Guess it question type
| Guess it question type | |
|---|---|
| Type | question type |
| Set | N/A |
| Downloads | https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=qtype_guessit |
| Issues | https://github.com/rezeau/moodle-qtype_guessit/issues |
| Discussion | https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=qtype_guessit |
| Maintainer(s) | Joseph Rézeau |
Installing this question type
Follow the generic Installing plugins documentation.
The Guess It Question Type
History
Guess It is an adaptation of a language game to be played on paper or on a classroom blackboard, dating back to the 1970s. It was one of the very first games I programmed on my Commodore 64 in the mid 1980s. I adapted Guess It to H5P a few years ago and it is still available on my Moodle/H5P test site here.
Rationale
The player (student) has to guess a "mystery sentence", word by word. Each word entered by the student is compared letter by letter with the word to be guessed, starting from the beginning of the word. If a guessed letter matches the original letter, upon checking the answer, that letter is underlined with the equal sign (=). If the original letter's rank in the alphabet is situated before the letter typed by the student, the student's letter is marked with the < sign (look before). And in the opposite case, the student's letter is marked with the > (look after) sign.
The difficulty of the exercise resides in a number of factors. It is easier to guess a sentence which has been recently memorised in class or a well-known saying or proverb or a verse from the lyrics of a well-known song.
Adding a Guess It Question
Edit form
Question name
Enter any name that is useful for organising your Questions; this name will not be displayed to the students.
Instructions
Although this field shows the Required icon, it is in fact optional. Use this field to display any information that would help the student answer the question. All kind of text and media are available.
Wordle option: Guess a word
This option will be explained below.
Guessit word(s)
This is the field where you type the sentence that the student will have to guess, word by word. If you enter capitals and punctuation, they will be required for a correct answer, but help will be provided if they are missing.
How many tries before giving help
Select the number of tries needed before the Help option becomes available. Never means that Help will never be available. Range available: Never, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14. Set this according to the level of difficulty of the sentence to be guessed.
General feedback
Use this in the same way as you would for any question type. Optional.
Example scenario
0.- Upon entering the game, the player is presented with a number of empty gaps corresponding to the number of words in the mysterious sentence.
1a.- Words are entered one by one in the provided gaps and you navigate to the next gap by pressing either the Tab or the Space keys. If needed, the size of gap #4 will "grow" to accommodate the word "favourite".
1b.- When Check is pressed, specific feedback is provided in the "feedback" zone as follows: Gap 1 shows that the first word of the sentence should start with a capital letter. The yellow background tells that the word entered is partially correct. Gap 2 shows that the 2nd word has been correctly guessed, and the word is displayed on a green background. The words in gaps 3 to 4 are on a red (incorrect) background. For each partially or incorrect word in the answer, marks are displayed just under the first letter, showing whether the letter to be found is located after (> sign) or before (the < sign) the letter entered, in the alphabet. The letter "S" is simply given.
2a. The player has entered "Spring is a lovely period", taking care to enter words whose first letter matches the < or > marks previously given in the specific feedback. Note that when new words are entered in the incorrectly marked gaps (red background) their background is reset to white until Check is pressed.
2b. Specific feedback is provided again. Note that specific back displayed in the "feedback zone" is added for each successive try and numbered. This is especially helpful for incorrect words. In the example above, the player now knows that the word in Gap 3 begins with a letter after "a" and before "m" in the alphabet; the word in Gap 4 begins with a letter after "l" and the word in Gap 5 begins with a letter before "p". Before attempting a new try at guessing the incorrect words, the player decides to get some help by clicking on the Get help button.
2c.- Since in the question Options we set How many tries before giving help to 6, a relevant message is displayed.
3.- 6a-. And the scenario continues, with each new try adding its own specific feedback to the list.
6a.- The student clicks on Get help, after the required set number of tries has been reached...
6b. The last missing word is given. Note that the final full stop is also given.
7.- Finished! The navigation box at the top left shows Question 1 Correct.
The Wordle option
Edit form
In the default Guess It question type, the student/player has to guess a sentence made up of several words. If the Wordle Option is selected in the edit form, then they have to guess a single word. This is based on a recently popular word game, see Wikipedia article. In this Guess It question type, Wordle can use any length of words between 4 and 8, but the recommended default is 5 letters only. One limitation is that only CAPITAL LETTERS can be used, and no diacritics (accents). The above screen shows the ad hoc ERROR message displayed.
The recommended default number of tries is 10 but can be set at 6, 8, 10, 12, 14. Set this according to the level of difficulty of the word to be guessed. No help is provided other than the specific feedback colour scheme explained hereafter.
Scenario 1
For this scenario the word to be guesses is PIZZA and the maximum number of tries has been set to 6 (because this is a fairly common word, which should be guessed easily).
1.- The Wordle option only accepts UPPERCASE letters. If the player enters lowercase letters, they are automatically converted to uppercase. Each time the player enters a letter, the focus is placed on the next gap.
When the last gap has been reached, the focus is placed on the Check button and the player can submit their answer by pressing either the Space or the Tab keys.
2.- Feedback is provided using the same colouring scheme as for the regular Guessit game. Green for a correctly placed letter; yellow for a letter which is in the word but not correctly placed and red for a letter not in the word. The feedback message shows the distribution of the letters and the number of tries left.
3.- As for the regular Guessit game, the successive tries are displayed. Here the player has correctly guessed the first letter (P) but none of their other letters are part of the work.
4.- Looking better... not much choice of Italian food left, so...
5.- When the word is found, the Check button disappears. And the Info box displays Correct.
Scenario 2
Word to find in 6 tries: TIGER
[... More tries ...]
Since the max number of tries was set at 6, if the word in not found, it is "given". Note that the current score is marked as Incorrect. The General Feedback message is displayed "A quite ferocious animal". Under it, the Incorrect and Score 0/5 are displayed.
Importing questions to the Guess It question type
The GIFT to guessit format plugin
The specific GIFT guessit format plugin allows you to use a text editor to write Guess It questions in a simple format that can be imported into your Moodle question bank. This plugin is available in the Moodle plugins repository here:
GIFT to guessit format plugin and see the documentation here: GIFT to guessit format documentation
The Glossary export to quiz plugin
You can use your Moodle site/course glossaries to export their concepts and definitions to the Guess It (Wordle option) question type.
Glossary export to quiz plugin and see the documentation here: Glossary_export_to_quiz
