the assignment problem multiple choice questions

Center for Teaching

Writing good multiple choice test questions, constructing an effective stem, constructing effective alternatives.

• Additional Guidelines for Multiple Choice Questions

Considerations for Writing Multiple Choice Items that Test Higher-order Thinking

Additional resources.

Multiple choice test questions, also known as items, can be an effective and efficient way to assess learning outcomes. Multiple choice test items have several potential advantages:

Reliability: Reliability is defined as the degree to which a test consistently measures a learning outcome. Multiple choice test items are less susceptible to guessing than true/false questions, making them a more reliable means of assessment. The reliability is enhanced when the number of MC items focused on a single learning objective is increased. In addition, the objective scoring associated with multiple choice test items frees them from problems with scorer inconsistency that can plague scoring of essay questions.

Validity: Validity is the degree to which a test measures the learning outcomes it purports to measure. Because students can typically answer a multiple choice item much more quickly than an essay question, tests based on multiple choice items can typically focus on a relatively broad representation of course material, thus increasing the validity of the assessment.

The key to taking advantage of these strengths, however, is construction of good multiple choice items.

A multiple choice item consists of a problem, known as the stem, and a list of suggested solutions, known as alternatives. The alternatives consist of one correct or best alternative, which is the answer, and incorrect or inferior alternatives, known as distractors.

1. The stem should be meaningful by itself and should present a definite problem. A stem that presents a definite problem allows a focus on the learning outcome. A stem that does not present a clear problem, however, may test students’ ability to draw inferences from vague descriptions rather serving as a more direct test of students’ achievement of the learning outcome.

2. The stem should not contain irrelevant material , which can decrease the reliability and the validity of the test scores (Haldyna and Downing 1989).

3. The stem should be negatively stated only when significant learning outcomes require it. Students often have difficulty understanding items with negative phrasing (Rodriguez 1997). If a significant learning outcome requires negative phrasing, such as identification of dangerous laboratory or clinical practices, the negative element should be emphasized with italics or capitalization.

4. The stem should be a question or a partial sentence. A question stem is preferable because it allows the student to focus on answering the question rather than holding the partial sentence in working memory and sequentially completing it with each alternative (Statman 1988). The cognitive load is increased when the stem is constructed with an initial or interior blank, so this construction should be avoided.

1. All alternatives should be plausible. The function of the incorrect alternatives is to serve as distractors,which should be selected by students who did not achieve the learning outcome but ignored by students who did achieve the learning outcome. Alternatives that are implausible don’t serve as functional distractors and thus should not be used. Common student errors provide the best source of distractors.

2. Alternatives should be stated clearly and concisely. Items that are excessively wordy assess students’ reading ability rather than their attainment of the learning objective

3. Alternatives should be mutually exclusive. Alternatives with overlapping content may be considered “trick” items by test-takers, excessive use of which can erode trust and respect for the testing process.

4. Alternatives should be homogenous in content. Alternatives that are heterogeneous in content can provide cues to student about the correct answer.

5. Alternatives should be free from clues about which response is correct. Sophisticated test-takers are alert to inadvertent clues to the correct answer, such differences in grammar, length, formatting, and language choice in the alternatives. It’s therefore important that alternatives

• have grammar consistent with the stem.
• are parallel in form.
• are similar in length.
• use similar language (e.g., all unlike textbook language or all like textbook language).

6. The alternatives “all of the above” and “none of the above” should not be used. When “all of the above” is used as an answer, test-takers who can identify more than one alternative as correct can select the correct answer even if unsure about other alternative(s). When “none of the above” is used as an alternative, test-takers who can eliminate a single option can thereby eliminate a second option. In either case, students can use partial knowledge to arrive at a correct answer.

7. The alternatives should be presented in a logical order (e.g., alphabetical or numerical) to avoid a bias toward certain positions.

8. The number of alternatives can vary among items as long as all alternatives are plausible. Plausible alternatives serve as functional distractors, which are those chosen by students that have not achieved the objective but ignored by students that have achieved the objective. There is little difference in difficulty, discrimination, and test score reliability among items containing two, three, and four distractors.

Additional Guidelines

1. Avoid complex multiple choice items , in which some or all of the alternatives consist of different combinations of options. As with “all of the above” answers, a sophisticated test-taker can use partial knowledge to achieve a correct answer.

2. Keep the specific content of items independent of one another. Savvy test-takers can use information in one question to answer another question, reducing the validity of the test.

When writing multiple choice items to test higher-order thinking, design questions that focus on higher levels of cognition as defined by Bloom’s taxonomy . A stem that presents a problem that requires application of course principles, analysis of a problem, or evaluation of alternatives is focused on higher-order thinking and thus tests students’ ability to do such thinking. In constructing multiple choice items to test higher order thinking, it can also be helpful to design problems that require multilogical thinking, where multilogical thinking is defined as “thinking that requires knowledge of more than one fact to logically and systematically apply concepts to a …problem” (Morrison and Free, 2001, page 20). Finally, designing alternatives that require a high level of discrimination can also contribute to multiple choice items that test higher-order thinking.

