How to write good Free Text Questions

Free Text questions are similar to Essay questions, in the sense they require a great deal more thought and users need to enter their own answers. With Free Text questions however, answers are generally kept to a one or two word maximum.

Also known as: Short Answer questions, Fill in the Blank, objective

Use Free Text Questions to Assess:

• Basic understanding of a subject
• Analysis
• Evaluation
• Knowledge Recall

Question Usage Ideas:

• Knowledge of definitions
• Direct questions
• Foreign language Tests
• Math Tests

Advantages of Free Text Questions:

• Questions are easy to create
• Automatically graded
• Easy to grade on paper
• Test takers cannot easily guess answers
• Versatile - works great for different types of classes

Disadvantages of Free Text Questions:

• Can easily be marked wrong, due to spelling mistakes
• Answer given is limited to only a couple of words
• Questions need to be specific and clearly written.
• Can be confusing if correct answer consists of too many words.