Tips on entering your answers
to fill-in questions

For tests that are corrected on-line, QuizMaker works in conjuction with CorrectQuiz which is a program that looks at the student's answers and compares it with an answer key which QuizMaker compiles using the answers that you indicate. The student's answer is correct if it is equal to or contains the entire answer listed in the answer key, otherwise it is wrong. To ensure that CorrectQuiz produces the desired results, you may have to format the answers in a certain way. The tips below will help guide you. There is also a short table which gives sample answers with matches.

When CorrectQuiz looks up the answer, it checks letter-by-letter, so spelling DOES count. A misspelled word in the student's input or in the answer key could make the whole answer wrong (unless, of course, the word to match is misspelled the same way). On the other hand, uppercase and lowercase differences are ignored, and any extra spaces that precede or follow the answer are simply trimmed off.
For "inexact" match types, the student's answer is correct if it merely contains the answer in the answer key. That means if "Lincoln" is in the answer key, both that answer and "Abraham Lincoln" would be correct. But so would "Lincoln, Nebraska" and "Mary Todd Lincoln". Contrarywise, if "Abraham Lincoln" is in the answer key, just "Lincoln" would be considered wrong if the student entered this as their answer, as would "Abe Lincoln". If this behavior is undesirable, you may want to take advantage of the advanced answer feature which allows you to specify a range of different specific answers. Tips on using this feature follow shortly.
If possible, avoid using special characters like punctuation marks and symbols in your answers when you are using an "inexact" match type. CorrectQuiz has a tendency to treat these characters like spaces. ¹ For instance, "4.3" acts the same way as "4 3"; "50%" and "$50" are both interpreted as "50". If you must use these characters, consider changing the match type to "exact" instead.

Advanced answer feature

CorrectQuiz has the ability to correct questions that have several different required answers (this AND that) or several different alternative answers (this OR that). If you plan on making a quiz like this, please read on.

For questions with several different possible answers ("or" answers), you must place a "|" between each alternative when you are telling QuizMaker your answer. For questions with more than one required answer ("and" answers), you must put a "&" between each answer when you are filling out the answer space for QuizMaker. If both the "|" and "&" characters are present in the answer, the answers between "|" are evaluated before those between "&". For example, "Bob Dole & Bill Clinton | Dole & Clinton" is considered an "or" answer and is broken up into "Bob Dole & Bill Clinton" and "Dole & Clinton". After that, each alternative is evaluated as a separate "and" answer. Acceptable answers for this question would be either "Bob Dole and Bill Clinton" (and vice-versa) or "Dole and Clinton" (and vice-versa).
All "and" answers are treated on an "inexact match" basis. It searches the student's answer for every one of the required answers, and only considers the student's answer correct if it contains all of those answers.
"Or" answers are simply extensions of "exact match" answers. They look for an identical match. That means that the student's answer must match one of the available alternatives in the answer key exactly or else the answer is wrong.
This tip applies to "self-tests" and "correct & mail" tests. When an incorrect answer occurs on "or" questions, the correct answer displayed is the first one in the list. This is helpful when several answers are acceptable, yet there is one BEST answer which you want to display after a wrong answer. Suppose "George Washington" and "Washington" are both acceptable, but "George Washington" is a better answer. For that answer you may want to write "George Washington" as the first item in the list, as in:
George Washington| Washington

Here is a table with some sample answers and what they will and will not match:

Answers with matches and non-matches CASE AND LEADING/TRAILING SPACES IGNORED Ex=exact, Inex=inexact, Adv=advanced
Listed Answer	Mode	Will match	Will not match
Hawaii	Ex	Hawaii	(anything else)
Lou	Inex	Lou Betty Lou Mary Lou Retton	St. Louis Louisville Jesse Alou
George Washington	Inex	George Washington George Washington Carver Pres. George Washinton	Washington G. Washington Martha Washington
Martin & Lewis	Adv	Martin, Lewis Lewis and Martin Jerry Lewis & Martin Luther King	Lewis Dean Martin Martin_Lewis ¹
John F. Kennedy \| Kennedy \| President Kennedy	Adv	John F. Kennedy Kennedy President Kennedy	John F Kennedy ² President John F. Kennedy John Kennedy
Bob Dole & Bill Clinton \| Dole & Clinton ³	Adv	Clinton/Dole Bob Dole + Clinton Sen. Bob Dole-D Pres. Clinton-R	Clinton Clinton and Robert Dole Dole & Bill

¹The underscore character ("_") is the one exception to the rule about special characters being treated like spaces in inexact matches. In Perl, underscores are considered to be letters. ²Note the missing period in this example. For exact matches (as in "or" questions), if the answer in the answer key contains punctuation marks, the student's answer must contain the same marks or else it will be considered wrong.

³As mentioned earlier, if the student gets this answer wrong on a self-test, "Bob Dole and Bill Clinton" will be the correct answer displayed by CorrectQuiz.

Here's a sample quiz you could write for QuizMaker:

Tips on entering your answersto fill-in questions

Advanced answer feature

Tips on entering your answers
to fill-in questions