Each answer can optionally have a response. If no response is
entered for an answer then the default response "That's the Correct
Answer" or "That's the Wrong Answer" is shown to the student.
It is possible to have more than one correct answer to a multichoice question.
The different correct answers may give the student different responses and
jump to different (forward) pages in the lesson but
do not vary in their grades, (that is, some answers are not more correct
than others, at least in terms of grade.) It is possible for all the answers
to be correct and they might take the student to different (forward) parts of
the lesson depending on which one is chosen.
There is variant of Multichoice questions called "Multichoice
Multianswer" questions. These require the student to select all the
correct answers from the set of answers. The question may or may not tell
the student how many correct answers there are. For example "Which of the
following were US Presidents?" does not, while "Select the two US
presidents from the following list." does. The actual number of correct
answers can be from one up to the number of choices. (A Multichoice
Multianswer question with one correct answer is different from a
Multichoice question as the former allows the student the possibility of
choosing more than one answer while the latter does not.)
Again the correct answers are flagged using forward jumps, the wrong answers
by same page or backward jumps. When there is more than one correct answer
the jumps should all go to the same page, similarly with the wrong answers.
If that is not the case a warning is given on the teacher's view of
the lesson. The correct response, if required, should be given on the first
correct answer and the wrong response, if required, should be on the first
wrong answer. Responses on the other answers are ignored (without warning).
Short Answer The student is prompted for a short piece of text.
This is checked against one or more answers. Answers can be either correct
or wrong. Each answer can optionally have a response. If no response is
entered for an answer then the default response "That's the Correct
Answer" or "That's the Wrong Answer" is shown to the student.
If the text entered does not match any of the answers the question is wrong
and the student is shown the default wrong response.
By default the comparisons ignore the case of the text. There is an option
to make the comparisons case sensitive.
The asterisk (*) character can be used in answers as a "wild card"
character. It stands for any number of characters (including no characters
at all). For example, the answer "Long*" will match
"longer", "longest" and "long". If one of
the answers is just "*" (a single *) this answer will match
anything, it is normally used as the last "catch-all" answer. The
matching process goes through the answers in the order they appear on the
screen. Once a match is found the process stops and the corresponding
result (and response, if present) is returned. So, if for example the
answers are Longest, Long* and * (in that order), the input
"longer" will match the second answer and, in this case, the
third answer, although a match, is ignored.
If an asterisk (*) is actually needed in an answer, it should be entered as
\*, backslash asterisk. True/False The answer to this type of question only has two options,
true or false. The student is prompted to choose which is the correct
option. This type of question is basically a Multichoice question with just
two choices. Matching These are quite powerful and flexible questions. They
consist of a list of names or statements which must be correctly matched
against other list of names or statements. For example "Match the
Capital with the Country" with the two lists Japan, Canada, Italy and
Tokyo, Ottawa, Rome. It is possible to have repeated entries in one of the
lists but care should be taken to make the repeats identical. For example
"Identify the type of these creatures" with the lists Sparrow,
Cow, Ant, Dog and Bird, Animal, Insect, Animal.
When creating this type of question the items for the first list go into the
Answer boxes and items for the second list go into the Response boxes. Once
created a more sensible labeling scheme is shown. When the student
successfully matches the items the jump on the first answer is used. An
unsuccessful answer jumps to the page on the second answer. The question does
not support custom responses, the student is told how many matches
are correct or if all the matches are correct.
Unlike the Multichoice question where the choices are shown in a random
order, the first list of items is not shuffled but shown in the same
order as entered. This allows for "Ordered" questions to be
constructed. Consider the question " Put the following into the order
they were born, the earliest first" with the lists 1., 2., 3., 4. and
Longfellow, Lawrence, Lowell, Larkin. The second list is shuffed before
being used in the question, of course. Numerical This type of question requires a number as the answer.
In it's simplest form it requires just one answer to be specified. For
example "What is 2 plus 2?" with the answer 4 given a forward
jump. However, it is better to specify a range because the internal rounding
of numerical values can make single numeric comparisons rather hit or miss.
Thus, if the question were "What is 10 divided by 3" it would be
necessary to give the answer as "Minimum:Maximum", that
is two values separated by a colon (:). Thus if 3.33:3.34 is given as the
acceptable range for the answer, then the answers 3.33, 3.333, 3.3333...
would all be taken as correct answers. "Wrong" answers would
include 3.3 (less than the minimum) and 3.4 (greater than the maximum).
More than one correct answer is allowed and the answers can be either single
or pair of values. Note that the order in which the answers are tested is
Answer 1, Answer 2... so some care needs to taken if the desired response
is to appear. For example the question "When was Larkin born?"
could have the single value of 1922, the exact answer, and the pair of
values 1920:1929, the 20's, as the less exact answer.The order in which
these values should be tested is, obviously, 1922 then 1920:1929. The
first answer might have the response "That's exactly right"
while the other answer's response might be "That's close, you've got
the right decade"
Wrong answers can be given but depending on their actual range, care should
be taken to place them after the correct answers. For example in adding the
wrong answer 3:4 to the "10 divided by 3" question it needs to come
after the correct answer. That is the answers are ordered 3.33:3.34 (the
"correct" answer) then 3:4 (the "wrong" answer, but
not wildly wrong answer!). |