Long sentence in multiple choice

May 19, 2011

Hi everybody!

I am about to make quizzes in multiple choice, unfortunately the answer options are in a long sentence or sentences. I have tried Word Bank, but it looks cramped and unappealing. Please help me on suggestions

on how to write such kind os quizzes without sacrificing the appealing presentation?

Regards,

Widya

9 Replies
Jeanette Brooks

Hi Widya - can you describe to us a little bit more about the question you need to ask your learners? Maybe there is a way to craft the question differently, so that learners don't have to digest a lot of text in order to understand their choices? If you can give us a sample of the question(s) you want to ask learners, maybe we can help to re-tool it.

Widya  Y

Hi Jeanette,

Let me copy the question and the choices here. This is a reading comprehension question and graded.

Q: Which of the following, if true, provides the strongest support for the argument that the companies should continue to present

     these seminars?

A.   Companies that present workplace safety seminars to their employees are likely to be in manufacturing industries or segments of the

      service sector that present more opportunities for workplace accidents than the average company.

B.   A fast-food chain determined that the rate of workplace accidents remained the same as its franchises after all employees had

       viewed a 30-minute workplace safety video.

C.   Workers are ultimately responsible for their own safety, and no amount of workplace education can alter their behavior.

D.   A business research institute determined that workplace accidents reduce the productivity of manufacturing businesses by

       as much as 8 percent per year.

E.   Many companies mistakenly believe that presenting workplace safety seminars to their employees relieves the company

      of legal liability in the event that employees are injured.

Thanks!

Jeanette Brooks

Thanks for sharing that example, Widya. And yeah, I see what you mean ... having that much text on one slide could definitely feel overwhelming to the learner.

One idea would be to make the quiz slide scrollable, so that learners don't have to look at a whole bunch of tiny text squeezed into a very small space. They can scroll up or down to browse through the list of choices. You could add some callout text onto the slide itself, to make sure learners know that the slide is scrollable. And you would probably also want to make sure that your quiz player template requires users to scroll to the bottom of the slide before answering the question. (In Quizmaker, go to Player Templates > Edit > Navigation and mark "Require user to scroll to bottom on longer questions.")

Here's a published example, and below is a screenshot.

If you'd like to use the source file as a springboard for using this kind of approach, I've attached it for you.

Hope that helps!

Widya  Y

Wow Jeanette!! You are awesome! Thank you very much for everything!

Yes, I am going to use the source file for my project!

I spent a lot of time to figure out how to design the quiz without giving the idea of cramped.

I am also eager to try the hot spot, but i guess in another project! Thanks a lot again Jeanette!

Bill Chivers

If I might offer an opinion (somewhat as a latecomer, just got started with Articulate and googling around for thoughts on the quizmaker question types).

Is is possible that you are trying to ask too many things in a single question? Essentially you are asking whether the five statements are true, and which of the true ones is the strongest argument. As a result you've got quite an unwieldy MC question. You could do something like turn it into 5 MC questions, each of which says something like "Assess the following viewpoint "<the text of one of your current answers>" and then give three answers (1) False (2) True, but considered a weak argument (3) True, and a strong argument.

Something like that might make the whole thing a bit more digestible?

I've been writing MC questions for years, it is always worth trying to avoid multiple long answers. Hope that's of some interest.

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