Question types

An assessment can use all five question types together. What you fill in is different for each type, and so is who does the marking.

• Checked against an answer

  Program, both kinds of choice question, and true or false all have a right answer. They can be checked as soon as a student submits.

  Good for anything you want returned already marked.

• Read by you

  An open ended question has no right answer to check, so it waits for you.

  Good for explanations, reasoning and design.

Program

The student writes and runs a program. You choose the language and version it starts in, write the question, and write the test cases that decide whether the program worked.

This is the only type where marking means running something. Test cases have their own page.

Choice, one answer

Write the question and the choices, then mark the one that is correct. The student picks a single option.

Choice, several answers

The same, but more than one choice is correct and the student has to find them all.

These are two separate types. You choose which one you want when you add the question.

By default a choice question is all or nothing. Turn on Score/Mark at Choice level to give each choice its own mark. Then a student who finds two of three correct answers scores more than one who finds none. That matters most for several-answer questions.

True or false

A statement, and the student chooses which it is. This is the quickest type to answer and to mark.

Open ended

A written answer, such as an explanation or a description of an approach. You set a Minimum Length and a Maximum Length. That is all you set.

An open ended question has no marks of its own. You decide what the answer was worth when you read it. Every other type works the other way round.

What each question includes

Every question except open ended has a Mark/Score.

Marks to take off only appears when the assessment itself is set to take marks off for wrong answers.

What next

Programs need test cases before they can be marked.

Question types is the reference version of this page.