Square Root symbol over fill in the blank answers

Question

In a simplifying radicals fill in the blank question, I can type in the square root symbol just fine for the prompt, but I can't have an answer under the radical. First, is there a way to do this that I've missed? The best I've done is set up a table and have a top border on the answer that is under the radical (thanks @James for help on specific borders). This sort of looks OK, but I'm wondering if there is a better solution. Below is a screenshot of both the question and the code. TIA!

James · Accepted Answer

@JustinDavidson I would consider just putting a square root in the middle and not putting the vinculum over it. You may even increase the size of the radical to make it more prominent. Here's how I did that.

Simplify $\sqrt{24}$.

`2`

$\sqrt{}$

`6`

Canvas does not have good support for math content. To mimic the way we write mathematics is very difficult to do. It also breaks a lot of accessibility rules, so Canvas isn't going to enable them. Tables aren't supposed to be used for layouts. CSS doesn't show up to screen readers so they won't "see" the vinculum regardless of what you do. It doesn't matter to Canvas that you may not have any students that use a screen reader, Canvas is committed to accessibility and creating similar experiences whether a person is using a keyboard or mouse, desktop or phone, monitor or screen reader. A lot of math teachers want Canvas to be a full-fledge program like MyMathLab, WebAssign, WebWork, or MyOpenMath (list not intended to be complete) that recognizes math content and allows you to enter mathematical expressions. It's not specialized like those programs and I have seen no movement in the 12 years I've been using it towards providing that capability. It was something that could have been done back when New Quizzes was originally imagined. It was supposed to be an LTI that allowed you to embed questions into other content. It was to allow for flexibility in question types so that new question types could be added. If someone wanted to write a plugin for math content, they would be able to. It's not 4 names later and I forget how many years, but it's very different than what was originally touted. Many math and science instructors have asked for this over the years. Some want students to be able to enter an equation for their answer and then have Canvas grade the correctness of their image. Back then, it was an image, not LaTeX. Many times I wrote that you cannot grade √2 easily as a fill-in-the-blank question. People could put spaces in it, they could write sqrt(2), 2^0.5, 2^.5, 2^(1/2), 8^(1/6), (3-1)^.5, exp(0.5*ln(2)), and so on. You really need something that is designed to understand math. You've made some progress towards making it visually appealing, but you're going to run into roadblocks. That suggests that you may have to look for alternative, less written-math, ways to ask the questions. You can modify the question. That has the full radical over with the $a\sqrt{b}$ because it was written with the equation editor / MathJax. It separates their answer. I generated this with this code.

Simplify $\sqrt{24}$ and write your answer as $a\sqrt{b}$.

a = `2`, b=`6`

It probably would have looked better to put a and b on separate rows. You could implement restrictions on the width, it's just that table isn't really supposed to be used for that from an accessibility perspective. You could wrap things in a div and specify the width. Using white-space: nowrap will keep the a = on the same line as the input box.

Simplify $\sqrt{24}$ and write your answer as $a\sqrt{b}$.

a = `2`

b = `6`

I hate to add the padding, but it seems that New Quizzes runs the text too close together. I don't use New Quizzes much, but another reason for me not to switch. I probably would have added some padding to the bottom of the a = 2 paragraph.