• Burton, Steven J., Sudweeks, Richard R., Merrill, Paul F., and Wood, Bud. How to Prepare Better Multiple Choice Test Items: Guidelines for University Faculty, 1991.
• Cheung, Derek and Bucat, Robert. How can we construct good multiple-choice items? Presented at the Science and Technology Education Conference, Hong Kong, June 20-21, 2002.
• Haladyna, Thomas M. Developing and validating multiple-choice test items, 2 nd edition. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999.
• Haladyna, Thomas M. and Downing, S. M.. Validity of a taxonomy of multiple-choice item-writing rules. Applied Measurement in Education , 2(1), 51-78, 1989.
• Morrison, Susan and Free, Kathleen. Writing multiple-choice test items that promote and measure critical thinking. Journal of Nursing Education 40: 17-24, 2001.

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• For each row of the matrix, find the smallest element and subtract it from every element in its row.
• Do the same (as step 1) for all columns.
• Cover all zeros in the matrix using minimum number of horizontal and vertical lines.
• Test for Optimality: If the minimum number of covering lines is n, an optimal assignment is possible and we are finished. Else if lines are lesser than n, we haven’t found the optimal assignment, and must proceed to step 5.
• Determine the smallest entry not covered by any line. Subtract this entry from each uncovered row, and then add it to each covered column. Return to step 3.

Try it before moving to see the solution

Explanation for above simple example:

  An example that doesn’t lead to optimal value in first attempt: In the above example, the first check for optimality did give us solution. What if we the number covering lines is less than n.

Time complexity : O(n^3), where n is the number of workers and jobs. This is because the algorithm implements the Hungarian algorithm, which is known to have a time complexity of O(n^3).

Space complexity :   O(n^2), where n is the number of workers and jobs. This is because the algorithm uses a 2D cost matrix of size n x n to store the costs of assigning each worker to a job, and additional arrays of size n to store the labels, matches, and auxiliary information needed for the algorithm.

In the next post, we will be discussing implementation of the above algorithm. The implementation requires more steps as we need to find minimum number of lines to cover all 0’s using a program. References: http://www.math.harvard.edu/archive/20_spring_05/handouts/assignment_overheads.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQDZNHwuuOY

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Designing Multiple-Choice Questions

A multiple-choice question (MCQ) is composed of two parts: a stem that identifies the question or problem, and a set of alternatives or possible answers that contain a key that is the best answer to the question, and a number of distractors that are plausible but incorrect answers to the question. Students respond to MCQs by indicating the alternative that they believe best answers or completes the stem. There are many advantages to using MCQs for assessment. One key advantage is that the questions are easy to mark and can even be scored by a computer, which makes them an attractive assessment approach for large classes. Well designed MCQs allow testing for a wide breadth of content and objectives and provide an objective measurement of student ability.

The following suggestions for designing MCQs are organized into three sections: 1) general strategies, 2) designing stems, and 3) designing alternatives.

General strategies

Write questions throughout the term.  Multiple-choice question exams are challenging and time-consuming to create. You will find it easier if you write a few questions each week, perhaps after a lecture when the course material is still fresh in your mind.

Instruct students to select the “best answer” rather than the “correct answer”.  By doing this, you acknowledge the fact that the distractors may have an element of truth to them and discourage arguments from students who may argue that their answer is correct as well.

Use familiar language.  The question should use the same terminology that was used in the course. Avoid using unfamiliar expressions or foreign language terms, unless measuring knowledge of such language is one of the goals of the question. Students are likely to dismiss distractors with unfamiliar terms as incorrect.

Avoid giving verbal association clues from the stem in the key.  If the key uses words that are very similar to words found in the stem, students are more likely to pick it as the correct answer.

Avoid trick questions.  Questions should be designed so that students who know the material can find the correct answer. Questions designed to lead students to an incorrect answer, through misleading phrasing or by emphasizing an otherwise unimportant detail of the solution, violate this principle.

Avoid negative wording.  Students often fail to observe negative wording and it can confuse them. As a result, students who are familiar with the material often make mistakes on negatively worded questions. In general, avoid having any negatives in the stem or the options. Should you choose to use negatives, be sure to emphasize the key words by putting them in upper case, and bolding or underlining them. For example:

The University of Waterloo does  NOT  have a building of this name?

a.) B.C. Matthews Hall b.) Carl A. Pollock Hall c.) I.L. Neilson Hall d.) Douglas Wright Engineering Building

Designing stems

Express the full problem in the stem.  When creating the item, ask yourself if the students would be able to answer the question without looking at the options. This makes the purpose of the question clear.

