Elearning Tutorial:

Weighted Scores

How to Add Weighting to Different Answers

In this part of the tutorial we will set a second correct answer with a lower score.

Weighting Answers

Often a trainer may wish to allow for, or test, different depths of a learner's knowledge. In these circumstances it can be useful to include different answers in the same question and give them different scores to indicate the depth of understanding. This is also useful where more than one answer is actually required as with the Multiple Response questions. This is called "weighting".

It is also important to note that setting any answer as incorrect will set the whole question as incorrect so weighted scoring needs to be used where partially-correct answers are possible. You can also apply negative scores to penalise badly incorrect answers but remember this will be included in the automatic calculation of the total score variables.

In our example "Flock" is a general term for a collection of birds and offers an alternative answer for people who do not know the more specific collective noun for a group of Owls.

Let's be generous and allow "Flock" to be a correct answer as well as "Parliament" but give it a lower score to reflect the fact that it is not the best answer.

Firstly we add a third answer to reflect this new option.

1. Double-click the Question object to open the Question Properties and go to the Question tab.
2. Click in the Name column for Answer 1 and replace "correct answer" with "best answer".
3. We don't want to change Answer 2 otherwise we would have to change all our existing incorrect buttons so now click in the Name column for Answer 3 and type "also correct".
   
4. In the Score column for Answer 3 set the score as 1.
   
5. Finally, click the cross in the final column to switch it to a tick and tell Opus this answer is correct.
   
6. Click OK to apply your changes and close the dialog.

Then we simply need to connect the "Flock" button to the new answer using the Set User Answer action as before.

1. Double-click the button with the caption "Flock" and go to Actions.
2. Select the Set User Answer action.
3. Use the spin buttons to change the answer index to 3.
   
4. Click Apply to apply your changes and close the dialog.
5. Repeat this for the Reset User Answer action.
6. Click OK to apply your changes and close the dialog.

At the moment the question only provides feedback as to whether or not our answer was correct so the weighting of the scores is not apparent. IN the next tutorial we will learn how to display the score.