Essay With Plain Text
Daniel Santamaria avatar
Written by Daniel Santamaria
Updated over a week ago

The Basic Essay question lets students give long, detailed answers to questions (up to a maximum of 10,000 words). As the grading of an essay is subjective, the question cannot be auto scored. 

Figure 1: Basic essay question example.

Create a question

Enter a question stem in the Compose Question area.

Below, there are formatting options which can be toggled: Copy, Cut and Paste. The formatting buttons will appear on the top left of the students toolbar.

Figure 2: Basic essay formatting parameters.

Then you can specify the Maximum Length - this is the maximum number of words that can be entered into the text entry field. The word count will be displayed in the question toolbar.

Word Limit Setting allows you to choose whether word count should be displayed in the toolbar or not. You can choose between the following options:

  • Always On - Word Limit is always displayed.

  • On Limit - Word Limit will only be displayed when the limit is reached.

  • Off - Word Limit will not be displayed.

Note that the word count indicator will be shown all the time.

More options

Under More Options you will find the ability to enable Submit Over Limit. This defines whether the students are able to save/submit the response when the word limit has been exceeded. When the amount of words entered in the text field reaches the limit the area will be highlighted in red. The student will be still able to enter text but will not submit the essay if Submit Over Limit is enabled.

Layout

You can set Min height and Max height of the text entry field. The values should be entered in px.

Browser Spellcheck - This will turn on spellcheck in the text entry area. Note: This is a browser feature and may not always be available.

Additionally, you may want to add a placeholder which will be displayed inside the text entry field. It will disappear when the user starts typing text in.

Enabling Character Map allows authors to add non-typical letters and symbols in language e.g. ó, ç, ñ or Math and Science e.g. μ, ∞ ,≤, and make them available for the students in Essay Text questions. When Character Map is on, the default Alpha character map will be shown to the students. The Numerical Character Map will be available when the Has Mathematical Formulas option is enabled. To create a Custom Character Map enter the specific characters into the Characters to display box.

Alpha character map

Numerical character map

Custom character map

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