powered by bearhug

return to questions


Question Asked:

Are "fill in the blank" question answers case sensitive? Posted 2 years ago by Dave in Design-a-Course

When adding a "fill in the blank" type question to a Design-a-Course module, will the question be scored as correct if the student's submitted answer differs only in the case from the recorded correct answer? For example, if the recorded correct answer is "Resistance" and the student types "resistance" will the question be marked as correct?

This is the answer to the question:

2 years ago by Dave Smith (Staff Member)

This question is a recap of a discussion with one of our customers. It is posted here to help other customers understand the proper use of the "fill in the blank" question type.

The simple answer to this question is, "No, fill in the blank answer are not case sensitive." However, there can be other subtle differences between the correct answer and the submitted answer that can be confusing, and even frustrating, to your students. The remainder of this reply will present specific examples of correct and incorrect uses of this question type to help you build more effective evaluation questions.

You might ask the student to provide that property of a conductor that opposes current flow and can be calculated as the voltage across a circuit divided by the current flowing through that circuit. The correct answer would be "resistance". A response of "resistance", "Resistance", or even "RESISTANCE" would be scored as a correct response.  However, "ohms" is correctly scored as an incorrect response, because ohms is the unit of measurement for resistance but not the name of the property.

Your course content might contain text similar to the following "A window-type current transformer..." However, the correct answer the might get recorded, possibly by another author responsible for adding the evaluation questions, as "Window Type". When the student reads the course content and is presented with the question, it is logical that they might enter "window-type" as the answer. This will not match the recorded correct answer of "Window Type" not because of the difference in case but because of the use of the hyphen where the correct answer has a space.

Another problem to look for is a question where there might be more than one way to express the correct answer. You might ask the question, "How much current will flow in a circuit contained 10 ohms of resistance with an applied voltage of 20 volts?" Which of the following is the correct answer: 2A, 2 Amps, 2 amperes? Of course, they are all correct answers, but only one of them can be recorded and scored as the correct answer for this question. Therefore, this is a poor "fill in the blank" question.

In conclusion, the fill in the blank question type requires that the exact word or phrase recorded as the correct answer be submitted by the student. However, a submitted answer that differs only in case from the recorded correct answer will be properly scored as correct.  

2 replies to this question Post your own

Answered 2 years ago by Dave Smith (Staff Member)

This question is a recap of a discussion with one of our customers. It is posted here to help other customers understand the proper use of the "fill in the blank" question type.

The simple answer to this question is, "No, fill in the blank answer are not case sensitive." However, there can be other subtle differences between the correct answer and the submitted answer that can be confusing, and even frustrating, to your students. The remainder of this reply will present specific examples of correct and incorrect uses of this question type to help you build more effective evaluation questions.

You might ask the student to provide that property of a conductor that opposes current flow and can be calculated as the voltage across a circuit divided by the current flowing through that circuit. The correct answer would be "resistance". A response of "resistance", "Resistance", or even "RESISTANCE" would be scored as a correct response.  However, "ohms" is correctly scored as an incorrect response, because ohms is the unit of measurement for resistance but not the name of the property.

Your course content might contain text similar to the following "A window-type current transformer..." However, the correct answer the might get recorded, possibly by another author responsible for adding the evaluation questions, as "Window Type". When the student reads the course content and is presented with the question, it is logical that they might enter "window-type" as the answer. This will not match the recorded correct answer of "Window Type" not because of the difference in case but because of the use of the hyphen where the correct answer has a space.

Another problem to look for is a question where there might be more than one way to express the correct answer. You might ask the question, "How much current will flow in a circuit contained 10 ohms of resistance with an applied voltage of 20 volts?" Which of the following is the correct answer: 2A, 2 Amps, 2 amperes? Of course, they are all correct answers, but only one of them can be recorded and scored as the correct answer for this question. Therefore, this is a poor "fill in the blank" question.

In conclusion, the fill in the blank question type requires that the exact word or phrase recorded as the correct answer be submitted by the student. However, a submitted answer that differs only in case from the recorded correct answer will be properly scored as correct.  

Posted 2 years ago by Dave Smith (Staff Member)

Yesterday, we released a new version of the Design-a-Course product. One new feature of this version changes the way fill-in-the-blank questions are created and scored. Now you can enter a list of correct answers into the answer field when creating the quesion. If the student's submitted answer matches any item from the list, then the question will be scored as correct.

To use the example from the previous post, if the question were used about the amount of current flowing through a circuit, then you could enter the correct answer as:

2A|2 Amps|2 amperes

Notice that the alternative answers are separated by the vertical bar character (|). The student's answer must still match exactly with one of the options entered as a part of this answer string. Therefore, an answer of "2 A" will not be stored a correct because of the space between the "2" and the "A".

Current customers can download this new version by logging into your account on the Design-a-Course server.

Go to our Website