4 Writing your first Short answer question

The Short answer question is the textual equivalent of the Numerical question type but the response matching features are too limited for this question type to be of much practical use. Consequently we will not spend long on this question type. Later on we will come back to response matching textual answers with the Pattern match question type.

Here is the single short answer question from An interactive tour of the Moodle Quiz. As you will see later there is only one correct answer.

Figure 4.1 A Short answer question. (In fact there are other behaviours based on 'Adaptive mode' that are not covered in this course.)

As before the question can be broken in three main sections.

• The question stem which is shown on a blue background.
• The users interaction, here there is an 'edit box' for them to type into.
• The feedback to their response on a yellow background.

With this third question you will be beginning to recognise that there is a similar pattern to all the question types and a rhythm to the interaction between student and machine.