Put all relevant material in the stem.  Do not repeat in each of the alternatives information that can be included in the stem. This makes options easier to read and understand, and makes it easier for students to answer the question quickly.

Eliminate excessive wording and irrelevant information from the stem.  Irrelevant information in the stem confuses students and leads them to waste time. For example:

A number of books have been published about the University of Waterloo. These books fall into various genres such as photographic histories, biographies of prominent people involved with the University, and accounts of the history of individual departments. Among them was a book whose author is known as "Simon the Troll". What is the title of this book?

a.) Dreaming in Technicolor b.) Water Under the Bridge c.) Of Mud and Dreams d.) Images of Waterloo

Most of the stem is not necessary to answer the question. A better question would be:

What is the title of the book about Waterloo written by “Simon the Troll”?

e.) Dreaming in Technicolor f.) *Water Under the Bridge g.) Of Mud and Dreams h.) Images of Waterloo

Designing alternatives

Limit the number of alternatives . Use between three and five alternatives per question. Research shows that three-choice items are about as effective as four or five-choice items, mainly because it is difficult to come up with plausible distractors.

Make sure there is only one best answer.  Avoid having two or more options that are correct, but where one is “more” correct than the others. The distractors should be incorrect answers to the question posed in the stem.

Make the distractors appealing and plausible.  If the distractors are farfetched, students will too easily locate the correct answer, even if they have little knowledge. When testing for recognition of key terms and ideas keep the distractors similar in length and type of language as the correct solution. When testing conceptual understanding, distractors should represent common mistakes made by students.

Waterloo Counselling Services provides workshops about:

a.) cooking skills b.) hockey refereeing c.) *study skills d.) fire safety and prevention

It is unlikely that students would choose options a, b, or d, even if they didn’t know the answer. A better question would have plausible links between the stem and the distractors:

a.) preparing for marriage b.) presentation skills c.) * study skills d.) psychotherapy research

Make the choices gramatically consistent with the stem . Read the stem and each of the choices aloud to make sure that they are grammatically correct.

Place the choices in some meaningful order.  When possible, place the choices in numerical, chronological or conceptual order. A better structured question is easier to read and respond to:

During what period was James Downey the president of Waterloo?

a.) 1990-1996 b.) 1991-1997 c.) 1992-1998 d.) *1993-1999

Randomly distribute the correct response.  The exam should have roughly the same number of correct answers that are a's, b's, c's, and d's (assuming there are four choices per question).

Avoid using “all of the above”.  If “all of the above” is an option and students know two of the options are correct, the answer must be “all of the above”. If they know one is incorrect, the answer must not be “all of the above”. A student may also read the first option, determine that it is correct, and be misled into choosing it without reading all of the options.

Avoid using “none of the above”.  The option “none of the above” does not test whether the student knows the correct answer, but only that he/she knows the distractors aren’t correct.

Refrain from using words such as always, never, all, or none.  Most students know that few things are universally true or false, so distractors with these words in them can often be easily dismissed.

Avoid overlapping choices.  Make the alternatives mutually exclusive. It should never be the case that if one of the distractors is true, another distractor must be true as well.

Avoid questions of the form “Which of the following statements is correct?”  There is no clear question being asked, and the choices are often heterogeneous. Such questions are better presented in the form of True/False questions.

If you would like support applying these tips to your own teaching, CTE staff members are here to help.  View the  CTE Support  page to find the most relevant staff member to contact.

Other Resources

CTE Teaching Tip “ Exam Questions: Types, Characteristics, and Suggestions ”

Cheser-Jacobs, L., & Chase, C.L. (1992).  Developing and Using Tests Effectively: A Guide for Faculty . 1st ed. Jossey-Bass Publishers; San Francisco, CA. 

Dirks, C., Wenderoth, M.P., & Withers, Michelle. (2014).  Assessment in the College Classroom.  1st ed. W.H. Freeman and Company; New York, NY.

Kar, S.S., Lakshminarayanan, S., & Mahalakshmy, T. (2015). Basic principles of constructing multiple choice questions.  Indian Journal of Community and Family Medicine,  1(2):65-69. doi:10.4103/2395-2113.251640

Towns, M.H. (2014). Guide to developing high-quality, reliable, and valid multiple-choice assessments.  Journal of Chemical Education,  91(9):1426-1431. doi:10.1021/ed500076x

This Creative Commons license  lets others remix, tweak, and build upon our work non-commercially, as long as they credit us and indicate if changes were made. Use this citation format:  Designing multiple-choice questions . Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo .

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Designing multiple-choice questions

Designing multiple-choice questions.

A multiple-choice question (MCQ) is composed of two parts: a stem that identifies the question or problem, and a set of alternatives or possible answers that contain a key that is the best answer to the question, and several distractors that are plausible but incorrect answers to the question. Students respond to MCQs by indicating the alternative that they believe best answers or completes the stem. There are many advantages to using MCQs for assessment. One key benefit is that the questions are easy to mark and can even be scored by a computer, making them an attractive assessment approach for large classes. Well-designed MCQs allow testing for a wide breadth of content and objectives and provide an objective measurement of student ability.

