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Charting

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This lesson provides step-by-step guidance on creating a Charting item in the Item Bank. This item type allows for students to directly interact with a bar chart, histogram, line chart, or dot/line plot, by dragging each category to the correct value. This question type can be administered online only, offers relative scoring, and is automatically scored.

Before You Begin

This lesson begins assuming that users have the permissions to create new Item Bank items, and are familiar with the item creation process. To learn more about creating Item Bank items, take a look at the Create Items article.

Create Charting Item

General Item Settings and Configure Chart

An example Charting item type, with Item Type labeled as step 1, Link Passage labeled as step 2, the Include Teacher Instructions toggle labeled as step 3, the Scoring Model options labeled as step 4, the Question field labeled as step 5, Chart Type labeled as step 6, Max Value labeled as step 7, the Grid and Label Intervals labeled as step 8, and the Dimensions labeled as step 9.
  1. Select the Charting item type.
  2. (Optional) Choose one or more passages by selecting Link Passage.
    • Passages must be published and located in the same Work Space to be available for linking.
  3. Use the slider to determine if the item should Include Teacher Instructions.
    • If the slider is set to Yes, enter teacher instructions into the text box.
  4. Select the desired Scoring Model.
    • All or Nothing: Points are only awarded for the item when all answers are correct. Enter the amount of Total Possible Points into the text box.
    • Relative: Points are awarded relative to the number of correct answers. Enter the amount of Relative Points Awarded for each chart category formatted correctly. The Total Possible Points field automatically updates according to the highest relative points value.
  5. Enter the Question in the text box.
  6. Use the dropdown menu to select the Chart Type.
Chart Types
Histogram
An example Histogram.

The Histogram chart type is visually styled as a histogram; however, it does not offer some typical histogram features. The labels for the bars are just text, which the system does not understand as representing numeric ranges, or “buckets.” Therefore, if the buckets are uneven (e.g., if the last bucket were 21-50 instead of 21-30), the width of the bars will not be adjusted accordingly. It is therefore recommended that the Histogram chart type only be used with equal-width buckets.

Bar Chart, Line Chart, Line Chart X
An example of a Bar Chart, Line Chart dot, and Line Chart x.

The Bar Chart, Line Chart ⬤, and Line Chart X charts use an explicit numerical scale, determined by the item author.

Dot/Line Plots
An example of a Dot/Line Plot Dot chart and a Dot/Line Plot x chart.

The Dot/Line charts' numeric scales are implicit:

  • Dot/Line Plot ⬤ - Each ⬤ represents a single object.
  • Dot/Line Plot X - Each X  represents a single object.
  1. Set the Maximum Value.
    • For bar charts, line charts, and histograms, the maximum value can be as high as 10,000, or as low as 0.05.
    • For dot/line plots, the maximum value must be between 3 and 10.
  2. Set the Grid Interval and Label Interval (for bar charts, line charts, and histograms; not applicable for dot/line plots).
    • Grid interval: The distance, in chart units, between grid lines. All category values can only be changed at this increment. For instance, if the grid interval is 0.5, then a category could be set to 0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, etc., but not to 0.7 or 0.25. The valid range of values for the grid interval will be constrained based on the other settings, particularly Max Value, and a default value will be set accordingly. For instance, at the default chart height of 480px, with a maximum value of 10, the grid interval could be 2, 1, 0.5, or 0.25. It is usually best not to use the very smallest value that the system will allow, as that will result in very closely spaced gridlines, which makes precise plotting tricky.
    • Label interval: The distance, in chart units, between grid line numeric labels. Often it will be the same as the grid interval, but when gridlines are closely spaced, labeling every gridline may make the labels illegible. The valid range of values for label interval will be constrained based on other settings. For instance, at the default chart height of 480px, with a maximum value of 10 and a grid interval of 0.5, the label interval will be constrained to 0.5, 1, or 2.
  3. (Optional) Set the chart Dimensions in pixels.
    • Chart dimensions default to 480x480 pixels. It is generally best to initially leave these values as they are, and make adjustments as needed. For instance, if the graph has a lot of categories, or if the category names are long, users can increase the width to accommodate them. Users can likewise increase the height to accommodate a higher max value or smaller grid interval, or to increase spacing between grid lines.
    • Conversely, once finished creating the chart, if it needs less vertical or horizontal space than it is using, the height and width can be reduced accordingly.
    • Pixel scales are provided above and to the right of the chart to aid in the selection of appropriate numeric values. These are only shown in authoring, not when an item is delivered to students.

Define Initial Chart Attributes

An example of the Define Initial Chart Attributes section, with Add Category labeled as step 10, the chart title labeled as step 11, the category bar labeled as step 12, the axis labels labeled as step 13, and the trashcan icon labeled as step 14.
  1. Select Add Category to create chart categories. Each category will initially display the label Category; select and type over the text to update the label.
  2. (Optional) Select Click here to add a title to enter a title for the chart.
  3. (Optional) All new categories default to an initial value of 0; whatever values are set here are what students will see when the item is initially opened. To set a value other than 0, select the arrow slider, dot, or X, and slide to the new value.
  4. (Optional) Select Click here to add a label for this axis to enter a label for the horizontal and/or vertical axes.
    • For example, if the categories are January, February, and March, the axis label might be Month.
  5. Use the trashcan icon to delete unwanted categories, if necessary.
Click to copy

Define Correct Responses

An example of the Define Correct Response section, with the bar slider labeled as step 15, Rationale labeled as step 16, and the Save and Next buttons labeled as step 17.
  1. Depending on the type of chart selected, select either the slider, dot, or X, and drag to the correct value.
    • The bar or line will deepen in shade when being edited.
    • A student's response will only be recognized as correct if every category precisely matches the correct answer defined here. The correct response cannot be identical to the initial chart configuration, although it is okay for some categories to have the same initial value and correct value. (E.g. one bar could be pre-set to the correct value as a model; if most or all bars have the initial value 0, it is okay for that to also be the correct value for some of them.)
  2. (Optional) Add Rationale for the correct answer.
  3. Select Save to save the item progress, or select Next to save and continue to the next step.

Next Steps

To learn more about creating different item types, take a look at the other articles in the Item Types manual.

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