Dropdown Problem Comparator Research

In general, no other platform investigated implements dropdown problems the same way that Open edX does. Dropdowns are only used for cloze-style gap-fill/blank filling questions, and their use and labelling is much more opinionated than in Open edX, where it is a simple input type that can be attached to any question. A general search shows many survey tools using dropdown questions, but few quiz tools and LMSes use them in this way as anything other than cloze input types.

While support for this feature is poor outside of the academic use-case, as exemplified by Moodle, dropdowns are a useful problem type that is needed in Open edX. At best, they are useful for the Cloze method or “fill-in-the-blank” style questions, and at worst they provide learners with an alternative way of engaging with a problem that could otherwise be structured as a simple multiple choice question.