We organized the following suggestions into three sections:

• General strategies,
• Designing stems (the question or unfinished statement)
• Developing alternatives (options)

General strategies

• Write questions throughout the term.  Multiple-choice question exams are challenging and time-consuming to create. You will find it easier to write a few questions each week, perhaps after a lecture when the course material is still fresh in your mind.
• Instruct students to select the “best answer” rather than the “correct answer.”  By doing this, you acknowledge that the distractors may have an element of truth to them and discourage arguments from students who may argue that their answer is correct.
• Use familiar language.  The question should use the same terminology used in the course. Avoid using unfamiliar expressions or foreign language terms unless measuring such language knowledge is one of the question’s goals. Students are likely to dismiss distractors with unfamiliar terms as incorrect.
• Avoid giving verbal association clues from the stem in the key.  If the key uses words similar to the stem’s words, students are more likely to pick it as the correct answer.
• Avoid trick questions.  Design questions so that students who know the material can find the correct answer. Questions designed to lead students to an incorrect answer, through misleading phrasing or by emphasizing an otherwise unimportant detail of the solution, violate this principle.
• Avoid negative wording.  Students often fail to observe negative wording, and it can confuse them. As a result, students who are familiar with the material often make mistakes on negatively worded questions. In general, avoid having any negatives in the stem or the options. In the rare cases where you use negatives, be sure to emphasize the keywords by putting them in uppercase and bolding or underlining them. For example:

Iowa State University does  NOT  have a building of this name?

• a.) Beardshear Hall
•  b.) Marston Hall
•  c.) Agronomy Hall
•  d.) Ames Hall 

Designing stems

• Express the full problem in the stem.  When creating the item, ask yourself if the students would answer the question without considering the options. This step makes the purpose of the question clear.
• Put all relevant material in the stem.  Do not repeat each of the alternative information included in the stem. This step makes options more straightforward to read and understand and makes it easier for students to answer the question quickly.
• Eliminate excessive wording and irrelevant information from the stem.  Irrelevant information in the stem confuses students and leads them to waste time:

Poor example

From this prairie beginning, Iowa State University’s campus has grown to encompass approximately 140 buildings and renowned national landscaping. However, throughout its history of growth, the campus also lost numerous buildings to fire and the wrecking ball, such as the Chemistry Building, Margaret Hall, Old Main, the original Veterinary Hospital, Clyde Williams Stadium, numerous barns, cottages, and temporary buildings. What building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965?

• Morrill Hall
• Beardshear Hall
• Farm House 
• Agronomy Hall

A better example

What is the oldest structure designated as a National Landmark on Campus?

• *Farm House 

Developing alternatives

• Limit the number of alternatives . Use between three and five options per question. Research shows that three-choice items are about as effective as four or five-choice items, mainly because it is challenging to develop plausible distractors.
• Make sure there is only one best answer.  Avoid having two or more correct options, but one is “more” accurate than the others. The distractors should be incorrect answers to the question posed in the stem.
• Make the distractors appealing and plausible.  If the distractors are farfetched, students will too quickly locate the correct answer. Even if they have little knowledge when testing to recognize key terms and ideas, keep the distractors similar in length and type of language as the correct solution. When testing conceptual understanding, distractors should represent common mistakes made by students.

Poor example: Which of the following artists is known for painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

• Homer Simpson.
• Michelangelo.

It is unlikely that students would choose a, b, or d, even if they didn’t know the answer.

A better question would have plausible links between the stem and the distractors:

Better example: Which of the following artists is known for painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

• Botticelli.
• Make the choices grammatically consistent with the stem . Read the stem and each of the options aloud to make sure that they are grammatically correct.
• Place the choices in some meaningful order.  When possible, place the options in numerical, chronological, or conceptual order. A better-structured question is easier to read and respond to: During what period was George Washington Carver a student/faculty at Iowa State?
• Randomly distribute the correct response.  The exam should have roughly the same number of correct answers: a’s, b’s, c’s, and d’s (assuming there are four choices per question).
• Avoid using “all of the above.”  If “all of the above” is an option and students know two of the options are correct, the answer must be “all of the above.” If they know one is incorrect; the solution must not be “all of the above.” A student may also read the first option, determine that it is correct, and misled into choosing it without reading all of the possibilities.
• Avoid using “none of the above.”  The option “none of the above” does not test whether the student knows the correct answer, but only that he/she knows the distractors aren’t correct.
• Refrain from using words such as always, never, all, or none.  Most students know that few things are universally true or false, so distractors with these words in them can often be easily dismissed.
• Avoid overlapping choices.  Make the alternatives mutually exclusive. It should never be the case that if one of the distractors is true, another distractor must be true as well.
• Avoid questions of the form “Which of the following statements is correct?”  There is no clear question asked, and the choices are often different. A better practice is to present these questions in True/False format.

