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Drag and Drop Questions (Silver/Gold Feature)
Drag and Drop Questions (Silver/Gold Feature)
Neta Raz Studnitski avatar
Written by Neta Raz Studnitski
Updated over a week ago

Definition

Another great tool for creating interactive assignments, such as cloze tasks, the Drag and Drop question type prompts students to insert the correct answer by choosing from several possible options, and dragging it to one of several possible positions within a text or a background image.

Add a Drag and Drop question:

  1. Click on the blue + button

  2. Choose "Drag and Drop" from the Question types

  3. Select your preferred Drag and Drop question type: "Add Inline Text" or "Upload Background Image"

Create a Text-Style Drag and Drop question

Step 1: Create text with drop areas:

  1. Enter your text into the question bar

  2. Click "Add drop area" to create a designated space for your students to populate with an answer. The drop area will read "Drag answer here"

  3. Place your cursor back on the text bar to continue typing

  4. To delete a drop area, click the trashcan symbol

Step 2: Add choices for students:

  1. Type each choice separately into the "type an answer and click enter" bar, and click Enter/Return.

  2. To remove a choice, click the X symbol attached to it.

    Note: Each Answer choice is limited to a maximum of 40 characters

NEW! Quick Math Button

Are you using the Math Keyboard to enter answer choices often? Formative now offers the option to add a Math Button to the answer choice fields within several question types, inlucing text type answer choices in Drag & Drop questions, for quicker access to the Math Keyboard.

This will eliminate the need to repeatedly click on the little plus button and choose the Math Keyboard from the dropdown menu.

To enable access to the quick math button:

  1. Click on "My Account" from the left side menu, and then "Settings"

  2. Locate the field "Show math keyboard in answer choices" and toggle it ON

Once this setting is toggled on, you will see a Math Button added next to the little plus button within your answer choice fields. Clicking this button will immediately bring up the Math Keyboard.

Step 3: Define an answer key for auto-grading

  1. Drag and drop each choice into its' correct drop area

  2. To un-assign a choice from a drop area, click the X symbol in it

  3. Switch on "Allow Partial Credit" to take auto-grading up a notch by allowing your students to get credit for answering part of the question correct.

Learn how to adjust question settings here.

Create an Image-Style Drag and Drop Question

Step 1: Add an image and create a question:

  1. Take a photo or Upload an image (PEG, PNG, GIF, DOC, PDF) from your local device or from Google Drive

Please note: Images must be less than 25 MB in size.

2. Enter your question or directions in the text bar

3. Click on the image where you would like to add drop area(s)

4. To re-position the drop area, click on it again and use the navigation bar arrows, you can also use the trashcan symbol on the navigation bar to delete a drop area

Step 2: Add choices for students:

Choices can be either in the form of text or in the form or images

To add text choices:

  1. Type each choice separately into the "type an answer and click enter" bar, and click Enter/Return.

  2. To remove a choice, click the X symbol attached to it.

    Note: Each Answer choice is limited to a maximum of 40 characters

NEW! Quick Math Button

Are you using the Math Keyboard to enter answer choices often? Formative now offers the option to add a Math Button to the answer choice fields within several question types, inlucing text type answer choices within Drag & Drop questions, for quicker access to the Math Keyboard.

This will eliminate the need to repeatedly click on the little plus button and choose the Math Keyboard from the dropdown menu.

To enable access to the quick math button:

  1. Click on "My Account" from the left side menu, and then "Settings"

  2. Locate the field "Show math keyboard in answer choices" and toggle it ON

Once this setting is toggled on, you will see a Math Button added next to the little plus button within your answer choice fields. Clicking this button will immediately bring up the Math Keyboard.

To add image choices:

  1. On the "type an answer and click enter" bar, click the + symbol to the far right and choose "image".

  2. Take a photo or Upload an image (PEG, PNG, GIF, DOC, PDF) from your local device or from Google Drive.

  3. To remove a choice, click the X symbol attached to it.

Step 3: Define an answer key for auto-grading

  1. Drag and drop each choice into its' correct drop area

  2. To un-assign a choice from a drop area, click the X symbol in it

  3. Switch on "Allow Partial Credit" to take auto-grading up a notch by allowing your students to get credit for answering part of the question correct.

Adjust question settings

Toggle on the question settings of your preference:

Reuse Answer Choices

Since the auto-grader is reliant on the association of a specific drop area with a specific answer choice, when the same answer choice can fit multiple drop areas it is not enough to simply type the answer choice multiple times - with the same answer choice appearing multiple times your students will most likely not match the exact same pair that you selected and the auto-grader will miscalculate their score. Instead - If you need the same answer choice to fit multiple drop areas, type the answer choice only once and then toggle the Reuse Answer Choices option ON. This will allow you to associate the same answer choice with multiple drop areas, and your students to do the same, and the auto-grader will calculate the score correctly.

Students will not be able to submit their work without providing an answer

Add a whiteboard style box for your students to showcase their work

Switch scoring method for this question from auto-grading to a rubric based grading.

Switch on the ability to allow **Partial Credit" to take auto-grading up a notch by allowing your students to get credit for answering part of the question correct.

You can also add hints for your students, and tag the question to standards.

Partial Credit

How we grade the "Allow Partial Credit" feature in Drag and Drop Questions

When you select “Allow Partial Credit”* you can choose between subtracting points for incorrect answers, or not subtracting points for incorrect answers.

If you choose to subtract points for incorrect answers, students’ scores will be auto-graded like this:

Let's take a look at an example of how this works in practice. Here is a Drag and Drop answer key:

To receive 100% of the score, students will need to match all 10 choices correctly.
Please Note: answers that are left un-matched will not count toward the score at all

Here are some examples of student responses to this Drag and Drop question, along with their auto-graded scores:

Student A

Student B

Student C

If you choose not to subtract points for incorrect answers:

Let's take a look at an example of how this works in practice. Here is the same Drag and Drop answer key:

Here are the same examples of student responses to this Drag and Drop question, along with their auto-graded scores, when choosing not to subtract points for incorrect answers

Student A

Student B

Student C

Did you know?

Drag and Drop questions are a standard STAAR question type used by the state of Texas.

Would you like to create other types of cloze questions? check out Fill In The Blank question and In Line Choice question !

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