Fill in the blank dropdown: enhanced question type

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

Enter your question into the Question Setup field.

Use the Rich Text Editor, which appears when you click into the field, to apply formatting such as bold and italics, or to insert images or tables. Hover your mouse over the individual icons to view the tooltip explaining the function of each button.

To generate a blank when creating this type of question, type an underscore (_) into the text editor or click the Insert Response button in the stimulus toolbar. Each underscore corresponds to an answer blank under Correct Answer Setup. Add additional underscores to have multiple blanks in the question.

Click +Option to enter an option you want to appear in the drop-down menu for the first blank in Response 1. Click +Option to add additional choices in the drop-down menu. Repeat this process for each blank response in the question.

Correct Answer Setup

Select the correct term in the drop-down menus in Correct Answer Setup.

Click the + button at the top of Correct Answer Setup to enable an additional set of acceptable responses to the blanks in the question.

Click into the percentage field to the right of the additional answer to determine whether the alternate answer is worth partial credit and to set the percentage of possible points students can receive for this answer accordingly.

Click the karat from the Additional Setup Options to activate placeholder text for the top answer choice in each response’s list.

To add Placeholder Text to all responses, enter the text into the All Responses textbox. Click + Add to add Placeholder Text to individual responses lists.

Add partial credit

To award partial credit for specific responses, click the + button from Correct Answer Setup to add an alternate answer.

In the percentage field for the additional answer, enter the percentage of possible points students can receive for this exact answer.

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. If the Scoring Type is set to Partial Match, the formula for scoring the question is:
  (Value of the percentage field/the number of possible correct highlights) * (the number of selected correct highlights) = 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.

• Example:
  If there are four possible correct highlights, and a student selects three correct responses and one incorrect response, the value produced by the formula would be 75. (100 percent / 4 possible correct highlights) * (3 correct highlights selected) = 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. To simply award points for correct answers without additional deductions for incorrect answers, set the Penalty Score to 0. To weigh incorrect responses the same as correct responses, set the Penalty Score to 100.

The formula for scoring a question with a Penalty Score is:

[Partial Match Value] - [(Value in Penalty field / # blanks) * (# incorrect responses selected)]

• The Penalty formula, like the Partial Match formula, produces a relative percentage, not a point value.

• The penalty value divided by total number of blanks is the penalty per answer in percentage form.

• 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 blanks) * (1 incorrect response selected)] = 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

1. Click + Learning Objectives to display the Learning Objectives browser.

2. Select a Parent Objective to find and select specific objectives.

3. Click Align to add the objectives.

Preview and edit the question

1. Click Preview Question to review how the question will display to students.

2. Click Edit Question to return to the question editor. Alternatively, click X to close the question.