Designing Multiple-Choice Questions developed by the Centre for Teaching Excellence at the University of Waterloo (retrieved on February 22, 2021) from https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/developing-assignments/assignment-design/designing-multiple-choice-questions, and Multiple choice exam construction Center for Teaching Excellence at Duquesne University retrieved (February 23, 2021) from https://www.duq.edu/about/centers-and-institutes/center-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-and-learning-at-duquesne/multiple-choice-exam-construction

Table of Contents

Creating an online assignment, adding your questions, short answer, free response, multiple choice, file upload, question formatting, adding images, adding explanations, choosing when/if explanations appear, adding subquestions and removing questions, hiding questions and responses, randomizing questions and answers for students, setting a time limit for the assignment, extending dates and time limits, displaying answers immediately, displaying answers after the due date, submission interface, submitting work on students' behalf, auto-graded fields, manually graded fields, publishing grades, deleting submissions, regrading auto-graded questions, exporting assignment submissions.

• ​Assignment Workflow

Online Assignments (Beta)

Currently in beta, online assignments let you create questions directly on Gradescope. Students will be able to log in and submit responses within the Gradescope interface. For some types of questions (multiple-choice, select all, and short answer), you can also indicate the correct answer ahead of time, and student submissions will be automatically graded. However, though you can autograde certain fields, AI-assisted grading and answer-grouping are not possible in Online Assignments at this time.

Assignment Setup

• On your course’s homepage, click Assignments (left sidebar) and then Create Assignment  (bottom right). Select Online Assignment from the list of assignment types when it appears. 
• Add an assignment title, set a release date, due date, and, optionally, a late due date. If you’re making a test assignment that students should not see, make sure to set the Release Date far in the future, or use a demo course that has no real students in it.
• (Optional) To give students a set number of minutes to submit work, select  Enforce Time Limit.  Then, use the  Maximum Time Permitted  field to set your time limit.
• (Optional) To allow groups of students to submit the assignment together, select the  Enable Group Submission ,  and set your preferred group size.
• Click  Create Assignment . This will take you to the  Assignment Outline  where you add your questions.
• On the left side of your Assignment Outline , enter your first question title (optional) and point value. You can preview your exam on the right side of your screen as you add questions. While you're creating your outline, note that all instructors and TAs in your course will be able to edit it too. If multiple people are editing the outline at once, all the users will see a warning message at the top of your screen.
• Add your question in the  Problem field.

• From the dropdown, select the way you’d like students to answer this question: short answer, free response, multiple-choice, select all, or file upload. You can add multiple answer fields to a question if you’d like, but be sure each answer field is on a line by itself. See the next section of this guide for more on how the answer input fields work.
• Click the Add Question  button after each question to insert the next problem or task in the assignment along with the point value and answer input fields, repeating the process explained in Steps 1-3. Click the Add Subquestion button after a question to add a child question beneath it and create a group. Note that when you make a group of questions, the top-level question can only be used for description text, and students cannot submit any input fields within that question. For instance, if you have Questions 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3, students can only submit answers to those, and not to Question 1, the parent of the group.
• When you're finished, click  Save . If you close your outline before saving it, the questions you added and changes you made will still be there when you return. However, even if the assignment release date has passed, your students and the other instructors in your course will not be able to see the latest questions or changes until you click Save Assignment either in the footer or after the last question in the outline. If you return to your outline and do not want to keep your unsaved changes, click the up arrow next to the Save Assignment button in the footer, and then click Discard Changes when the option appears.

Answer input fields

We currently support Multiple Choice, Select All, Short Answer, Free Response, and File Upload fields. For Multiple Choice, Select All, and Short Answer questions, you’ll supply the correct answer, and we’ll automatically grade your students’ responses. A question can have multiple input fields, in which case the student must get all of them correct to receive credit. Input markup must be the only thing on the line that it occurs on. This means that you currently cannot have text before or after an input field.

