Question Library: Significant Figures Questions

Significant figures questions are similar to Arithmetic questions (see Arithmetic Questions), but allow students to enter answers in scientific notation format. The questions are graded based on what students entered as their significant digits.

Example:

Significant Figure

Which is set up as:

To set up Significant Figures questions:

1. Access Quizzes or Surveys and click Question Library.

2. Choose Significant Figures Question from the Create New drop-down menu, then click Go.

3. Enter a Title to easily distinguish one question from another when building new quizzes, re-using questions, and/or grading. (Titles will not appear to students in any quiz, but they are visible to instructors.)

4. If desired, set the Points for the question. Note that you can easily change this value when using the question in a quiz. For greatest flexibility, we suggest leaving the value at 1 in Question Library.

5. If desired, set the Difficulty of the question. Difficulty is optional. It does not affect how Carmen grades questions. It is generally used as a way to organize questions.

6. Enter the Question Text in the box provided. Use curly braces { } to identify variables that will be defined later. You can use all the options in the HTML editor to format or add resources. If desired, add an image to the question.

We recommend uploading all images to a specific folder the File Manager before adding them to quizzes using the Find option. This helps ensure images stay associated with questions properly during Copy Course Components.

7. Type the formula used to calculate the correct answer in the Formula field. Make sure that you enclose all variables in curly braces (for example: {x}+{y})/4.) Click Test to open a new page displaying an example of your formula.

8. Indicate the number of required significant figures and what percentage of available points should be deducted for not providing the correct number of figures.

9. Set a Tolerance by choosing plus or minus on half of the least significant figure, Units or Percent to define how accurate students must be when answering the question. For example, a tolerance of 3% would allow students to be off by 3%, or a tolerance of 5 units would allow students to be off by 5 units in their answers (units are defined in the field below).

10. If needed, type the unit of measurement in which the answer should be given in the Units field (Example: MPH, meters, inches, etc.).

Use the radio buttons to control the case sensitivity of the unit or to use Regular Expressions.
If you wish to assign points for using the correct unit, choose a percentage value from the Worth drop-down menu.

11. In the Variables section, define the variables you used in the Question Text.

Type the name of your variable (for example, x) in the Name column. (Do not include curly braces with the name.)
Enter a range for the variable by typing the minimum value for the variable in the Min column and the maximum value in the Max column.

When setting values for Significant Digits questions, only 1 number can appear to the left of the decimal. For example, 10.2 x10^1 is not a valid significant figure, but 1.02 x 10^2 is.

Set the number of significant figures for each variable in the x10 boxes.
In the Step field, type the increment that the system should use when choosing random numbers from the range you specified in the Min and Max fields. (Examples: set the step to 1 to limit the variables to whole numbers.)

Example: If you create variable X with Min=100, Max=200 and Step=5, the system will only choose values for X that are increments of 5 above 100 (105, 110, 115, etc., up to 200) when generating questions.

If you have more variables than the number of spaces provided, enter a number in the Add Variable box click Add Variables to add more variables. If you have fewer, click Delete to Remove empty variable boxes.

12. If desired, add hints or feedback to a question by expanding the collapsible menus at the bottom of the page and entering text.

You must enable Hints when setting up quiz properties in order for hints to appear to students. If hints are enabled, students can click a link to receive them. Students will only see Feedback if they are able to see the questions in the quiz submission window. (See Setting Up Quiz Properties to enable hints and feedback for a quiz.)

13. Click Preview to view your question as it will appear during use and grading. Click Save to save the question and return to the main page, Save and Copy to save the question and create a new question of the same type and that retains the copied properties, or click Save and New to continue creating questions of the same type.

Current as of December 2010 (D2L 9.1). Not significantly impacted by December 2011 update (D2L 9.4).