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Ranking text question

The Ranking text question type evaluates a learner’s ability to arrange items in the correct order.

María Isabel Zuleta Zapata avatar
Written by María Isabel Zuleta Zapata
Updated over a week ago

The Ranking text question asks learners to rank items based on preference or importance.

This question type is especially useful for testing methodologies or procedures that involve multiple steps. For example, you can use it to check whether learners understand how to:

  • Carry out a safety or troubleshooting procedure

  • Identify the correct sequence of actions or events

  • Recognize levels of gradation (e.g., from most to least important)

How to create a text-ranking question in Easygenerator

You can create Ranking Text questions either from your course outline or directly within a section:

  1. Click + Add item to add a Ranking Text question to your course outline,
    or click + Add page to insert it directly into a section.

  2. Add a question title and instructions.

  3. Enter the answer options in the correct order (from top to bottom). Click Add answer option button to create more options.

  4. Add question feedback for correct and incorrect answers.

    Note: You can copy, delete, or reorder answer options at any time while creating the question. Hover over an answer option and select the desired action.

Tips for writing effective Ranking text questions

  • Make the question instruction direct and meaningful, clearly stating a specific problem that aligns with the learning objective.

  • Avoid negative phrases unless absolutely necessary – this may confuse learners. 

  • Limit the number of items to 7. More than 7 items may make the task confusing for learners.

  • Ensure the order is unambiguous, and that each item has a clear, distinct position in the list.

  • Keep all items parallel in structure, similar in length, and consistent in grammar.

  • If you have a long list of items to be ranked, consider grouping them into categories and creating multiple smaller ranking questions instead of one large one.

    For example, if you have a list of 20 items, divide them into 3-4 categories with 5-7 items each, and ask learners to rank the items within each category.

    Breaking large ranking tasks into smaller, more manageable assessments may increase the total number of questions, but it makes the activity easier and more effective for learners.

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