Overview of the Bar chart task

The Bar chart task lets learners create or modify a bar chart by dragging the bars up or down.

Example bar chart where learners drag bars for the planets in the solar system to complete a graph showing their orbital speeds as the planets get further from the sun.

When should I use a Bar chart task?

Bar chart tasks are useful to test maths or science concepts, but you still can use them in other areas. In the example above, the intent of the task is less about the actual figures and more about learners realising the relationship between orbital speed and distance from the sun (orbital speed decreases the further you get from the sun).

So, you could use bar charts wherever you've got relationships or statistics you'd like learners to know. Instead of just telling them the stats - get them to build them. Or... you could get them to take their best guess based on their prior knowledge or intuition. This can make learners engage with relevant figures more than just reading some stats.

Example 1: Making predictions

In the example below we ask learners to make a prediction.

Example bar graph where learners make a prediction about the total proportion spent on advertising platforms (e.g. Internet, Television, Radio).

Example 2: Open-ended bar chart

You can also use this task for learners to graph their own activities. Note you need nice short labels for the bars in the graph.

Example bar chart where learners show the number of times in a week they have done different workplace "activities" (e.g. phone, email, help others, late).

How do I create a Bar chart 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.

Clear task content button on right of task element below task type choice.

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.

In between the top and bottom standard fields we have the following areas and fields.

Setting the graph and draggable bars

Add in the min, max, and label for the y-axis.

You can also set a Title for the chart which will display in bold above the car chart.

For each bar along the X axis, use Add to add a "point" (bar) and select whether you want the learners to be able to interact with these or not. To remove a bar use the bin icon to the right.

Setting the correct answer

Under Correct, drag your bars to the correct value on the y axis to allow the task to be automarked.

If there are more correct answers, use the + to add alternative answers.

Other articles you may be interested in:

Task types - See the variety of tasks available for course authors to engage and assess learners.
Many ways with tasks - A blog about how you can come up with ideas for tasks which includes a free Task cheat sheet with ideas for tasks for every task type.
Adding a task to your course - Course authors can add assessed and non-assessed tasks to their courses.
Automarked tasks - Understanding how automarked tasks work for authors, learners and facilitators.
Adding a quiz using tasks - Course authors can create assessed or non-assessed quizzes to add to their courses.

The Ordering task

The Select hotspots task

The Number line task

The Line chart task

The short text task