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As of August 1st, 2008, the Edutech web site will no longer be updated. Edutech was funded by the Swiss Virtual Campus programme, which ended on July 31st, 2008. Some activities will be taken over by the e-Learning Services group at the SWITCH foundation.

Jumbled Sentence Test

Introduction

This page gives you access to an example of a Jumbled Sentence test, also called Scrambled Sentence test that lets you experience - in the role of the student - how such a test works in Vista with the aim to encourage you to develop a test version adapted to your course. You will also find a pedagogical reflection and a step by step instruction for setting up such a test in Vista. Further information concerning Jumbled Sentence Tests in Vista can be found in Part 4, Chapter 7, Sect: "Assessments and Assessment Manager", Sub-sect: "Creating or Editing Jumbled Sentence" in the  Designers and Instructors Reference, WebCT Vista 4 (pdf, 2.5 MB) p 86. Get UN & PW at edutech Vista Support.

Click this screen shot and than "Vista Demos - Assessment-Demos" for access to the example.

Usage Comments

Jumbled Sentence questions present a portion of a sentence and dropdown lists from which students must select the words that are missing from the sentence and put them in the correct order. They are designed to give students practice working with word order in sentences. The format is especially appropriate for language learning and allows students to manipulate the order of words in a sentence with single clicks. The student must recognize different kinds of words and phrases and make use of his knowledge of grammar and syntax in order to solve the problems.

If used to reconstruct a single sentence this text type can help train in language learning

• awareness for syntactical elements in the target language.
• translation skills if presented with the mother tongue sentence and the target langue words in one question. Example: Translate the following sentence into French: I love to work with WebCT! J'[aime] [travailler] [avec] [WebCT]!

If used to reconstruct a whole paragraph this text type can help train

• in language learning: the recognition of essential text construction elements in the target language.
• in technical subjects: it lifts the awareness for the logical steps of a process through the reconstruction of the scrambled text of a manual or instruction.

The main difficulty of this test type is to not overlook any other correct sequence the students might want to indicate.

How to do it in Vista

It is more or less a three step process.

1. Create Jumbled Sentence Questions.
2. Create an Assessment with Questions
3. Editing Quiz Properties

Create Jumbled Sentence Questions

You can create Jumbled Sentence Questions from either the Questions or Question Database screen:

1. Locate and click the assessment or click Go to Question Database.
2. Click Create Questions. A menu appears.
3. Click Jumbled Sentence. The Create Jumbled Sentence Question screen appears.

4. In the Title text box, enter a title. The question title identifies the question when searching the Question Database. When Section Students view the question, the question title appears at the top of the question.
5. In the Question text box, specify the question text and format. If you want i.e. to use the HTML-creator, select the corresponding check box and wait for the screen to adapt.
6. If you want, insert an equation.
7. If you want to add an image to display with the question click Browse and select the image you want to add.
8. Click Generate Answer. The Answer section appears.
9. If you change the answer text click Update Answer each time.
10. Assign a value to the answer
11. Indicate the Answer box width and decide the case sensitivity.
12. If you want to provide Section Students with general feedback about the question next to More Options, click the Expand/Collapse icon. The More Options section expands.
13. All questions are automatically stored in the Question Database. Since the Question Database can contain thousands of questions, it's a good idea to organize questions into categories. If you want to add the question to a category next to More Options, click the Expand/Collapse icon. The More Options section expands.
14. To add the question to an existing category, select Specify an existing category, and from the drop-down list, select the category.
15. If you want to preview the question to ensure it displays and grades correctly click Preview. The Preview Question pop-up window appears and the question is displayed as it will appear in the Section Student view.
16. If you want to check the grading scheme and feedback select your answer and click Grade. The Graded for pop-up window appears and the answers are displayed, including the grade and any feedback.
17. Click Save. The Questions or Question Database screen appears and the question is added.

Note: If you enter more than one sentence (with gaps surrounded by square brackets) into the question text box, Vista generates a whole Jumbled Sentence Text.

Next you need to Create an Assessment with Questions

Other Resources Concerning this Subject

• Consult also the HOWTOs: View Assessment Submissions.