Hints are used to give extra help to the students before an answer is attempted.
Hints are marked with a [h] tag.
Hints are useful in any situation where the student is allowed to make multiple attempts on an item. Especially so when it is desirable to have him reflect on the possible cause of his errors or have him refresh his memory about some concept recently learnt.
For instance, they can be used to support the student which has been unsuccessful so far in an open question or free writing exercise. They can also be used, in a mcq exercise that follows some narrative text to show the student the part of the text that the question refers to, as illustrated below.
[i] What are Jose and Viviane making?",
[h] French Toast... What a delicious recipe! What do I do first?
Hints can be define down to item level (they cannot be defined at option level).