Embedded Answer questions (or CLOZE questions) are a way of designing multiple choice, short answers and numerical answers that are inserted within a passage of text. They are useful when you want to have a single question have multiple sub-parts and when it makes better sense to have answer boxes or dropdowns within sentences.
The questions are written by including a specific syntax to code each type of question that gets translated by the system.
Embedded Answers (Cloze Questions) Advisory: If your quiz ALREADY has attempts, editing questions can break quizzes. We recommend that no CLOZE questions are edited after a quiz has been opened. Questions should be dropped from the quiz by zeroing their score; or a duplicate of the quiz should be made and students moved to the second copy.
If you must edit Cloze questions, ensure that you DO NOT:
- add or delete sub-questions within a question;
- change the order of the questions in the text; or
- change their question type (numerical, short-answer, multiple choice)
We also recommend that you make any changes using the HTML text editor instead of the RTF editor in eClass to ensure that you do not accidentally inject new formats or behaviours into the Cloze question that you are modifying. Please contact eClass support if you have any questions about making edits to existing CLOZE questions.
Cloze question structure:
The structure of a cloze question is as follows:
- Start the cloze sub-question with a curly brace: {
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Define a grade (number of points if correct) for each cloze sub-question with a positive integer. (Note: setting the question score to zero will prevent the entire quiz attempt from being graded (all attempts will be scored zero.)
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Define the type of cloze sub-question, and bound it with a colon on each side:
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- For a short answer question where case is unimportant, use :SHORTANSWER: or :SA: or :MW:
- For a short answer question where case must match, use :SHORTANSWER_C: or :SAC: or :MWC:
- Note: The text input field for a short answer question will be the length of the longest option (correct or incorrect) plus a random number of characters (0 to 15% total length of the longest option). To make all short answer fields EXACTLY the same length, an option of 55 characters in length will need to be included in the question (nothing shorter is possible).
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For a numerical answer, use :NUMERICAL: or :NM:
- Note: If the correct answer is 5 and you allow an accepted error 0.1, you should type {1:NM:=5:0.1}.
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For a multiple choice question, displayed as a dropdown menu in-line the text, use :MULTICHOICE: or :MC:
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For a multiple choice question, displayed as a vertical column of radio buttons, use :MULTICHOICE_V: or :MCV:
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For a multiple choice question, displayed as a horizontal row of radio buttons, use :MULTICHOICE_H: or :MCH:
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For a multiple choice question with shuffled choices, displayed as a dropdown menu in-line the text, use :MULTICHOICE_S: or :MCS:
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For a multiple choice question with shuffled choices, displayed as a vertical column of radio buttons, use :MULTICHOICE_VS: or :MCVS:
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For a multiple choice question with shuffled choices, displayed as a horizontal row of radio buttons, use :MULTICHOICE_HS: or :MCHS:
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Use a ~ as a seperator between possible answer options
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A = should be placed immediately before the correct answer option
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A # can be used to mark the beginning of a feedback message (optional)
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Close the cloze sub-question with a curly brace: }
Cloze question examples:
a) Multiple choice example. Below is an example of a multiple-choice type question. The syntax that would be entered in the question text field is:
"The Capital of France is" is the question that you would like to ask. This can be any basic textual information.
"{}" encloses the Cloze codes.
"1" indicates the value of the question.
":MC:" indicates that the question is a multiple-choice question.
"#wrong" anything after "#" becomes an optional message.
"~" separates the Multiple choice options.
"%50%" means that if the student selects "Ile de France", the student receives 50% of 1 mark.
"=" indicates that if you select "Paris" you will get a full mark for the question.
The screenshot below indicates the question that is created by Cloze.
b) Short answer example. The syntax that would be entered in the question text field is:
"A group of lions is called a" is the question that you would like to ask.
"{}" encloses the Cloze codes.
"1" indicates the value of the question.
":SAC:" indicates that the question is a short answer question where the case of the answer must match.
"=" indicates that 'pride' is the only answer that will score a mark for the question.
The screenshot below indicates the question that is created by Cloze.
c) Multiple subquestions example. Several questions can be added as subquestions: The subquestions in this example will appear as a short paragraph:
The questions are coded the same as the multiple-choice and short-answer questions as above. Any questions type can be combined.
You can verify your answers and also see whether there are errors in a question's syntax by clicking Decode and verify the question text then expanding the dropdown immediately below the decode button:
The following link gives more in-depth explanations and examples of how to use Cloze to create quiz questions.
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