• Choosing "Short Answer" from the Insert Field dropdown or adding this Markdown syntax [____](answer)  to a question's Problem Field gives students a text box where they can enter a short numerical answer or a response that is only a few words.
• To allow Gradescope to autograde answers, you can put the correct answer inside the parentheses.
• Correct answers in the parentheses can be text or numbers.
• Make sure to put the answer field on a separate line, with no text before or after it.
• At the moment, Gradescope can only accept one correct text answer in a short answer field.
• Students will be autograded based on whether or not their response exactly matches the text you entered as the correct answer.
• However, you do have options on the assignment's Settings page to ignore leading and trailing whitespace and case-sensitivity.
• If there is only one correct numerical answer, you can simply put that numerical answer inside the parentheses.
• If you want Gradescope to accept any mathematical equivalent of the correct answer, add = and +-0 to the answer input field. Adding = and +-0 on either side of the correct answer prompts Gradescope to accept any mathematical equivalent of the correct answer. Equivalents can be written using any of these supported operators: +, -, *, /, %, ^, ( ). See tip below.
• If you want Gradescope to accept any mathematical equivalent of the correct answer within an acceptable margin of error , you can add = , +- , and then a value to the answer input field. Adding = , +- , and the additional value prompts Gradescope to accept any mathematical equivalent of any value that falls within the given range. Equivalents can be written using any of these supported operators: +, -, *, /, %, ^, ( ). See tip below. Formatting short answer input fields: Below are some examples to help you format short answer input fields. [____](2) means Gradescope will only accept "2" as the correct answer [____](=2+-0) means Gradescope will accept 2, 2.0, 2.00, 2/1, "1+1", "2*1", "2^1" etc. [____](=2+-0.2) means Gradescope will accept any mathematical equivalent of any value between 1.8 and 2.2
• Choosing "Free Response" from the Insert Field dropdown or adding this Markdown syntax |____|  to a question's Problem Field gives students a text box where they can enter multi-paragraph text answers to that question.
• If a question has any free-response boxes, they won’t be automatically graded and that question must be graded by hand.
• Choosing "Multiple Choice" from the Insert Field dropdown or adding the Markdown syntax shown below will let students click on a single correct answer from a group of options.
• ( ) description  creates a choice.
• (X) answer  designates the correct answer among the choices.
• Don’t leave blank lines between choices, or it’ll start a new group of choices.
• Choosing "Select All" from the Insert Field dropdown or adding the Markdown syntax shown below will let students click on all the possible correct answers from a group of options.
• [ ] description  creates a choice.
• [X] answer  designates a correct answer among the choices.
• Student must mark all required answers to get points.
• Choosing "File Upload" from the Insert Field dropdown or adding this |files|  Markdown syntax lets students upload any file type (PDFs, images, code) as part of their response. 
• File Upload fields also let instructors combine online questions and questions where students upload photos of handwritten work (or code files) within the same Gradescope assignment.
• Though you can view and grade the uploaded files, you will not be able to mark on or annotate them.

Any normal text you type in the question box will be passed through as text. You can use Markdown and LaTeX expressions in your questions and students can use LaTeX in their responses (denote LaTeX with  $$ , eg.  $$x^2$$ ). You can see a preview of what the assignment will look like to students in the pane on the right.

Check out our guides on Markdown and LaTeX for more details on how to use these.

• In the Assignment editor, go to the relevant question.
• Select  Insert Images. This will open the Insert Image dialog.
• When prompted, select an image file from your device's file browser. Select Open .
• (Optional) To add alt text to the image, enter text for the Image Description (Alt Text).
• To upload the image, select  Upload.
• To insert an image or graphic using Markdown syntax , insert the image URL link in the question's Problem field. Here's an example of inserting an image using Markdown syntax:  
• Repeat steps 1 - 3 as needed.

If you'd like, you can add explanations for the correct answer and choose when/if you'd like students to see these explanations. To add an explanation to a question, put two square brackets ( [[ ]] ) around the explanation text. Make sure to put the explanation on a separate line, with no text before or after it. For multiple-line explanations, use brackets around each line of the explanation. Empty lines between explanations will break them up into two separate blocks. There isn’t currently a way to provide explanations for incorrect answers. However, you can add details about incorrect answer options to the explanation for the correct answer.

To choose when/if students see an explanation depends on whether the two Answer Visibility boxes are checked on the assignment's Settings page.

• If only " show explanations when students answer a question correctly " is checked, students will see the explanation as soon as they select the correct answer for an auto-graded question (e.g., multiple-choice or select all) or as soon as you grade a manually graded question with a full-credit rubric item. Students will see this explanation right away, even if the due date hasn't passed yet and even if grades for the assignment haven't been published yet. However, students who select incorrect answers or who don't get full credit would never see the explanation if only this checkbox is checked.
• If only " show answers after due date " is checked, all students will see explanations, regardless of whether they selected the correct or incorrect answer, and regardless of their score. However, they will only see these explanations after the due date or late due date (if one is set), and after grades for the assignment are published.
• If both checkboxes are checked, students who have the correct answer or full credit will see explanations right away, and students who have the incorrect answer will see explanations after the due date has passed and grades have been published.
• If neither checkbox is checked, no students will ever see any explanations.

You can add new questions or subquestions using the  Insert Question  and  Add Subquestion  buttons below each question. The dashed line with an icon, when hovered over, turns into an “Insert Question” button, which inserts a question at the spot where the line is (in between two questions).

Adding a subquestion turns the question into a question group and adds a child question of the current question. Note that when you make a group of questions, the top-level question can only be used for description text, and students cannot submit any input fields within that question. i.e. If you have questions 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3, students can only submit answers to those, and not to Question 1, the parent of the group.

