Text Entry

Creating a Text Entry Question

To create an interactive item question, begin by creating a new test in Aware or navigating to an existing test. The TEA suggests text entry for use in mathematics, reading, language arts, and science assessments, but text entry is available for any assessment. Text entry follows the TEA's examples and may be used in conjunction with text, images, and tables. 

Note: Assessments with interactive response questions may be printed as test booklets only, without answer documents available. This test is not scannable, nor will it have student IDs, class numbers, or any other information. Teachers must use the Enter Answers feature to manually input student responses for students taking a paper version of the assessment.

1. Select Interactive Item Types from the options. 

2. Select Text Entry from the available question types. 

3. Construct the Text Entry question. Use the Add Placeholder Response button to indicate where the text entry box should be located. Select the Continue button to move forward. 

Note: Automatic grading works well with three or fewer words; any longer entries will likely function better as a constructed response question. Automatic grading does not check for capitalization or spacing, but will check spelling. If the student support for spelling is enabled at the student or test level, the support will function as intended. 

4. Use the interaction builder to designate the text box size and correct answer. Add multiple correct answers if needed. 

5. When you have finished constructing your question and adding correct answers, select Create.

Creating a Text Entry Question With Equation Editors

A test author can also create text entry questions that harness equation editors to input math-centric answers. The same scoring rules for general text entry questions also apply for those that use an equation editor.

Student Experience 

Students will see the text entry question during online testing. 

If the spelling support is enabled, the student will see the red line that indicates an incorrectly spelled word. 

Mark As Correct

In a test, it is possible for a teacher to overwrite student-generated text to change an incorrect answer to correct. However, leaving the student text and using the Mark as Correct button maintains the integrity of the data. If the Mark as Correct button is incorrectly selected, teachers can select the Unmark Correct button that will appear to revert the changes.

If a teacher has marked a question correct for a student, then the data view for Student Individual Responses will be updated. The field will be color coded as blue.

In the event a student submits a correct answer that the test author did not include when originally creating the question, the test author can add the answer and any other variations after the assessment is active.

Note: Adding additional answer choices after testing has begun may require a Rescore.

Data Analysis

Question Type is available in Quick Views. You can access Quick Views through the navigation bar or through the Quick Views card. 

Once in Quick Views, search for the assessment using the search fields. Click on the assessments you want to analyze and apply the Student Individual Responses template from the drop-down menu. 

Interactive questions will be indicated in data analysis next to the scores for each of those questions. The examples below show questions with three interactions. Teachers may view the exact question in the Enter Answers screen and modify student answers if needed. 

Question Type is available as a column for data views, located in the Responses folder.

This column will show the question type and in which question number the type is located.

Additional Information

Visit the Interactive Item Types FAQ for more information.