Short answer

Short answer questions can be used to:

• check spelling, for example, vocabulary tests.
• check concrete factual knowledge, for example: What is the name of the President of the United States of America?
• recognise specific items in, for example, pictures, movies or diagrams.

Below are two examples of short answer questions, one good and one poor:

Limitations

Short answer questions are best suited for manual assessment, and if you want to use automatic assessment you must add keywords (see Keywords under Adding short answer questions below). The weakness of automatic assessment is that it can be difficult for participants to hit the correct keyword. You can add alternatives to the keywords where you take into account misspelling and synonyms. However, you can never be sure that an answer that is correct in principle will not be automatically assessed as wrong.

It is not possible to use the scoring method with penalty on short answer questions.

To add short answer questions, enter a test and click the Questions tab. Click Add and select Short answer from the drop-down list. 

Question

Short answer questions consist of a question. If you want to use automatic assessment, enter

Answer key

The 'answer key' is the correct answer to the question. The answer key is only visible to the teacher, and can be used as a guide when correcting answers manually.

Keywords

Keywords are necessary if you use automatic assessment. The answers are checked against the keywords, and that means that participant answers have to contain the keywords to be correct. In addition to keywords, you can add alternatives to the keywords. If the keyword is 'ship', typical alternatives might be 'boat', 'vessel', 'craft', etc. If your question is not intended to check spelling, you can also add different spelling suggestions. If, for example, the keyword is 'onomatopoetic', you can add other spelling options, such as 'onomatopoeic', 'onimatopoetic', or 'onomateopoetic'.

Above we used the question 'What is brass an alloy of?' as an example. In the table below is a suggestion as to what keywords and alternatives are smart to use:

Question	Keywords Alternatives
What is brass an alloy of?	copper Cu, cuprum, kopper
	zinc zink, Zn, sinc, spelter

In the next table you see a couple of answers, and the result of the automatic assessment.

Assignment answers	Comment
Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc.	2 out of 2 correct. Both copper and zinc are keywords.
Copper and lead.	1 out of 2 correct. Copper is a keyword, but lead is incorrect.
The alloy consists of Zn and Cu.	2 out of 2 correct. Both Zn and Cu are alternatives to the keywords zinc and copper.
Brass is a chemical element, not an alloy.	0 out of 2 correct. Nothing in the answer conforms with the keywords or alternatives.
lead zinc copper bronze gold silver bismuth	2 out of 2 correct. Even if both of the alloy components are mentioned, this participant has most likely entered seven random metals and has hit the correct keywords and alternatives by chance. If you assess manually you will discover attempts such as this, but if you use automatic assessment it is not picked up by the system. Note: You cannot use the scoring method that penalises wrong answers in the short answer questions.

1. Click on a test.
2. Click the Questions tab.
3. Click Add.
4. Click Short answer.
5. Enter the question in the first text field.
6. If you want, enter an answer key in the next text field. This field functions only as a reference for the teacher.
7. If you want to add keywords, enter a keyword in the Keyword field. You can also enter alternatives to the keyword in the Alternative field. If you add more than one, separate them with a comma. If you want to add more than one keyword, click Add keyword.
8. Check the box in front of Use automatic assessment if you want itslearning to automatically assess the answers. If this option is enabled you have to add keywords.
9. Click Save.

Preview
Before you save a question, itslearning allows you to preview it. To preview the question, click Preview. By clicking the preview link, you can see the question from the participants' perspective. Submit an answer to see how the feedback looks for a correct and incorrect answer. Click the Back link to continue editing the question.

1. Click on a test.
2. Click the Questions tab.
3. Click on the question you want to edit.
4. Make your changes.
5. Click Save.

1. Click on a test.
2. Click the Questions tab.
3. Select the question you want to delete by checking the box in front of the question.
4. Click Delete question.