Finally, you can delete questions using the  Delete Question  button. Deleting all parts of a question group will revert that question group to a regular question (i.e. inputs will work again).

• If you’d like to, you can choose to hide an Online Assignment’s questions and students’ responses after the time limit expires or the due date passes (if no time limit is set). To do this, first, open your assignment and navigate to the  Assignment Settings  page from the left side panel.
• On your  Assignment Settings  page, under  Questions and Student Work Visibility  select “Show after grades are published.”
• Then click the  Save  button. Questions and students’ responses will now be hidden after the time limit expires or the due date passes. Students will regain access once you click  Publish Grades .

To assist in preventing unwanted collusion between students, Gradescope allows for questions, answer options, or both to be randomized when distributed. By default, the randomization settings are disabled. To enable them:

• Once the Online Assignment has been created, access the assignment Settings in the left sidebar.
• Shuffle Questions - Top-level questions (1, 2, 3…) will be ordered randomly for each student. Subquestions will remain in their original order (1.1, 1.2 - 2.1, 2.2). 
• Shuffle Choices - The answers to any multiple choice or select all questions will be listed in random order. 
• Select Save . 

When you are ready to grade the assignment, the student submissions will not appear randomized when viewed by an instructor, TA, or reader. If you would like to see how the questions or answers were displayed for an individual student,

• Access the Manage Submissions or Review Grades page.
• Select the name of the student.
• The student’s submission, and the randomization they were given, will be displayed.

The optional  Maximum Time Permitted  feature lets you give students a set number of minutes to complete an Online Assignment from the moment they open it and see the questions. When students open an assignment with a time limit, they’re told how long they have to complete it and can then confirm that they’d like to begin. Students will then see a countdown timer on their screen as they complete the assignment. They can hide the timer if they don’t want to see it and reveal again if they change their mind. Students can update their answers any number of times. The most recently submitted answer for each question at the end of the time limit will be saved for you to view and grade. Because students only have a finite amount of time to submit work, timed assignments reduce the risk of students cheating or working together to get the answers.

If you want to extend or modify when a specific student can start, work on, or submit an assignment, check out Extending assignment release dates, due dates, late due dates, and time limits .

To learn how to give a student more time on all timed assignments in a course, check out Extending time limits at the course level . Currently, at the course level, you can only give blanket time limit extensions. You cannot give a student an extension on all assignment release dates, due dates, or late due dates in a course at once. You would need to give the student those extensions on each assignment. 

By default, students won’t see their feedback and scores until you click the Publish Grades button. For formative assessments in which you'd like students to see their results and feedback for auto-graded questions immediately (e.g., for multiple-choice, select all, or short-answer/fill-in-the-blank questions) you should click Publish Grades from the Review Grades page before you release the assignment to students. Here's how to do that.

• Create your Online Assignment and be sure to fill in the correct answers where applicable. Before you release the assignment to students, click Review Grades in the left side panel ( Course > Assignment > Review Grades ). This will take you to the Review Grades page for that assignment.
• On your  Review Grades  page, click the Publish Grades button in the bottom right. Now, as soon as a student saves an answer, they will immediately see whether that answer is correct or incorrect. See the note and image below for more on incorrect answer notifications. Incorrect answers: If a student answers incorrectly, they will only see that their answer was incorrect. They will not see the correct answers unless you opt to display answers after the due date . However, students can resubmit and update answers until the due date passes or the time limit expiration.

If you’d like students to see the correct answers for each auto-graded question (e.g., multiple-choice, select all, and short answer questions) after the due date has passed (even if they did not get the correct answer), you can check the "Show answers after due date box" on the assignment’s  Settings  page. Please keep in mind that even if you check "Show answers after the due date," you still need to click Publish Grades on the Review Grades page for students to see the correct answers. Also, if you set a late due date, students will only see correct answers after the late due date has passed , not after the due date.

Submitting the assignment

Once you’ve created the assignment, your students will be able to log in and enter their responses within the submission period. Students can use LaTeX in their responses to free response questions, and they can upload files of any type to file upload questions. As students complete each question, they’ll see a progress indicator telling them how many questions they’ve answered and how many questions they have left. 

The way students save or submit answers is slightly different based on whether or not the assignment has a time limit:

• In  timed  assignments, students’ answers will be autosaved as they enter them. They will not have a button to submit each one. Students will also see a countdown timer (which can be hidden) in the top right corner of their screen. 
• In  non-timed  assignments, students will need to click the  Submit Answer  button as they finish each question. They’ll see a timestamp next to each answer they submit. Along the top of their screen, they can also track how many questions they’ve answered or started but haven’t submitted. Any answers they haven’t submitted will have an asterisk next to them in their assignment. 

During the allotted time (if you set a time limit) and submission period, students can submit or update their answers as many times as they need to. You will only see students’ final answers for each question.

