This article covers the cloze with drop down task type.
For a general overview of tasks and what they can do, see An introduction to tasks and for general instructions on how to add them to your course, see How to add a task to your course.
Overview of the cloze with drop down task
The cloze with drop down task requires learners to select the correct answer from a drop down menu within a block of text.
When should I use a cloze with drop down?
This task is a variant of fill in the blanks. So the suggestions we've given in our article on fill in the blanks would work with this type as well. The difference is just that you give learners options to fill in the blanks (rather than the blank being free form).
This particular variant of fill in the blanks is most useful where the blanks are relatively distinct terms and free form would be too difficult or have too much variation.
Cloze with drop down is definitely a great choice of fill in the blanks where your missing terms have almost synonyms or where the terms are frequently misunderstood for another. Let's take a look at an example.
Cloze with drop down is a good choice for this example because the terms culturally aware and culturally competent are related, but distinct. And, in this course, it's important that learners know which is which.
How do I create a cloze with drop down?
All tasks load with an example task to give an idea of what each field is for. To add your own task details, you can type over the existing content in the fields or select Clear task content, to start completely fresh.
Standard fields
This task has the standard fields/options that all tasks have.
At the top:
Question: Where you set the main question/task which tells learners what to answer or do.
And at the bottom:
Hint: Add a hint to give pointers or clues to give learners extra guidance to complete the task. Learners can choose to See hint so it allows them to get this help “on demand”.
Feedback: Add feedback to give learners an automated response when they submit the task. See Writing feedback for tasks for pointers and ideas.
Feedback per response: Add specific feedback for a given response a learner could chose.
In between the top and bottom standard fields we have the following areas and fields.
Text with cloze spaces
Under Text, add the text you want your learners to add responses to.
Add your response boxes with the Insert Response button in the text formatting toolbar in the text editor. You can also use the keyboard short cut, double underscore.
In the Available responses section, enter the response options for each drop down box.
To add more response option boxes, use +Add.
To remove a response option, use the bin icon to the right.
The button to the left of each field allows you to re-order how response options appear to the learner, through simple drag and drop.
Setting the correct answer
Under Correct, drag and drop the item(s) to the correct space(s).
If there are more correct answers, use the + to add alternative answers.
You can also choose to not set a correct answer. Just don't allocate an answer from the dropdown(s). In this case, the task will not be automarked and the task will be allocated the complete/incomplete with feedback marking template to allow facilitators to manually mark the task (if desired).
Other options
Shuffle options displays the response options in a different order each time the question is shown.
Match all possible responses means that learners will be marked correct if their response(s) appear in any of the correct or alternative correct responses (for more detail read our article on match all possible responses).
