Essay question type

Note: This page is about the essay question type in the Quiz activity. For information about the essay question type in a Lesson activity, see the documentation Building Lesson.

The essay question type provides the option of answering by uploading one or more files and/or entering text online. (For longer essays, text or file uploads, you may wish to consider using the Assignment activity rather than this question type.)

Essay questions are created in the same way as other quiz question types. The difference is that essay questions have to be marked manually, and the user will not get a final grade until the instructor has marked their essay.

Creating an essay question

• If you haven’t yet made a quiz, access the Question bank from Course administration>Question bank and click the button ‘Create a new question’, choosing ‘Essay’.
• If you have made a quiz, access the Edit quiz screen and from the Add drop-down, choose ‘Add a new question’, choosing ‘Essay’.
• Give the question a descriptive name – this allows you to identify it in the Question bank.
• Enter the question in the ‘Question text’ field. This will be the title of and information about the essay you wish them to write.
• Set the ‘default mark’ and any ‘General Feedback’ if required. This is the text that appears to the user once you have graded their essay.

 

Response options

• ‘Response format’ allows you to choose what is available for the users when typing their essays, for example, the regular WYSIWYG editor with or without the option to upload files, or a plain text editor (with no formatting.) No online text means they cannot type any text. You cannot select this if you don’t allow attachments, as the users will have nothing to submit. If you have programming users, they may require plain text with monospaced font for their code.
• ‘Require text’ allows you to decide whether or not users must add text to the text editor when they do the question. If you only want them to upload a word-processed file as an essay, then you can set this to ‘Text input is optional’. (Note that this setting does not force the user to type text into the text editor; they can still leave it blank and continue to another question.)

Response template

It is possible for an instructor to create a template to scaffold the user’s answer in order to give them extra support. The template is then reproduced in the text editor when the user starts to answer the question. It is also possible to include grading information for instructors marking the essay to refer to as they assess the essays:

Question grading

The essay question will not be assigned a grade until it has been reviewed by an instructor and manually graded. Until that happens, the user’s grade will be 0.

To grade essays answer in quizzes, click on the quiz and then, from the gear menu, click ‘Manual grading’. For other themes, click Manual grading’ from the Quiz results section of your quiz administration block.

When manually grading an essay question, the grader is able to enter a custom comment in response to the essay and assign a score for the essay.