Tests & Assignments
Matching question updates: partial credit auto-distribution and other updates – 3900.78
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Matching questions are useful for testing a student's skill in making accurate connections between related concepts. This question type also checks students' understanding in a structured format.
To reward students who show partial understanding, some instructors wish to award partial and/or negative credit for matching questions.
In the past, instructors selected a scoring option:
- allow partial credit,
- all or nothing,
- subtract points for incorrect matches, but question score can't be negative
- or allow negative question scores.
These options were exclusive and, at times, created confusion for instructors. We removed these options.
Now, partial and negative credit is turned on by default. We auto-distribute partial credit as a percentage across the matching pairs. The auto-distribution of credit saves instructors time. Instructors can edit the partial credit values if needed to grant some pairs more or less credit. Values for partial credit must sum to 100%.
If desired, instructors may also specify a negative credit percentage to any pair. Negative credit is only assessed when applied and when a student mismatches a pair. If desired, instructors may choose to allow an overall negative score for the question.
We also made a few other improvements to this question:
- We re-worded the question construction guidance and moved it to an info bubble.
- In the past, the "reuse an answer" and "delete pair" options were behind the three-dot menu. Now, these options appear on the right side of the answer for each pair.
- Before reused answers appeared as "Reused answer from pair #" in the answer field. Now, the answer itself is displayed in the answer field. "Reused answer" appears beneath the answer for the pair.
- We renamed "Additional answers" to "Distractors."
Image 1. Before – Matching question
Image 2. After - Matching question
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.