> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.lamsfoundation.org/lams/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.lamsfoundation.org/lams/question-bank/short-answers.md).

# Short Answers

## Create a Very Short Answer question

Use a very short answer (VSA) question when you want students to generate a brief response rather than select one from a list. A response will usually be a word, short phrase, name, value or concise technical expression.

VSA questions work well when the learning outcome requires students to recall or produce a precise answer without cues. With a suitable scenario, they can also assess applied knowledge—for example, identifying the most likely diagnosis, method, principle or next action.

Do not use a VSA question when several substantially different responses could be valid, when the answer requires explanation or justification, or when you need to judge the quality of reasoning. Use an essay, numerical or other appropriate question type instead.

### Before you create the question

Start with the learning outcome and decide what brief response would provide valid evidence of achievement. Write the expected answer before writing the question. If you cannot define the boundaries of an acceptable answer reliably, automatic short-answer marking is unlikely to be appropriate.

Decide whether you are assessing the underlying concept or the exact form of the response. Spelling, capitalisation, punctuation, abbreviations, word order and units should affect the mark only when they form part of the intended learning outcome.

The LAMS editor compares student text with answers that you author. This makes the quality and completeness of the recognised-answer lists part of the assessment design. A response that is conceptually correct but missing from the list can be misclassified unless the matching settings accommodate it.

### Create the question

1. Enter a short, distinctive **Question's title**.

   Use the title to identify and manage the item in the Question Bank. Include information that distinguishes it from similar items, such as the topic and cognitive demand. Do not put information here that students need in order to answer the question.
2. Enter the task in **Question's description**.

   State a complete, focused question. Make the expected scope and response format clear without revealing the answer. If you expect a unit, abbreviation, number of words or particular terminology, tell students explicitly.
3. Enter accepted responses in **Correct answers**.

   Enter one answer per line. Include legitimate variants that should receive credit, such as an accepted full term and abbreviation, when these variants measure the same knowledge.
4. Enter recognised wrong responses in **Incorrect answers**.

   Enter one response per line. Include predictable misconceptions or errors that you want LAMS to recognise as incorrect. Do not try to anticipate every possible wrong answer.
5. Add general feedback if it will help students learn from the task.
6. Review the advanced settings, tag the relevant learning outcome or outcomes, and select **Save**.

### Write an effective VSA question

* Ask for one clearly defined response.
* Keep the question focused enough that knowledgeable students are likely to express the answer in a small and predictable set of ways.
* Use authentic context only when it is relevant to the intended reasoning.
* Avoid copying distinctive wording from learning materials when this would reduce the task to phrase reproduction.
* Avoid unintended clues in grammar, units, field labels or surrounding questions.
* State whether students should provide a term, value, name, diagnosis, method or action.
* State the required units and acceptable precision for quantitative responses. Consider the numerical question type when numeric tolerance or equivalent notation matters.
* Do not ask for a list unless the number of required elements and the acceptable order are clear—and automatic matching can represent the valid combinations fairly.
* Keep the required response genuinely short. If a satisfactory answer needs several sentences, use a question type designed for extended responses.

VSA questions reduce the cueing that occurs when students can inspect supplied answer options. Comparative studies have found that well-designed VSA questions can provide reliable and discriminating evidence, although findings arise mainly from health-professions contexts and should not be generalised uncritically to every discipline ([Sam et al., 2018](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29388317/); [van Wijk et al., 2023](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37450485/)). A 2026 systematic review found promising discrimination and acceptable reliability, but also substantial variation across the small body of comparative studies ([BMC Medical Education, 2026](https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-026-09359-5)).

### Build the recognised-answer lists

#### Correct answers

Add every response form that should receive credit under your assessment criteria. Depending on the question, consider:

* the full name and an accepted abbreviation;
* singular and plural forms;
* regional spelling variants;
* a common hyphenated and unhyphenated form;
* equivalent terminology used in the course or discipline;
* diacritic and transliteration variants, when these are not being assessed; and
* alternative word orders that preserve the same meaning.

Do not add a variant merely because it resembles the correct answer. Decide whether it demonstrates the intended knowledge. An over-permissive list can award credit for an ambiguous or incomplete response; an under-permissive list can penalise students for irrelevant surface differences.

#### Incorrect answers

Use this list for known, meaningful errors rather than arbitrary text. Good candidates include:

* a common misconception;
* a closely related but incorrect concept;
* an answer that omits an essential qualifier;
* an incorrect unit or order of magnitude; or
* a predictable response generated by a particular reasoning error.

These responses can help you distinguish recognised misconceptions from previously unseen answers. Review how the receiving LAMS activity displays, scores or reports them before relying on that distinction.

Never place the same normalised response in both lists. Check for duplicates, invisible spaces and variants that may become identical when case or stemming rules are applied.

### Add feedback for students

Enter **General feedback** that remains useful across different response patterns. You can:

* state the expected answer and explain why it is appropriate;
* contrast it with a common misconception;
* provide a short worked reasoning path;
* clarify required terminology or units; or
* direct students to a relevant resource or follow-up activity.

The VSA editor provides one general feedback field rather than separate feedback for each recognised response. Avoid wording that assumes every incorrect student made the same error.

Feedback is most useful when students receive it in time to act on it. Check the settings of the activity that uses the banked question, because that activity determines when students can see feedback.

### Configure the advanced settings

#### Default question grade

Enter the overall mark or weight for the question. The interface accepts an integer, for example `1`, `5` or `10`.

