Creating a Calculated Question in Your Online Course

Open the questions tab of the Question Bank. Then click create a question. Select the Calculated Question type.

Screen 1

  • Select the appropriate category for your question and name your question.
  • Go into the Question Text box.
  • Add your question with numerical values into the question box.           Ie -> What is the area of a rectangle in m2 if the base is 10 m and the height is 15 m?
  • Delete the numerical values in your problem and replace them with wildcards. Wildcards are placed into the question by using curved brackets and a name. An example wildcard is {A} or {B}. So instead of 10, we place in {A} and instead of 15, we place in {B}.
  • Now we should have -> What is the area of a rectangle in m2 if the base is {A} m and the height is {B} m?
  • Solve for the answer to your question in terms of the wildcards. This is usually done on paper. For this question it would be ANSWER = {A}*{B}.
  • Take the answer you obtain and place the formula into the “Answer 1 Formula = “ box below and assign a Grade of 100% using the box to the right.
  • You can also select an error tolerance of a relative, nominal or geometric. I’d suggest using the relative and setting it to 0.10 or 0.05. This means students can enter an answer that is off by 10% or 5% respectively and it will mark the question correctly. You can adjust the feedback and number of decimals as well.
  • You can also enter a WRONG formula that will calculate an answer. This enables you to give feedback based on common mistakes in a question. For the question we selected, maybe the student calculated the perimeter instead of the area. You can include this as a potential answer to the question and provide that feedback instantly to the student.
  • You can also require the student to include units. This can be extremely finicky and I’d suggest ignoring it.
  • Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

Your question is not finished yet.

Screen 2

  • On this screen you will see several options. Don’t bother adjusting them.
  • Click Next Page at the bottom of the page.

Screen 3

  • On this screen you can adjust the parameters of your wild cards. You can control max and min values and change the error tolerance if you forgot earlier.
  • Once you have the appropriate parameters that you want, scroll down to the Add section of the page.
  • Select forceregeneration of all wildcards.
  • Toggle the Add item menu to 100 or 50 or how ever many wildcards you would like to add. This determines the number of possibilities to your question. Once you have selected this click Add.
  • You should select Save Changes at this point. Your question is now created.

You may see an error that comes up on the bottom of the page. It may have to do with error tolerances. You can ignore this error and your question will still work, but you may be able to fix it by adjusting your error tolerances.

Congratulations you now have a question that will regenerate every time a student opens it.