Forum Discussion
Inconsistent Scoring of Quiz Questions
It happened AGAIN! This is just so random.
This is worse than I thought. Here's the analysis of this question after the weekend.
We've investgated other courses and it appears to occur randomly throughout. ACK! Going to see if we can get Workday involved.
Hi JeanMarrapodi-c,
I see you've opened a support case and you've been working with my colleague Cleober. Great call! I understand you're reaching out to Workday this week. We'll continue the conversation in your case if you have any follow-up questions about the Storyline end of things!
Thanks LucianaPiazza! It's now with the third level of support at Workday. The crazy thing is the randomness of it all. No one can replicate it but we can clearly document that it happens.
I heard back from Workday, and they said the following, so JudyNollet was on the right track. BUT!!!!! how in the world could twenty different people make this error? I'm not thrilled with their answer to fix it either.
"Thank you for your patience as we researched this issue. I've been on a hunt trying nail down the issue and have even conducted research to try to figure this out!
I was able to replicate the issue and believe that it is related to learners adding an extra spacing character at the end of the correct response. I've tested this out with several of your free-text questions to validate this theory. Please see my screenshot examples below that shows me adding the extra space character and the system returning it as incorrect.
To solve for this, I recommend that the course developer either adds character limits to the "acceptable answers" options (capping the characters to be the exact amount needed) or perhaps including the "space" as an acceptable answer. There may be other functionality on the development side to remedy this as well.
I think it'd be quite easy to add an extra space somewhere, just out of habit.
You might want to try adding a note that tells folks their answer could be marked as wrong if they include any unnecessary spaces.
By the way, the "Correct Incorrect Errors.pdf" you attached doesn't provide any additional insight into the problem. But it does include the names of a lot of real people. I suggest you delete it. To do that, use the More (...) button to edit that comment.
Fixed. Thanks. I asked google about the extra space thing and it said the same thing you did. But there was one interesting comment that I wonder if we can do in Storyline:
- Making the quizzes case-insensitive and space-insensitive.
We have a checkbox for case insensitive. How might I make it space insensitive? Maybe Javascript?
From Google's AI "An extra space at the end of an answer on a quiz is usually caused by a simple human error, like accidentally pressing the spacebar after typing the final word. While this may seem insignificant, most automated grading systems are configured to require an exact match between the student's entry and the answer key.
Here are the most common reasons this happens:
- Accidental space: The most frequent cause is a student unintentionally adding a trailing space. This is often done subconsciously, similar to how people might add a space after a period when typing a sentence.
- Copy-and-paste errors: When a student copies an answer from a source (like a webpage or a Word document) and pastes it into the quiz, they may unintentionally copy extra formatting or a non-breaking space along with the text.
- Rapid typing: On some platforms, typing very quickly can sometimes lead to input glitches, though this is less common.
- System and browser issues: While rare, some learning management systems or quiz software, when used with specific web browsers, can introduce extra spaces or formatting issues. However, these are typically system-wide issues rather than user-specific.
For students, this can be frustrating because the answer is technically correct but is marked wrong by the system. Quiz creators can solve this by:
- Including multiple versions of the correct answer in the answer key, such as "answer", "answer ", and " answer".
- Making the quizzes case-insensitive and space-insensitive.
- Reminding students to be careful when typing short answers. "
