How to Create a Fill-in Multiple Blanks Question

Step-by-Step Guide

How to Create a Fill-in Multiple Blanks Question

1.  On the Control Panel, click Course Tools, and then click Tests, Surveys, and Pools.
   
    
2. Click Tests.
3. Click the contextual menu on the test you want to edit, and then click Edit.
   
    
4. Point to Create Question, and then click Fill in Multiple Blanks.
   
    
5. In the Question Title box, type a name for your question.
   In the Question Text area, type your question. Type each blank as a variable surrounded by square brackets. For example:
   
   
   Variables should be composed of alphabetic characters, digits (0-9), periods (.), underscores (_) and hyphens (-). All other occurrences of the opening rectangular brace ("[") character should be preceded by the back-slash ("\") character. Variable names must be unique and cannot be reused.
   
    
6. In the Options section, select Allow Partial Credit, if desired.
7. Click Next.
8. Under the Answers for [variable], type the answer for each blank. You have three options for the answer: 
   1. Choose Contains to allow for abbreviations or partial answers. An answer will be counted correct if it includes the word or words you specify. Choose Exact Match if you want the students to have to match your answer exactly Choose Pattern Match to create a formula for more flexibility.
   2. The following information is pulled from the Blackboard Learn website, regarding Pattern Match: In a regular expression, most characters in the string match only themselves and are called literals. Some characters have special meaning and are called metacharacters. You can conduct an Internet search on regular expressions for a complete list. Here are a few examples:
      • A dot (.) matches any single character except newline characters.
      • Brackets [ ] match anything inside the square brackets for one character.
      • A dash (-) inside square brackets allows you to define a range. For example, [0123456789] could be rewritten as [0-9].
      • A question mark (?) makes the preceding item in the regular expression optional. For example, Dec(ember)? will match Dec and December.
         
      Simple string examples:
      • b.t - matches with bat, bet, but, bit, b9t because any character can take the place of the dot (.).
      • b[aeui]t matches bat, bet, but, bit.
      • b[a-z]t would accept any three-letter combination that begins with b and ends with t. A number would not be accepted as the second character.
      • [A-Z] matches any uppercase letter.
      • [12] matches the target character to 1 or 2.
      • [0-9] matches the target character to any number in the range 0 to 9.
         
      When you select Pattern Match for an answer, you can click Check Pattern to open a new window where you test your pattern to be sure it will produce the results you want. After testing and editing the pattern, click Save & Exit to save your modified pattern as the answer.
      
9. Add feedback for the answers, if desired.
10. Add question categories, if desired.
11. Add instructor’s notes, if desired, and then click Submit.
     

References

For additional information refer to Fill-in Multiple Blanks Questions from Blackboard Help.

To request help related to this article, please see our Service Catalog.