Multiple choice: standard question type
Create a multiple-choice question to assess your students’ ability to select the most correct options from several possible answers.
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 Options, enter possible answers.
Click + Option to add more answers.
Click the X remove an answer choice.
Optionally, select Distractor Rationale to add rationales for each answer option.
This is not a student feedback feature. Distractor rationales help instructors understand why students selected incorrect responses. This information appears alongside student responses in the Item Analysis report.
Correct answer setup
From Correct Answer Setup, select the correct answer.
Select Shuffle options to randomize the order in which the options are displayed to each student while taking the assessment.
Select Multiple Responses to allow students to choose more than one option when answering the question. Enable this setting for questions that ask students to choose all that apply, for example.
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.
You can create multiple correct answer tabs with different configurations, each assigned a percentage of credit. For example, if a question allows multiple responses and A and D are correct, you could add a tab where selecting A and C earns 50% credit.
In some cases, you may choose not to award any points for selecting A and C, or you may assign a different value, such as 25% credit.
Scoring type
If your question has more than one response, choose your Scoring Type 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 correct choices) * (the number of selected correct choices)] - [(Value of the percentage field/the number of correct choices) * (the number of selected incorrect choices)] = 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 choices total and three correct choices, and a student selects three correct responses and one incorrect response, the value produced by the formula would be 67. [(100 percent / 3 correct choices) * (3 correct choices selected)] - [(100percent / 3 choices) * (1 incorrect choices selected)] = 67(%). If the question is worth 10 points, the student would receive 6.67 points, because 67% of 10 is 6.67.Because correct choices and incorrect choices are weighed the same, each incorrect choice will effectively cancel out a correct choice.
Layout options
From Layout, choose an option from the list.
Enter the Number of columns for the answer option layout.
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.
Select a Parent Objective to find and select specific 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.