Some concepts require students to identify multiple valid conditions. Others test relational knowledge or procedural order. Forcing every learning objective into a single-choice format degrades the quality of the evidence you collect about student understanding.
Online Exams expands its assessment toolkit. You can now build a single exam using a combination of four distinct question types:
- Multiple-choice
- Multiple-select
- Matching
- Sequencing
This is not just a feature update. It is a shift toward more precise assessment design, without adding administrative overhead.
Four formats. Distinct cognitive tasks.
Different learning objectives require different ways to demonstrate competence. Here is how each format serves a specific purpose in your exam.
Multiple-choice: one correct answer
The standard for discrete decisions. Use this when a student needs to identify a single correct definition, interpret a specific result, or select the appropriate method from a list. The rigour comes from the quality of the distractors, not the format itself.
Multiple-select: several correct answers
Real-world problems rarely have only one contributing factor. A system failure might have three plausible root causes; a clinical scenario might present multiple relevant symptoms. Multiple-select questions require students to evaluate every option independently and identify all correct answers while excluding the incorrect ones. This removes the guesswork advantage built into single-choice formats and tests a deeper level of discrimination.
Matching: relational mapping
Some knowledge is fundamentally about connections. Students need to link a technical term to its definition, a protocol to its purpose, or a cause to its effect. Instead of bloating your exam with five separate multiple-choice questions to test these pairs, a matching question assesses the whole set of relationships in a single, cohesive interaction. It is efficient for the student to answer and efficient for you to read.
Sequencing: procedural order
Knowing the components of a process does not mean a student knows how to carry it out. A laboratory procedure, a sorting algorithm or a troubleshooting workflow will fail if the steps are performed out of order.
Sequencing questions ask students to arrange items into the correct chronological or logical order. This is the most direct way to assess procedural knowledge and dependency.
One exam. A variety of questions. Zero additional friction.
Adding variety to an assessment should not complicate the exam experience or your grading workflow. We built these question types to fit into the existing Online Exams architecture.
- A unified student experience. Students meet every question type in the same clean, device-agnostic interface. They do not need to learn new interaction patterns, download plugins, or switch between testing modules. They read, they answer, they submit.
- Automatic, server-side grading. As with multiple-choice, these formats are graded automatically by the platform. You get immediate, structured data on student performance, including question-level statistics, without manually reviewing a single response. (Read more about what automatic grading is actually for.)
- No new administration. The workflow is unchanged. Build the exam, mix the question types as needed, share the QR code or link, and review the results. No student accounts to manage. No separate software to maintain.
You now have four precise tools in a single platform, so you can build exams that reflect the actual complexity of your subject.