2.2.2 Short answer

The response matching in the Short answer question type is very limited. Consider using the Pattern match question type instead.

2.34 The Question text, Grade and General feedback

Question name: A descriptive name is sensible. This name will not be shown to students.

Question text: You may use the full functionality of the editor to state the question.

Placing the response box

The response box may be placed within the question rubric by including a sequence of underscores e.g. _____. At runtime the response box will replace the underscores and the length will be determined by the number of underscores. The minimum number of underscores required to trigger this action is 5. If no underscores are present the response box will be placed after the question and will be a full length box.

Default mark: Decide on how to score your questions and be consistent.

General feedback: We recommend that all questions should have this box completed with the correct answer and a fully worked explanation. The contents of this box will be shown to all students irrespective of whether their response was correct or incorrect. We do not recommend that authors rely on using the machine generated 'Right answer' (from the iCMA definition form).

2.35 The response matching fields

Case sensitivity: The author can specify whether or not the case of the response is important.

Answer: The Short answer question type will search for a sequence of consecutive characters within a response. The wildcard character '*' allows other words and characters, including space, to be present.

Beyond this wildcard there are no other response handling facilities. The Pattern match question type offers more sophisticated features. For example if you wished to look for ‘Tom’ and ‘Dick’ and ‘Harry’ in any order then Pattern match allows you to do this easily but Short answer requires you to specify all possible sequences.

The wildcard '*' on its own in the 'answer' field will match 'any other answer'.

Feedback: Use this to give feedback to the responses that are matched by the current response match.

Improving your response matching

Do remember that Moodle keeps all the responses that students enter and as such it is straightforward to gauge the accuracy of your response matching. If you are writing this type of question you should allow time to modify your response matching in the light of actual student responses.

2.2.3 Combined