Configuring a Matching Activity
Set up a matching activity's pairs and scoring in a roomy Configure dialog, opened right from the canvas.
A matching activity asks learners to connect prompts on the left with their correct answers on the right — great for term-to-definition, cause-to-effect, or word-to-translation practice. Its setup — the prompt/answer pairs and whether the answers are shuffled — lives in a dedicated Configure dialog with room to work, instead of being squeezed into the narrow right sidebar.
Opening the Configure dialog
Select a matching activity on the canvas. A floating ⚙ Configure button appears just above it.
Click ⚙ Configure to open the dialog. Alongside the settings you'll see a live preview of the matching activity, so you can see what it will look like on the canvas while you edit (you can't see the activity itself behind the dialog). From top to bottom the dialog has:
- Scoring — whether the activity contributes to the score. The Scoring switch, Points, and Group work the same for every scorable widget.
- Content — the pairs and the Randomize Matches option.
Setting up the content
Work in the Content section:
- Pairs — each pair has a Prompt (the left-side item) and a Match (the answer that correctly pairs with it), shown side by side as you edit them. Type into each field, or click the image button beside it to show a picture from your media library instead of text — handy for matching a photo to a word or a symbol to its name (the same picker the multiple choice widget uses; click the ✕ to clear an image). A side with a picture keeps its text box, now labelled Describe the picture: what you type there is what a screen reader says for the picture. Click Add Pair to add another, and use the trash button to remove one (a matching activity keeps at least one pair). The correct answer is simply the match you set alongside each prompt — there's no separate answer key.
- Randomize Matches — when on, the answer column is shuffled for each learner so the correct pairing isn't given away by position. The prompt column always stays in the order you entered it, and the shuffle never lines every answer up beside its own prompt. Turn it off if you want the answers to stay in the order you entered them.
Give every answer, and every prompt, different wording. Grading goes by pair, not by text, so two answers that both read "Bark" mean a learner can pick the one that looks right and still be marked wrong. The dialog warns you when two answers or two prompts read the same.
Reading the choices aloud
The Read choices aloud section sets whether the cards in both columns can say themselves for children who can't read yet: Off (the default), Tap to hear, tap again to choose, or Speaker on each choice. With it on you also choose Read all, the Voice (the lesson's narration voice or the device's voice), and press Generate audio for all choices to make every clip at once. Each side of a pair gets Spoken words (leave blank to use its text) and Say nothing. See Matching Widget for how students use it.
Grading the matching activity
Scoring is on by default, so the dialog opens with the shared on/off, points, and group controls already at the top. Because the correct pairing is defined by the pairs you entered, there's nothing else to mark — a learner's answer is graded against the prompt/match pairs directly.
If you're using the matching activity only to branch the scene rather than to grade it, turn Scoring off.
Saving your changes
Nothing you change in the dialog affects the widget until you save it. The canvas keeps showing the last saved version while you work.
- Save applies your Content and Scoring changes to the widget.
- Cancel throws the changes away and leaves the widget as it was. Pressing Esc, clicking the ✕, or clicking outside the dialog does the same thing. If you've made changes, you'll be asked to confirm before they're discarded, so an accidental click can't lose your work.
What stays in the sidebar
Only Content and Scoring move into the Configure dialog. Style & Layout — the colors, font size, gap, border radius, and cursor — still lives in the right sidebar, the same as every other widget. So do the activity's behaviors/triggers, visibility, and position. Select the widget and the sidebar shows its Style & Layout settings while the dialog handles the pairs and scoring.
A few things to know about the style settings:
- The text uses your lesson's theme font in bold. There is no separate font picker for matching; change the lesson theme to change it.
- On the canvas, items are drawn with the Border color, the same as a learner sees before they start.
- Selected Color outlines the item a learner has picked, and Highlight Color colors the connecting lines while they work.
- Correct Color and Wrong Color only appear after a Submit button locks the activity. They color each connecting line, not the items.