Keep the weighting proportionate to the evidence supplied by one brief response. A one-word answer may represent sophisticated reasoning when it follows a well-designed scenario, but response length alone does not show cognitive demand. Preview the item and confirm the score produced by accepted, rejected and unrecognised responses.

#### Penalty factor

Enter the penalty that should apply in a context where students can make another attempt. The field accepts a floating-point number.

Use a penalty only when it serves a clear assessment purpose. Its effect can depend on how the receiving LAMS activity handles attempts, so test the question in that activity before relying on the calculation. Explain any penalty to students in advance. Be especially cautious when spelling or formatting differences could cause an otherwise valid response to be rejected.

#### Case sensitivity

Choose whether capitalisation affects answer matching. The default shown in the editor is **No, case is unimportant**.

Keep case unimportant when capitalisation is irrelevant to the learning outcome. Require matching case only when it carries meaning that you genuinely intend to assess, such as a case-sensitive symbol or notation. Do not penalise ordinary sentence capitalisation or typing habits when you are assessing conceptual knowledge.

Test examples before deployment, including all-capitals responses, initial capitals and discipline-specific symbols whose meaning changes with case.

#### Maximum number of words

Select **Maximum number of words**, then enter the permitted limit when you need to constrain response length.

Use the smallest limit that still accommodates every valid response form. Tell students about the limit in the question description. Check how LAMS counts hyphenated terms, symbols, numbers and punctuation before using the setting in consequential assessment.

A word limit encourages concise responses but does not resolve an ambiguous question. If students need qualifiers or reasoning to make their answer defensible, revise the task or choose another question type.

#### Student answer must exactly match expected answer

Turn this on when students should receive credit only for a response that exactly matches one of the expected answers under the configured case rule.

Exact matching is appropriate for tightly controlled codes, labels or terminology when the exact form is part of the construct. It is risky for ordinary language because an extra space, punctuation mark, spelling variant or equally valid synonym may change the result.

Before enabling exact matching:

* enumerate legitimate variants;
* test leading and trailing spaces, punctuation and multiple spaces;
* check singular, plural and inflected forms;
* test abbreviations and Unicode characters; and
* arrange a review process for unexpected responses when the assessment is high stakes.

Automatic classification should support consistent marking, not replace academic judgement when valid answers cannot be exhaustively predicted.

#### Autocomplete

Turn on **Autocomplete (as student types answer autocomplete with stemming from answers)** when you want LAMS to suggest recognised answers as the student types.

Autocomplete can make terminology entry faster and reduce irrelevant spelling or inflection errors. However, it also supplies cues and changes the task from unaided generation towards recognition. Do not enable it when independent recall is central to the learning outcome or when suggested answers could reveal the solution after only a few characters.

Stemming groups related word forms computationally; it does not establish that two responses are conceptually equivalent. Preview the student experience and test ambiguous stems, closely related technical terms and words from both the correct and incorrect lists.

#### Learning outcomes

Search by outcome name or code, then select every learning outcome for which the question provides meaningful evidence.

Tag the outcome at the level actually assessed. Producing a term without options can provide stronger evidence of recall than recognising it in an MCQ, but it does not automatically demonstrate explanation, evaluation or performance. A scenario-based VSA may assess application if students must interpret the scenario to generate the response.

Avoid tagging every broadly related outcome. Across an assessment, review the distribution of questions by outcome, cognitive demand and weighting so that Question Bank metadata supports meaningful blueprinting.

### Use VSA questions within a programme of assessment

Treat each VSA response as one data point. In programmatic assessment, individual assessment events should maximise learning and feedback, while consequential decisions draw on multiple data points collected over time ([van der Vleuten et al., 2012](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22364452/)).

VSA questions can complement MCQs by requiring students to generate rather than recognise an answer. They still provide only a narrow sample of performance. Combine them with other methods when outcomes include explanation, communication, creation, practical performance or professional judgement.

Frequent low-stakes VSA questions can support retrieval practice and reveal unprompted misconceptions. Their incorrect and unrecognised responses can also inform teaching and future item revision, provided you review them rather than treating automated classifications as infallible.

### Review responses after use

Response review is essential for maintaining a VSA question.

* Identify conceptually correct responses that were not recognised.
* Look for spelling, punctuation, spacing, case or word-order differences that should not affect credit.
* Identify ambiguous responses that the accepted list treated too generously.
* Group recurring incorrect answers by misconception or reasoning error.
* Check whether autocomplete disclosed too much of the answer.
* Compare performance with the intended cognitive demand and learning outcome.
* Correct marks through the appropriate assessment process when a valid response was misclassified.
* Add a new accepted variant only after deciding that it meets the assessment criterion.
* Record substantive changes as a new version so results from materially different matching rules are not treated as directly comparable.

For high-stakes use, plan human review of unrecognised and borderline responses. Research implementations of VSA assessment commonly combine computer classification with examiner review; efficient automation does not remove the need for quality assurance ([Sam et al., 2018](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29388317/)).

### Final check

Before you save or deploy the question, confirm that:

* the question measures a tagged learning outcome at the intended cognitive level;
* one brief response can answer it unambiguously;
* the expected format, units and word limit are clear;
* the correct list includes legitimate response variants;
* the incorrect list contains meaningful, defensible misconceptions;
* case sensitivity reflects the construct rather than typing conventions;
* exact matching will not penalise irrelevant surface differences;
* autocomplete does not undermine the intended recall task;
* the grade and any penalty behave as intended in the receiving activity;
* feedback helps students understand the answer or next step;
* the question is accessible to students using assistive technology or alternative input methods;
* you have planned how to review unrecognised responses; and
* you have previewed the question in the LAMS activity where students will answer it.


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```
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```

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