Question scoring - Advanced

When several question elements are used it is important to be aware of which settings apply to the elements, and which settings apply to the complete question.

Applies to each question element:

• Marks per correct answer  
• Marks per wrong answer

These settings are the general rule for marking. Exceptions can be defined in upper and lower mark limit per question element. More on that later in the article.

Applies to the question as a whole:

• Marks for unanswered (All question elements must be unanswered)
  • In general: 
    • These are marks awarded if all question elements are unanswered. 
    • If one question element is unanswered, the remaining ones will be marked as wrong answer. 
    • This setting must have a value and the default is 0. 
  • Exception for multiple response questions: 
    • If one question element is answered, the remaining unanswered ones will be marked as unanswered. See example under Known limitations.

• Marks for all correct
  • These are the marks awarded if the learner gets all answers correct.
  • These are not bonus points - they don't stack with the max achievable marks.
    If this is set to a lower value than maximum achievable marks, the result is that a learner with all correct answers may achieve a lower score than learners with one or more wrong answers.
  • This setting does not require a value and is empty by default. When it is left empty, the marks for all correct will be defined by maximum achievable marks as set in marks per correct answer.

• Minimum marks
  • If this is not set, the lowest achievable score will be defined by the settings on the options above.
  • If this is set to 0, the question will never award negative marks.
  • This setting does not require a value and is empty by default.

Known limitations

The following limitations apply only to Multiple Choice and Multiple Response questions. In a Composite question, the two question types have different scoring logic.

This is best illustrated through an example: 

If you create a composite question that has Marks per wrong answer set to -1, and Marks for unanswered set to 0, the following will occur: 

• If the composite question is attempted and a Multiple Choice question is left unanswered, the scoring gives -1 per unanswered question element. 
• If the composite question is attempted but a Multiple Response question is left unanswered, the scoring gives 0 per unanswered question element.

Lower and upper mark limit per question element 

Individual question elements can have their acheivable marks further limited. This can be set up in Options per question element. Using this will override the marks per correct and marks per wrong answer.

If you do not want to use this, please leave the setting empty. Any other value will be a part of the scoring rules.

Click on the question element to get the Option menu available on the right.

Upper mark limit: This can be used if you want to override marks per correct answer. If this is set to a lower value than marks per correct answer, the upper mark limit will override marks per correct answer.

Example:
A question consists of four question elements, each with one correct answer. Marks per correct answer is set to 2, and the question can award a maximum of 8 marks.
Setting the upper mark limit on one of these elements to 1,5 changes the maximum to 7,5 acheivable marks.

Caution: Setting upper mark limit to 0 means that the question element cannot award positive marks at all.

Lower mark limit: This can be used if you want to override marks per wrong answer. If this is set to a value that is higher than marks per wrong answer, the lower mark limit will override marks per wrong answer.

If the question in the general scoring rule is set to award negative marks per wrong answer and the lower mark limit is set to 0, the element will not award negative marks
Setting a lower mark limit is useful in those cases where you want to limit the impact of one wrong answer compared to the other wrong answers.

Note: If the value of minimum marks set on the question is higher that the sum of all lower mark limits, the minimum marks setting will override the combined lower mark limits.

Example of scoring using a multiple response question with two question elements that both have two correct and two wrong answers:

Marks per correct answer: 2
Marks per wrong answer: -2
Lower mark limit on question element: -3

The candidate gets all correct on question element 1 and all wrong on element 2:
4 marks are achieved for element 1, and -4 for element 2.
The result without a lower mark limit will in this case be 0 of 8 marks.

But because we have a lower mark limit of -3 on both elements, the final result will be 1 of 8 marks.

If the candidate answers all wrong, the result will be -6 of 8 because of the lower mark limit.
Remove the lower mark limit, and all wrong will result in -8 of 8.

Any minimum marks set on the question will override all of the above.
A more extreme example of setting minimum marks to 7 will award 7 of 8 marks on every possible combination of answers, except for all correct which will award 8 of 8.