Use the Fill in the Blank Drop-down question type to create a specific list of options that will display to students when they are attempting to fill in a specific blank. Students select the correct answer from a drop-down for each blank.
Question setup
From Question Setup, enter your questions or instructions.
-
Use the Rich Text Editor to format text or insert images and tables.
-
Hover over icons to display tooltips.
-
Enter an underscore or click Insert Response to generate a blank.
-
Each underscore corresponds to an answer blank in Correct Answer Setup.
-
Add additional underscores to add multiple blanks in the question.
-
Click +Option to enter a drop-down menu term for the first blank in Response 1. Click +Option to add additional terms in the drop-down menu. Repeat this process for each blank response in the question.
Correct answer setup
From Correct Answer Setup, choose the correct term from each response list.
Optionally, add alternate correct answers:
-
Click the + button at the beginning of the Correct Answer Setup area to set up an additional set of acceptable responses to the blanks in the question.
-
In the percentage field, set partial credit and the percentage of possible points students can earn for this answer.
Click the Additional Setup Options to enter placeholder text in All Responses for the top answer choice in each response’s list. Click + Add to add Placeholder Text to individual responses lists.
Scoring type
If your question has more than one blank, choose the Scoring Type for the question after you have entered the correct responses to each blank.
-
Select Exact Match to require that students correctly respond to all choices. This option allocates 100% of the possible points for a correct response and zero points for an incorrect one.
-
Select Partial Match to award points relative to the number of correct responses.
Partial match
If the Scoring Type is set to Partial Match, the formula for scoring the question is:
(value of the percentage ÷ the number of blanks) × the number of selected correct responses = partial match value
-
The partial match value does not represent the number of points the response will receive, but the percentage of the total possible points.
-
The calculation always uses 100% from the main correct answer—not the alternate answers.
Partial match example
If there are four possible correct responses, and a student selects three correct responses and one incorrect response, the value produced by the formula would be 75%.
(100 ÷ 4) × 3 = 75
If the question is worth 10 points, the student would receive 7.5 points, because 75% of 10 is 7.5. To penalize the student for the incorrect highlight, refer to the Penalty score information.
Penalty score
When the question is set to Partial Match, you can optionally set a Penalty Score to deduct a percentage of the total question point value for each incorrectly matched answer.
-
Enter 0 for the Penalty Score to award points for correct answers without additional deductions for incorrect answers.
-
Enter 100 to weigh incorrect answers the same as correct ones.
The formula for scoring a question with a penalty score is:
partial match value - [(penalty score ÷ the number of blanks) × the number of incorrect responses selected]
-
The penalty formula, like the partial match formula, produces a relative percentage, not a point value.
-
The penalty value divided by the total number of blanks is the penalty per answer in percentage form.
Penalty score example
If you were to take the previous example and add a penalty score of 20, the value produced by the penalty would be 70%.
75 - [(20 ÷ 4) × 1] = 70.
Again, if the question is worth 10 points, the student would receive 70% of 10, which is 7.
Author notes
Enter Author Notes to explain why certain choices are incorrect, or why partial credit was given for alternate answers. This field only displays to authors with edit access. This information will not display to students.
Align learning objectives
-
Click + Learning Objectives to display the Learning Objectives browser.
-
From the available learning objectives, select a category and choose from the objectives.
-
Click Align to add the objectives.
Preview and edit the question
-
Click Preview Question to review how the question will display to students.
-
Click Edit Question to return to the question editor. Alternatively, click X to close the question.
