Activities | Fill the gaps

Activities with "Fill the gaps" answers allow students to complete texts filling the blanks.
This type of activities is divided in two areas:

A. Wording area. It consists of a sample text by default, but it can include other components like images, audios, and videos.

B. Write options. This area shows the different write options available.

Setup process

Step 1. Set up activity properties
Step 2. Set up the wording
Step 3. Set up answer options
- Option 1. Link an option with other elements within a row or a column.
- Option 2. Locate an option aligned with a text.
Step 4. Advanced layout design: how to add columns

Step 1. Set up activity properties

After adding the activity, go to the "Properties" tab and configure them:

PROPERTY

DESCRIPTION

Title

Activity title.

Mastery

Score required to mark activities as complete and get a positive feedback. Getting a 100% score is required by default.
In order to calculate the score of fill the gap activities, we use the following formula: number of correct options / total number of options.
For example, if an activity has 5 options or gaps and students choose 3 correct options: 3/5= 0,6 = 60%.

Attempts

Number of attempts available for students to find the right option. Once a student finds the right answer, attempts will expire automatically. If you want unlimited attempts, write "0" attempts. (It will only be finished after overcoming the activity).

Competences

This property allows choosing what skills or academic goals are achieved after completing this activity. This option is useful when the platform used to publish a unit keeps record of these data.

Distinguish upper case/lower case

This property allows us to determine if students should distinguish between upper case and lower case when writing. The options are:

No: With this option, it doesn't matter whether students use upper case or lower case. So, they can write "house", "HOUSE", hOUSE", "House", etc. For example, for proper names any of these spelling alternatives are accepted: "New York", "new york", "new York", "NEW YORK"... This helps students to solve activities with more ease, as they do not need to pay attention to spelling rules.
Yes: With this option, students must write words using the exact spelling (the same spelling used when editing). For example, if we want students to write "New York", they should spell it that way; no variations will be admitted ("new york", "new York", etc). This option is useful when spelling accuracy is important for student assessment.

Distinguish accents

This property allows choosing if it is required to write word/s using correct accent marks.

No: With this option, presence or absence of accent marks will not be penalised. So, the word "canción"("song" in Spanish) will also be admitted without the accent mark ("cancion").
Yes: With this option, students must write words exactly as described in wordings. So, the word "canción" will only be admitted if written with accent mark.

Ignore special characters

This field allows us to indicate what special characters we do not consider important to mark an answer as valid. So, we could ignore full stops, commas and similar characters.
If students wrote "I want this, but can't have it.", we could consider that there is no need to include a full stop or a comma, so the option "I want this but can't have it" would be admitted too.

Step 2. Set up the wording

1. Write a text for the wording of the question (see here).

2. Optionally, you can add more components within the wording. Make sure you select the wording (you will easily find it with the breadcrumb trail) before going to the "Add" tab and include the components you need.

Step 3. Set up answer options

3. An answer option appears by default under the wording. If needed, we can add more options, as many as appropriate.

4. We can configure options clicking on each and going to their "Properties" tab. There are the following fields:

PROPERTY DESCRIPTIÓN

Correcto

We should use this property to indicate the right word that students must use to fill the gap. It is important to say that students must write exactly what is written inside this field; otherwise, their answer will not be marked as correct. However, this rule will not be applied if we have decided that the lack of accent marks is not penalised.
If we want to offer more than one correct option, we should write options separated by two characters "II" (key combination for this is Ctrl+Alt+1).

Título Nombre de la opción. Es un dato importante que debemos configurar si queremos situar la opción en línea con un texto. Tamaño del texto
Esta propiedad permitirá decidir el espacio disponible para escribir el texto correcto (en px). Resulta de gran utilidad si situamos la opción en línea con el texto mediante un Gap. Tamaño de columna

La opción se comporta como una columna, por lo que, por defecto ocupa 12 espacios en pantalla (el 100% del espacio disponible). Podemos modificar la cantidad de espacios que ocupa, de 1 a 12, lo que nos permite realizar composiciones diferentes (2 columnas, dando un tamaño de 6 a cada opción; 3 columnas, dando un tamaño de 4 a cada opción; etc.)

Compensación

Esta opción permite crear un espacio de separación a la izquierda de la opción de respuesta, pudiendo configurar de 1 a 12 espacios.

Es última columna

Permite indicar que esta opción será la última de la fila. Así, aunque otra opción posterior cupiese en el espacio disponible, se le obligará a colocarse debajo. En este ejemplo, en la fila superior habrían entrado dos opciones más, pero hemos obligado que bajen a la siguiente fila.

Observa que las opciones de escritura son únicamente una línea sobre la que redactar el texto correspondiente, no tiene ningún elemento que nos ayude a identificar rápidamente cuál de los destinos está relacionado con un origen. Por lo tanto, debemos de buscar el modo de identificarlos.

Existen dos modos de hacerlo:

Opción 1. Relacionar una opción con otros elementos en una fila o columna.

Esta opción nos permite relacionar cada destino con otro elemento (por ejemplo, una imagen, un vídeo, un audio, un texto...). Basta con utilizar las filas o las columnas.

En este ejemplo, hemos creado 2 columnas de tamaño 5 con imágenes (la segunda columna tiene Compensación 1 para separarla un poco de la anterior) y hemos situado debajo las opciones, también con un tamaño 5. Así, cada opción está relacionada visualmente con una imagen.

Option 2. Locate an option aligned with a text.

Imagine that we want students to complete a sentence with origins using the drag-drop option to blanks inside a text.
In this case, we should link the target with the blank.

Then we put the cursor over the blank where we should put the target, we go to "Links" drop-down menu and choose "Gap".

Then, we select the Gap we've chosen, go to its "Properties" tab and choose the target we want to put there.

Remember that you should have gone to the option settings to indicate the "Size in the text" and offer students enough space to write their text.

Step 4. Advanced layout design: how to add columns

Normally wordings and texts are enough to configure activities correctly, but sometimes we want to add especial elements (images, audios, etc.) and create more complex layout designs. We can add "Columns" to create these layouts.
Columns can be inserted anywhere: after wordings, after answer options, etc.

Within a column, we can add different elements: images audios, videos, texts, etc. Within the "Properties" tab, we can configure properties like "Size", "Offset" and "It's the last column".
Use of columns allows creating complex layouts. For example, we could add various audios and texts to complete. For example, there are two columns in this case. Each column includes an audio file and a text where students need to fill the blanks. Each column occupies 5 spaces. Furthermore, offset for the second column is "1", which allows leaving a space with the previous column.