Randomizing Distractor Location in Matching Question
July 6, 2015 12:00 AM
I have a matching question (standalone - not part of a test) with three terms and four definitions (one definition is a distractor). When Lectora "randomized" the location of the definitions for display, it showed the distractor as the last option. So, two questions...
First, does it always put the distractor last? (I don't have the time and energy right now to test this out myself...figured someone else might know off-hand). I would hope not, as that would kinda partially defeat the point of having a distractor.
Second (and more importantly), is there some way to "re-randomize" the definitions, so that the distractor doesn't appear last? I know that I can manually move the text boxes around, but I'm wondering if there's a less manual way to do that... If not, I think I'll post that as a suggestion in the Suggestions forum!
Discussion (3)
Ah, I see. I was lucky to get the exact same order as I entered the right column in, this is why I was confused. I just checked, Lectora does randomize the distractor's position when putting text objects on the page, so I guess it was just your luck :)
It'd be very interesting, however, to build a constantly randomizing question. Not so hard, actually, thanks to Daryl's excellent 'Randomize All The Things' tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wbo3Voqar4
Sorry for the confusion...the random order I was referring to was the one it picked when it first placed them on the page. I couldn't see any way to truly randomize them (i.e., appear in a different order each time the question is run) - I looked for that, but didn't see that option.
It's possible that the random order that Lectora used to first place them on the page just happened to put the distractor last and that's not always the case. If so, I guess it was just a bit of "bad luck" for me! At any rate, I ended up just manually swapping locations between the distractor and one of the non-distractors, so I guess I'll move on to other worries! ;)
How did you randomize the right column? Lectora Help says, "Choices in the right column will be placed in random order when displayed to the user" but I couldn't make them move in Lectora Preview, Browser Preview or published version. They always stay in the exact position they were put on the page first.
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