By default, text-based free response question types, including List Questions, Blanks Questions, and Short Phrase questions apply standard rules when grading student responses.
Standard grading behavior applies the 'Relaxed' style of grader.
Relaxed Grader Rules
The process for evaluating student responses against the correct answer is as follows. With the student response and correct answer:
Change upper-case Roman letters to lower-case Roman letters.
Remove punctuation characters.
Do not change lower-case Roman letters or numbers (0 - 9).
Replace all other characters with the ASCII space character.
Convert strings of spaces to a single space character.
Compare the modified student response to the answer field string indicated in the question. Spaces in the response must correspond to spaces in the answer value.
For example, if the answer field value is "Abraham Lincoln", then the following responses are graded correct.
"Abraham Lincoln"
"abraham lincoln"
"a-braham L'incoln"
However
"A b r a h a m L i n c o l n"
is incorrect (as is "Barney", of course).
Exact Grader Rules
The optional Exact grader style that can be specified in List Questions and Blanks Questions modifies the above rules to recognize and enforce capitalization, punctuation, and other characters but still applies the above algorithm for handling spaces.
Again, assuming the answer field value is "Abraham Lincoln", then the following answers are graded correct:
"Abraham Lincoln"
However,
"aBraHam LincoLn" or "abraham lincoln" or "a-braham L'incoln"
will be graded wrong.
Palette Grader Rules
The Palette Question type provides a palette symbol grader that is intended for use in Chemistry content areas, and applies a modified Exact Grader designed to recognize and enforce superscripts and subscripts as well as the order of certain super-and subscript operators.
Math Grader Rules
Each of the Formula question varieties, as well as the Numeric question type apply question-specific grading rules, and support methods for setting margin of error and tolerance, and equivalent unit dimensions at the level of the question.
See Also: