With the Categorize question type, you can ask students to place items into categories and assess them on a variety of concepts (different types of numbers, species, when historical events took place). To create one:
Click on the blue + button
Choose "Categorize" from the Question types
Add items for students to drag into categories
Enter category labels
Drag items into one category to set the answer key. This enables auto-grading!
(By default an item will only be available to drag into a category one time. If you'd like to reuse answer choices and drag them into multiple categories, toggle on "Reuse Answer Choices")
You can add additional categories and/or items by clicking on " Add draggable Item" or "Add new category" below each!
Reuse Answer Choices
By default, reusing answer choices will be disabled. Once an item has been dragged into a category it is no longer available to be dragged again (on the student's end - once the item is dragged it disappears from the list of items).
You have the option to toggle on "Reuse Answer Choices" to allow the same item to be dragged multiple times. When toggling this button on, items will not disappear from the list and students will be able to drag them into multiple categories.
Note: Once this button has been toggled on you won't be able to toggle it off unless you remove the items you've dragged multiple times from their categories first.
Switch on the ability to allow **Partial Credit for Categorize question types to take auto-grading up a notch by allowing your students to get credit for answering part of the question correct:
How we grade the "Allow Partial Credit" feature in Categorize questions
When choosing to Allow Partial Credit, instead of looking at the answer choices as Correct/Incorrect/Uncategorized, our auto-grading algorithm will assign each pairing of an answer choice and a category a value of True or False:
When a teacher drags answer choices into a specific category to define the answer key, the pairings they create will be assigned the value "True".
Any pairings of answer choice and category the teacher did not define in the answer key will be assigned the value "False".
Another way to look at it is to ask oneself the question: "Does answer choice X belong in Category Y?"
If it does, the pairing will be assigned a "True" value
If it doesn't, the pairing will be assigned a "False" value
In their responses, students will label as "True" any pairing they include in their submission. They will label as "False" the pairings they do not include in their submission.
With this algorithm, each pairing of answer choice and a category has an equal value and is counted toward the score (see examples below for visual reference).
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 Categorize answer key with the True/False approach of Partial Credit:
Here are some examples of student responses to this Categorize 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 Categorize answer key as before, with the True/False approach:
Here are the same examples of student responses to this Categorize question, along with their auto-graded scores, when choosing not to subtract points for incorrect answers.
Student A
Student B
Student C
What's Next?