Fill in the blank text: standard question type
Choose Fill in the Blank to allow students to enter responses directly into blank text fields in the question.
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.
Correct answer setup
From Correct Answer Setup, enter the correct terms into the blank cells.
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.
Enter a Maximum Length for characters. The default is 40 characters. Decreasing the maximum character length will also shorten the input box.
Select Case Sensitive to consider capitalization during scoring.
Scoring type
If your question has more than one blank, choose your Scoring Type for the question after you have entered the correct responses to each blank.
Select Exact Match to require that students respond to all blanks correctly. 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 based on the number of blanks the student responds to correctly.
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 blanks, and a student enters 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.
To award points for correct matches without 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.
When a penalty score is applied, the scoring formula is:
partial match value - [(penalty score ÷ the number of blanks) × the number of incorrect responses] = final score
The penalty is calculated as a percentage of the total possible points — it is not a fixed-point deduction.
The penalty is divided across all response boxes to determine how much is deducted for each incorrect selection.
Penalty score example
Using the previous example, a student earns a partial match value of 75%. If you apply a penalty score of 20 and the student has one incorrect response selected, the calculation is:
75 − [(20 ÷ 4) × 1] = 70
If the question is worth 10 points, the student receives 7 points, since 70% of 10 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.