What are Written Answer Questions?
Written Answer Questions (WAQ) allow students to provide free-form text responses rather than selecting from multiple choice options.
Written Answer Questions are ideal for:
Short answers
Essay questions
Calculations
Fill-in-the-blank
Diagram Labelling
Extended responses (such a showing their work, or illustrations)
Written Answer Questions must appear at the end of all multiple choice questions. They cannot be interspersed with the Multiple Choice Questions.
After test day, scan in your written answer sheets and upload to Akindi. Grade your student's written responses within Akindi. Learn more about grading written answer questions here.
Creating Written Answer Questions
Importing from a Word Document
Akindi will automatically recognize Written Answer Questions included in your Word Document (.docx) by looking for:
A numbered question
Without any multiple choice answers
Indicate question weight in Word Document
Akindi will automatically identify the question weight listed in the uploaded Word document (.docx).
To indicate the question weight in the Word document:
In parentheses '(' at the end of the question
State the number of points
Followed by 'points', 'pts', or 'marks'
Creating directly in Akindi
1. Click the '+' icon. Select 'Question'.
2. Click 'MCQ' button next to question to open the question marking menu.
4. Click 'Multiple Choice' dropdown menu. Change question type to 'Written Answer'.
5. Type the question text into Akindi.
Control Answer Space for Students
When creating Written Answer questions, you can control how much space students have to write their responses.
1. Click the 'WAQ' button to open the question marking menu.
2. Use the answer space slider to indicate how much blank space will be left below the question.
The selected amount of space is the scannable answer area. This area will be snipped out and presented to you when marking the written answer questions. This area will be added below the question when the test sheet PDF is generated.
Scramble Written Answer Questions
Written answer questions can be scrambled amongst themselves at the bottom of the assessment.
To scramble written answer questions.
1. Click the 'Scramble Written Questions' toggle.
2. Select the desired number of versions from the dropdown menu.
3. Preview the scramble mapping by clicking 'Show Mapping'.
đĄ Written Answer Questions scramble only among other Written Answer Questions at the bottom of the assessment. They will always appear after all Multiple Choice Questions.
Where do students write their answers?
According the selected answer space, a designated space will be added below the question for the student to write their answers.
Students can write their answers directly on the printed test question sheet.
Grading Written Answer Questions
Scan the written answer sheets along with your bubble sheets into Akindi. Grade written answer sheets directly in Akindi.
đĄ Akindi does not use any AI in the system. When grading written answer questions, you are still the one in charge. Akindi only digitalizes and presents your students responses for you.
Have written answer questions but don't want to mark them in Akindi?
Use the hand-entered grades feature to manually import student grades for written answers that were graded outside of Akindi. Akindi will send a combined grade (MCQ + WAQ) to your grade book.