Short answer

Short answer

Multiple examples of correct answers can be specified for a single question. You can specify multiple correct answers for a single question, with options such as "Ignore upper and lower case letters", "Ignore number of spaces" and "Ignore leading and trailing spaces".

Sample quiz

How to create a quiz

Short answer question can be created in "text format" or "table format" way.

  • text
  • Excel

The first line, starting with #, is the setting for the entire quiz. The question data should be entered in blank lines. The first line of each block is the question text, the second line is a fixed "fill-in:", and the third and subsequent lines are the correct answer examples.

#messages_intro:short answer
#shuffle_questions:true
#mode:master
#lang:en

Answer the name of a country including the cities of Nashville, Houston and Philadelphia and more.
sa:
USA
US
the United States

2) Answer the name of the smallest country in the world.
sa:
Vatican City
Holy See

3) What is the capital of Canada? Answer the name.
sa:
Ottawa

4) Who wrote the novel, "Hamlet"?
sa:
William Shakespeare

5) Which country has won the men's soccer World Cup the most?
sa:
Brazil

The first line, starting with #, is the configuration for the whole question; the first line, #format:table, declares that the question data should be written in tabular format; from the third line onwards, each line corresponds to a question. The definition of a question is tab-delimited, the first element is the question text, the second element is a fixed "fill-in:", and the third and subsequent elements are examples of correct answers.
Click here to see samples fill-in.xlsx

A b C d e
1 #format:table
2 #messages_intro:short answer
3 #shuffle_questions:true
4 #mode:master
5 #lang:en
6 Answer the name of a country including the cities of Nashville, Houston and Philadelphia and more. sa: USA US the United States
7 2) Answer the name of the smallest country in the world. sa: Vatican City Holy See
8 3) What is the capital of Canada? Answer the name. sa: Ottawa
9 4) Who wrote the novel, "Hamlet"? sa: William Shakespeare
10 5) Which country has won the men's soccer World Cup the most? sa: Brazil
Adjustment for judging

For "Short answer," you can organize specific settings for what is regarded as a correct answer. By default, uppercase and lowercase letters, different numbers of whitespaces in the answer, and spaces in leading and trailing whitespace are treated as distinct or equivalent.

ignore_case

By default, this setting is on (case insensitive). You can change this setting by adding #ignore_case:false at the top of the question file.

  • true: case-insensitive (default)
    If you set "Japan" as the correct answer, both "Japan" and "japan" will be correct.
  • false: case-sensitive
    If you set "Japan" as the correct answer, "Japan" will be the correct answer, but "japan" will be incorrect.
ignore_whitespace_count

The default setting does not distinguish the number of whitespace.

  • true:No distinction is made between the number of whitespaces (default)
    If you set "ls -l" as the correct answer, then either "ls -l" (the correct answer) or "ls -l" (two whitespaces) will be the correct answer.

    A single whitespace or two or more spaces in a row is a correct answer, but no whitespace is treated as an incorrect answer.

  • false: Distinguish the number of whitespace
    If you set "ls -l" as the correct answer (single whitespace), "ls -l" (two whitespaces) will be incorrect.

 

 

ignore_whitespace

This setting is for ignoring a whitespace. The default setting recognizes a whitespace.

  • true: Ignore whitespace
    If you set "I am a student." as a correct answer, "Iamastudent." will also be correct.
  • false: Recognize whitespace (default)
    If you set "I am a student" as a correct answer, "Iamastudent" will be incorrect.

 

ignore_zenhan

Ignore the difference between double-byte characters and half-byte characters when typing answers.

  • true: In "Short answer," the default setting does not distinguish between double-byte characters and half-byte characters.
    If you set "zenhan" as a correct answer, "zenhan" (the same as the correct answer you set) will be the correct answer, and "zenhan" (double-byte and half-byte characters is reversed) will be correct as well.
  • false: Distinguish between double-byte and half-byte characters
    If you set "zenhan" as the correct answer, "zenhan" (the same as the correct answer you set) will be the correct answer, and "zenhan" (fdouble-byte and half-byte characters is reversed) will be incorrect.

 

trim

You can ignore leading and trailing whitespace. By default, this is set to on. You can change this setting by adding "#trim:false" at the top of the question file.

  • true: ignore leading and trailing whitespace (default)
    If you set "Japan" as the correct answer, both "Japan" and " Japan" will both be correct.
  • false: do not ignore leading and trailing whitespace
    If you set "Japan" as a correct answer, "Japan" will be the correct answer but " Japan" (including single whitespace) will be incorrect.

See more about the options → list of options

You can set either the same commentary for each answer, or show a different commentary depending on the correctness.

Uniform settings

Add a sentence at the end of the first correct answer, separated by "|", it will be shown as a commentary after answering the question.

#messages_intro:short answer
Answer the name of a country including the cities of Nashville, Houston and Philadelphia and more.
sa:
recycle|The 3Rs stands for reduce, reuse and recycle to manage waste properly.
US
the United States

Commentary for Correctness

If you add a sentence separated by "|" at the end of the first correct answer, it will be displayed as a commentary when you answer correctly. Likewise, for the second line separated by "|", the commentary will be displayed when you answer incorrectly. Even if you don't have two answers, you can display a commentary for incorrect answer by adding "|commentary for incorrect answer" in the second answer line (separated by tab in case of Excel format).

#messages_intro:short answer

Which city is the capital of Canada? Answer the name.
sa:
Ottawa|Correct!
Ottawa|Good try! The capital of Canada is Ottawa.

 

Answer the longest river in the world.
sa:
The Nile|Correct answer.
Nile|Nile is the longest and Amazon is the second longest.
|Good try!