Two new question types are now live in PaperScorer: matching/association and ordering. Both auto-grade from a scanned answer sheet, which means you can now cover a much wider range of assessment formats without losing the speed advantage of auto-grading.
What matching questions look like
Matching questions present students with two sets of items and ask them to pair them. The classic format:
- Left column: a list of terms, concepts, or stems
- Right column: a list of definitions, examples, or matching items
- Student's job: draw a line or mark bubbles indicating which pairs go together
Good use cases:
- Vocabulary to definitions
- Historical figures to events
- Authors to works
- Symptoms to diagnoses
- Chemical formulas to names
On a PaperScorer answer sheet, matching questions appear as a grid of bubbles. A student marks the intersection that represents their pairing. The scanner reads all pairings in one pass.
What ordering questions look like
Ordering questions ask students to arrange items in a specific sequence. Formats:
- Chronological: "Arrange these events in the order they occurred."
- Procedural: "Put these steps in the correct order to solve the equation."
- Hierarchical: "Rank these from smallest to largest."
- Logical: "Arrange these sentences to form a coherent paragraph."
Students mark the position (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) for each item. The scanner reads all positions at once, and PaperScorer scores based on the correct sequence.
Why these matter
Before these types shipped, teachers who wanted to test matching or ordering had two options:
- Use multiple choice as a substitute — awkward and often clumsy
- Hand-grade these questions — slow
Neither fits well in an auto-graded workflow. Now matching and ordering live alongside multiple choice, true/false, yes/no, and numeric response as fully auto-graded types.
Good for procedural knowledge
Ordering questions are particularly strong for testing procedural understanding — "do you know the correct steps?" — which multiple choice often misses. If you teach a process (how to solve an equation, how to run a lab protocol, how a historical event unfolded), ordering questions catch misconceptions that MC can paper over.
Partial credit
Both types support partial credit scoring. For matching, students can get credit for partially correct pairings — you decide the weighting. For ordering, there are a few common scoring approaches:
- Exact match only — all items must be in correct positions for full credit
- Per-item credit — each correctly placed item earns proportional credit
- Adjacent-swap tolerance — credit for items that are close to correct (common in ranking tasks)
PaperScorer lets you pick the approach per question.
Usage caps on free and Pro plans
Matching and ordering questions are available on all plans. On Free and Pro, there's a per-test usage cap (10 of each type per assessment) to keep the auto-grading engine performant. Enterprise has no cap.
Creating your first matching or ordering question
- Start a new assessment or edit an existing one
- Add a question, then choose "Matching" or "Ordering" from the type menu
- Enter your items (up to 10 for matching pairs; up to 10 for ordering sequences)
- Set the correct pairings or sequence
- Generate and print
Students see the question and matching/ordering grid on the printed test. The scanner handles the rest.
What's next
Matching and ordering were the two most-requested question types in our user feedback. The roadmap still has more — stay tuned for updates. In the meantime, try these out on your next assessment and let us know how they work in your classroom.
