But be careful. The answer scanning must also be able
to pick up responses such as 'one', or the programming must bar the typing
of letters.
Completion questions
Completion questions are sometimes called 'cloze' or
'fill in the blanks': in other words the learner has to provide a missing
word.
For example, the question above could be reworded in
this format:
If you are designing paper-based materials provide the
learner with enough space so that they can write the answer. The answer is
short in this example, but in some questions you might expect the learner
to write one or two sentences.
Things are more complicated with e-learning. The correct
answer is 'Stamp Duty', but the computer must be able to recognise different
spellings and capitalisation, as well as deciding whether a variant such as
'Stamp Tax' is acceptable.
So make sure that the question clearly requires a one
or two word answer (never more than two), otherwise learners may type in whole
sentences. In the above question the response 'This tax is called Stamp Duty'
is clearly correct but the program's answer scanning mechanism may only the
look at the first part of the response.
For such courses the best application for free format questions is where the
answer is numerical. For example:
When designing completion questions, make sure that you:
- avoid having more than two blanks
- put the blanks at the end of the statement,
as putting blanks at the beginning makes the statement much more difficult
to comprehend
If you do design a completion question with two blanks,
make sure that the correct answer for the second blank is not affected by
the learner's choice for the first blank, or the question could become meaningless.
(C) Bryan Hopkins, 2005
Also known as constructed-response questions, these require
the learner to enter a response into a space. They are easy questions to design,
and can be the most challenging to learners, as the correct answer is not
visible.
There are two main types:
Free-format questions work very well in paper-based materials,
but are more problematic in e-learning courses for a number of reasons:
- If you want to check the response you must design thorough
judging routines to take into account misspelling, etc.
- If you want to save the learner's response you must add
some data storage capability.
- If the response is not judged, feedback is not related
to the response. When learners realise this they may not bother with responding
and simply read the feedback, making this a non-interactive interaction.
Sometimes such questions are offered as 'reflection' activities,
where the learner is encouraged to write something about the topic they are
studying. Such questions do not need judging but a means must be provided
for saving the response in an e-learning course, such as through an electronic
notepad.
Open-ended questions
In this type, you ask a question and provide a space
in which the learner can enter their answer. Look at this example:
