Essay Question // Minimum amount of characters

May 14, 2014

Hi Heroes,

using an easy question in articulate storyline, i try to set a minimum amount of characters the user has to write in the text-field before he can proceed to the next slide. Is there a way doing this? I only found the possibility to set the maximum amount of characters...

THX

Ingo

3 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Ingo,

Essay questions don't have an option that would set a minimum amount of characters, or text, for a response. I think this is because the surveys aren't scored, but I can see why it would be helpful to avoid extremely short responses. 

To be honest, in cases where a learner is going to enter a short response simply because they don't want to put for the effort to type out a full response, those learners may end up finding a way around a character requirement anyway. I've seen this before in forms, where the user will type their answer, then enter random letters/numbers just to fill up the space until they can submit it. 

I think the best option would be to prompt the learner to take their time and submit a thoughtful, thorough response. 

In the meantime, you're always welcome to send a suggestion to add this type of functionality to a future update of the software.

There may be other community members who can chime in with suggestions on how to check if there is a certain number of characters. 

Alexandros Anoyatis

It is possible, but you are going to have to resort to using JavaScript in order to perform the validation (i.e. count the number of characters the essay text variable contains, then set a T/F value to another variable) and check against that.

Someone made a twitter demo with character limit, I think it was Phil. The JS code contained in that template may be a step to the right direction - although you do have to modify it to your requirements.

Hope this helps,
Alex

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