This article covers the essay with rich 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 essay with rich text task
The essay with rich task type lets learners type into a textbox. Learners have the ability to add formatting to their response. This question type requires a facilitator or coach to mark it.
When should I use essay with rich text?
All of the written and recorded types are really useful for those learning outcomes with verbs that require learners to generate something - describe, explain, discuss, critique, synthesize and so on.
Let's take a look at a few examples.
Example 1: Explaining in their own words
In this example we're focusing on a learner's understanding of the meaning of a term.
Example 2: Explaining similarities
In the example below we're still talking about the meaning of words, but instead we're asking learners to explain what the similarities are.
Example 3: Comparing and contrasting
And finally, in this example, we ask learners to explain something through comparing and contrasting. This is a bit closer to a "traditional" essay.
So, as you see, you can create an essay with rich text on a number of different levels. And, just because it's called "essay" doesn't mean you have to get learners to write an essay. Essay with rich text can be used for any response that requires more than a handful of words or a sentence. The rich text feature (ability to format text) means it can also be used for longer-form essays as well (up to a massive 10,000 words).
How do I create an essay with rich text task?
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.
How to allocate a marking template
As this task is manually marked, be sure to choose a marking template to set the options facilitators have available to mark and/or add feedback.