You’ve started to see our changes to the Quiz Tool and I hope you’re super stoked about them! As we dig deep into how instructors are actually using the tool and working through usability testing with them, we’re learning that some of our terminology doesn’t mesh with the functionality. We’d like to adjust the names to suit the true functionality. In this blog, I’ll outline what we’ve discovered and propose a new name.
A Long Answer question is for a free-form response of any length. You may think of it as an essay but it could be just a couple of sentences or a mathematical equation response. It must be manually marked. As you create the question, you can specify how long the response should be. We made that better by creating default short, medium or long response boxes so you don’t have to define rows anymore. So really, this question type is for written responses.
Now let’s look at Short Answer. A Short Answer question does not, at all, function as a variation of Long Answer. It is more akin to a Fill in the Blank question where the blanks are displayed in list format rather than inline. To create a valid Short Answer question, instructors must type in answers for the blanks. Unless an instructor is adept at using regular expressions to account for variations on answers, a student must type in an exact match for each blank to get auto-graded as correct. So the name Short Answer is misleading.
In short, we want to change the names of these question types to be more representative of what they are, and lead instructors to the right question type choice for their needs, rather than linguistically lead them down a rabbit hole that leaves them frustrated with Brightspace. Written Response is inclusive for those looking for an essay or a few sentences from students. At the same time, Short Answer definitely needs a less misleading name, most likely a variation on Fill in the Blank – we are open to suggestions for this one!
So as early as the March release, we’re flipping Long Answer to Written Response. Short answer will remain the same for now until we can land on a more descriptive name.
We're not stopping at just the name! Soon you'll see a revamped simplified interface with the dynamic preview on the right side panel. No more estimating the number of rows in a box to give students an idea of how long the response should be - we've added custom response box sizes based on how we've seen people use this question type. It's also much easier to add an image and resize it right inline with the question text!
We really do want to add rubrics, include an autosave function and we've even looked at adding a word count so students know how much they've typed. Every option comes with trade-offs in priority for other features requested and often there is an order of operations. We've chosen to move on to importing, randomization and making quizzes easy to build. But that doesn't mean we've abandoned other great ideas!