Fill in the blanks

The fill in the blanks activity type allows the creation of cloze tests where students type in the missing words of a body of text to self-assess their understanding. This can be used in tables and by leaving the answers blank more open ended activities can be created.

Creating a fill in the blanks activity

Add an activity and choose Fill in the blanks from the type drop-down list.

Under 1. Question add the text that students will complete. To indicate which words are to be left blank for them to complete, simply surround these in double square brackets – for example, [[This will be blank]]. See the example below. In this example we’ve also added explicit instructions to the student to fill in the blanks.

Issues with quotes and apostrophes

‘Curvy’ smart quotes and apostrophes copied over from Word will break this activity. Simply replace any curvy ones with straight by deleting these and typing them back in, which should produce only straight quotes and apostrophes.

Under 2. Automatic feedback add the feedback that students will receive upon completion. Like many iQualify activities there is no automatic check for correctness, so in this example students are asked to compare their answers to those given.

The image below shows the way this activity will appear to the students. The size of the missing word is indicated and the student has started to fill in the blanks.

When students complete the activity and selects Submit, the correct words are displayed alongside their entries. Note that there is no indication whether or not they are correct, except where no word at all has been entered.

It works in tables!

The syntax also works in tables allowing you to easily create forms for students to fill out.

Keep it open

Create open ended activities by removing an answer. Then there is no right or wrong response.