The Short Text question requires students to respond to questions that have short, definite answers, for example, 1-2 words, or a number.

Figure 1: Short text question example.

Create a question

Enter a question stem in the Compose Question area.

Follow these steps in order to configure question validation:

• Insert a value in the Point(s) box to set up a mark for the question.
• In the Allow drop-down menu, select either Exact match or Any text containing.
  • If Exact match is selected, what the student enters as a response must exactly match the response set in validation.
  • If Any text containing is selected, once the student enters the text included in the validation it will be marked as correct. Any other text added to the student response is ignored.
    NOTE: a comma-space and period-space are also ignored to ensure the response is scored correct if at a pause in or at the end of a sentence. All other punctuation or special characters included in the validation are required to be entered by the student to score a correct result.
• In the Value field, enter the correct response in the empty box as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Validation using the 'Any text containing' option.

Figure 3: Question using 'Any text containing' option.

• If there is more than one response that can be considered as correct click on the + tab in order to add an alternative correct response. In the new tab enter the response in the empty field. You can also set a specific score for the alternate responses which can be different from the initial correct response.

More options

Under More Options, you can specify the number of characters to be entered in the response box by entering a value in the Maximum Length field. The maximum value is 250 characters.

Layout

The Layout section allows you to add additional styling to the question:

• Enable Case Sensitive: if you want the responses to be validated considering the letters’ case.
• Spellcheck and text correction: Check this box to turn on spellcheck in the text entry area. When this box is unchecked, browser spellcheck will be disabled, along with auto-correct, auto-complete, and auto-capitalize on iOS devices. Note: This is a browser feature and may not always be available or supported.
• Input Type menu: defines which keyboard will be displayed by default to the students using tablet devices. Options are Text or Number.
• You can also add a Placeholder in the text input area. It will disappear when the student starts typing text in. 

Enabling Character Map allows authors to add non-typical letters and symbols in language e.g. ó, ç, ñ or Math and Science e.g. μ, ∞ ,≤, and make them available for the students in Essay Text questions. When Character Map is on, the default Alpha character map will be shown to the students. The Numerical Character Map will be available when the Has Mathematical Formulas option is enabled. To create a Custom Character Map, enter the specific characters into the Characters to display box.

Alpha character map

Numerical character map

Custom character map