"Fill in the blank" box too small

Good morning, Alex.

I'm thrilled with the latest version of Question Writer (3.1) and all the problems you've solved with it. I like especially to be able to view which question the student answered, on the "results" page. You know already that I recommend this program to every academic I meet!

There is one small problem. I want my students to recognise lines from poetry, and they're supposed to fill in the blank, the name of the poet and the title of the poem, say "John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn." I did a small quiz to try this, in the new "forest" theme. But, oh, there is a problem. The box is too small to contain the full name of the poet and the title. And when you see your feedback, it only shows the small box with one of the words you wrote.

Please take a look and tell me what you think I could do: [www.ritlist.is]

Hi Anna,

Glad you like the fixes in 3.1. The size of the Fill in the Blank box is a limitation. One way around this is to use an essay question, and restrict it to one line - but this is not ideal as it won't automatically mark the essay questions. Keep an eye on the blog for future updates on this.

Thank you, Alex, for a quick reply (as always).

As the exam is on Tuesday, I don't think you will be able to update this before then.

If I use essay questions instead, will QWR leave them unmarked? That is, say if I have 50 questions and 5 of them are "recognition" questions that I must leave as "essay questions." The student answers all the other 45 questions correctly. Will she get a 9.0 (out of 10.0) and I can raise the grade to, say, 9.4 if she has 2 correct answers?

Or, will she get a 10.0 because she answered correctly to all the multiple choice questions?

I ask because it can be pretty discouraging for a student to get a 10.0 and then be "downgraded" afterwards. Could you please direct me around this?

Thanks!

Hmmm - the Essay questions won't count towards an overall score because they're not automatically marked. To avoid the potential downgrading, perhaps you could have an additional question that has a point score equivalent to all the essay questions but that is impossible to get right ("How many balls are in the Jar?") - then you can grant additional credit later on.