Matching: standard question type
Use the Matching question type to assess your students' ability to identify pairs.
Question setup
Enter your question in the Question Setup field.
Use the Rich Text Editor to format text or insert images and tables.
Hover over icons to display tooltips.
From Prompts, enter the terms to display on one side of the pairs. Prompts will be presented to students in the order defined in the Question Setup.
Click + Prompt to add additional terms.
To reorder prompts, drag and drop them into different positions.
From Possible Options, enter the matches to the prompts. Options will be presented to students in the order defined in the Question Setup.
Click + Option to add additional matches or filler words that do not belong to any prompt.
To reorder the possible answers, drag and drop them into different positions.
Correct answer setup
Prompts and possible options auto-populate in Correct Answer Setup. Drag-and-drop each answer to its match to create pairs.
Select Duplicate Responses to allow students to match the same answer to more than one prompt.
Optionally, add alternate correct answers:
Click the + button at the beginning of the Correct Answer Setup area to set up an additional set of matching options that are at least partially correct.
In the percentage field, set partial credit and the percentage of possible points students can earn for this answer.
If there is more than one Correct Answer tab in Correct Answer Setup, the formula for scoring the question remains the same and is applied to each tab.
Scoring type
Choose your 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 based on the number of pairs a student matches 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 pairs) × (the number of correctly matched pairs) = partial match value
The partial match value represents the percentage of total possible points the student earns—not the final point value.
The calculation always uses 100% from the main correct answer—not the alternate answers.
Partial match example
If there are four possible matched pairs, and the student matches three pairs correctly and one pair incorrectly, the value produced by the formula would be 75%.
(100 ÷ 4) × 3 = 75
If the question is worth 10 points, the student receives 7.5 points, since 75% of 10 is 7.5.
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. It is not a fixed-point deduction.
Enter 0 for the Penalty Score to award points for correct matches without deductions for incorrect answers.
Enter 100 to weigh incorrect responses the same as correct responses.
The formula for scoring a question with a penalty score is:
partial match value - [(penalty ÷ the number of pairs) × the number of incorrectly matched pairs] = 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
If you were to use the partial match example and add a penalty score of 20, the value produced by the penalty would be 70%.
75 - [(20 ÷ 4) × 1] = 70
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.