When students log in, they will see a link on their course dashboard to submit an online assignment. If they have already submitted, the link will take them to their submission, and there will be a “Resubmit” button that they can use to resubmit as many times as they’d like before the deadline or time limit expiration. 

You can preview what the student submission interface will look like by going to the assignment’s  Manage Submissions page and clicking  New Submission . Note that this interface will automatically show the instructor whether the answer was correct or incorrect, but students will not see this unless you’ve published grades.

Instructors and TAs can submit work to an online assignment on behalf of students at any point, regardless of any set due dates or time limits.

• Open your assignment. Click the left side panel to expand it (if it isn’t already) and select  Manage Submissions . This will take you to a list of submissions that have been made to this assignment so far.
• Click the  New Submission  button at the bottom of the screen.
• On the submission page, type or select the student’s name from the dropdown under the assignment title.
• Enter or select the responses your student has given you. Upload any of their documents to the appropriate  Upload File  question. Click the  Submit Answer  button as you complete each question. If your student had existing responses that you did not touch, those will be preserved.
• When you’re finished, click the  View Submission  button to see the work you submitted for your student.

M ultiple-choice , select all , and short answer questions will be graded automatically based on the correct answer you provided in the question's problem field. Short answer questions require an exact match to be marked correct. You can enable options for making the matching case-insensitive and to remove leading/trailing whitespaces on the assignment’s  Settings  page. If there are multiple input fields in one question, students must answer all of them correctly to receive any credit. Also, if there are both auto-graded and manually graded fields (see below) in the same question, you will need to manually grade all fields. Though you can auto-grade multiple-choice, select all, and short answer questions, AI-assisted grading and answer-grouping are not possible on any answer field in Online Assignments at this time. Note that you can manually override any auto-grading by going to the Grade Submissions page, clicking on the question name, and editing the rubric or rubric item applications.

F ree-response and file upload fields can only be graded manually from the assignment’s  Grade Submissions  page. If there are both auto-graded (see above) and manually grade fields in the same question, you will need to manually grade both fields. Also, though you can auto-grade multiple-choice, select all, and short answer questions, auto-grading, as well as AI-assisted grading and answer-grouping are not possible on free-response and file upload fields at this time.

Rubrics allow you to grade quickly and consistently, applying the same set of feedback to every submission. Gradescope rubrics are created for each individual question .

Online Assignments contain pre-loaded “Correct” and “Incorrect” rubric items for any multiple-choice, select all, and short answer questions. You can add rubric items to these questions if needed; however, editing or deleting these pre-loaded rubric items will interfere with the auto-grading of these questions. To learn more about rubrics, check out our guidance .

Note that students won’t see their feedback and scores until you publish grades. If you intend for students to see their results for auto-graded questions immediately, you should publish grades from the Review Grades page when you are finished creating the assignment. See the section on Displaying answers immediately above for more on this.

If you’d like students to see the correct answers for each auto-graded question after the due date has passed (even if they did not get the correct answer), you can check the  Show answers after due date  box on the assignment’s  Settings  page.

Editing an assignment currently leaves any grading on existing submissions alone. To delete a student’s submission, check their score, or see when they started an assignment or last updated their latest submission, head to your Manage Submissions page.

If the points for auto-graded questions need to be recomputed or rescored, you’ll find a  Regrade All Submissions  button on the assignment’s Manage Submissions page as well. Clicking the Regrade All Submissions button will regrade all auto-graded questions:

• multiple-choice
• short answer

Any manual grading applied to auto-graded questions, such as submission specific adjustments or comments, will not be removed unless you check the box to allow it.

As the regrading only applied to auto-graded question types , rubrics for questions with free response and file upload fields will remain unaffected, even when the "reset manual grading" box is checked.

Exporting Submission Data

Exporting assignment submissions allows you to export submission data and all of your students' scores and responses, including any files they uploaded with an assignment. 

• Open your assignment and go to the R eview Grades page.
• Select Export Submissions and then Download Submissions from the modal. 

• Once downloaded, unzip the submissions.zip file, and you should have a submission_metadata.csv file and, if your assignment had questions with File Upload fields,  a Submission_XXXXX{ID} folder for each student.
• Submission_metadata.csv - contains a spreadsheet of the students’ submission data of each question. Data listed includes submission status, sections, each student’s total assignment score, question data like given question scores, response timestamps for each question, and each student's response for each question. Any file upload questions will contain a text file ID, which you can use to locate the folder of the same name containing the raw file in a student’s submission ID folder.

• Submission_XXXXX{ID} - contains an individual student’s raw files (given a text file ID generated by Gradescope) that they uploaded as a response to any file upload questions in the assignment. The filename of each folder is the student’s submission ID and can be found in the Submission ID column of the submission_metadata.csv . To see a file for a specific question, match text file ID found in the associated Question X Response column of the submission_metadata.csv . 

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