Overview

A quiz assessment presents the learner with a set of questions that they can answer online.

A quiz assessment is a great way to quickly assess a learner's understanding of a topic. Since a quiz that doesn't include freeform questions can be graded automatically, it's also time-efficient. Multiple question banks can be used to ensure that each learner gets a different set of randomly selected questions. Quiz assessments often have a completion threshold at the end of a module to ensure that a learner can only proceed to the next module once they've reached a certain level of competency.

To add a quiz, go to the Assessments tab, then click Add and select quiz.

Questions

When a quiz assessment is initially created, it's initialized with a single empty private question bank that has the same name as the assessment. A private bank is "owned" by the assessment, and no one else can see it, and when you delete the assessment, the question bank is also deleted. To associate questions banks and questions with a quiz assessment, go to its 'Questions' tab. Here you can add multiple question banks to the quiz by clicking "Add question bank".

You can select to add a new question bank or one from the library.

If you add a new question bank, you can specify if it's a private or shared bank.

If you select Shared, then you can specify its description, subject, and which library in the Resources Catalog it's placed, just as if you were adding the question bank via the Resources Catalog.

After the question banks are added, you can edit and remove them by clicking the appropriate icons, and you can reorder them using drag and drop. Please note that you can only remove a private bank from the list of banks once you've explicitly deleted all its questions. Also, note that when editing a bank, you can only switch it from Shared to Private if you have editing privileges for the bank and the quiz is the only one that is using the question bank.

Add questions to question banks

You can add questions to the private question bank manually or by importing QTI.

Shared question banks can be edited only via the Resources Catalog by users who have editing rights. Click on "View question bank" to visit the shared bank in the Resources Catalog.

If you have editing rights, you can choose to add questions manually or import QTI. 

Adding questions manually

To add questions one by one, click "Add questions".

A pop-up will open where you can select the types of questions to add.

The type of questions available are:

 True or false

The answer to this type of question can only be true or false. A correct answer gets full points, and an incorrect answer gets zero points.

You can add a correction box for questions where the correct answer is "False". Click "Yes" under Correction and enter the correct answer and the correction weight. If a learner selects "False", then a box will be displayed where they can enter the correct answer. If the learner enters an incorrect phrase, the percentage specified as "Correction weight" will be subtracted from the question's points.

You can also give feedback to learners for both the True and False answers.

The feedback will be displayed after the learner responds to the question.

Multiple choice (one answer)

The answer to this type of question is selected from a set of choices. A correct answer gets full points, and an incorrect answer gets zero points.

Each correct answer that does not have an override % is allocated an equal percentage so that all the correct answers add up to 100%. Each incorrect answer that does not have an override % is allocated an equal percentage so that all the incorrect answers add up to -100%. In general, you can omit an override % unless you want certain answers to be more important than others.

Multiple choice (many answers)

The answer to this type of question is selected from a set of choices. Each choice can add or subtract a specified percentage from the total number of points associated with the question. A negative score is rounded up to zero.

Fill in the blanks

The answer to this type of question is a set of words, one for each blank in the question. Each blank can have one or more right answers. The score is based on the percentage of blanks that are filled in correctly. When matching is done, the case of the letters is ignored. Write your question, and remember to write 'BLANK' for each blank that you want to be filled in. Under Blanks, write the missing words in the order that they show up in the question. 

Freeform

The answer to this type of question is text together with some optional attachments. Attachments can be any kind of file, such as a Word document, a PDF file, a PowerPoint presentation, or some graphics.

When adding a freeform question, you can enter an optional correct answer, and you can define when to show it to learners under "Require a score before showing correct answer". If you set it to "No", then the correct answer is shown in instant feedback mode or at the end of the quiz. Note that this option is set to "Yes" by default, meaning that you have to grade the question in order to show the correct answer.

Matching

The answer to this type of question is a set of matches between two sets of items. The score is based on the percentage of matches that are correct.

Arithmetic

The answer to this kind of question is a number. The operators can be addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*) and/or division (/). The number and range of the operands can be specified.

Some questions can be entered in "Text mode" (the default) or 'HTML mode', in which case this option appears at the top of the form. Use HTML mode for entering questions that require images, links, or audio.

Hotspot

The hotspot question allows you to upload a picture and then associate different regions of a picture with a label. To add a hotspot question, select "Hotspot" from the "add question" pop-up.

Enter the question, associate the points, then upload a picture by clicking the "Add picture" button.

After the picture is uploaded, click a shape and use the mouse to draw that shape on the appropriate region of the picture. We support circles, rectangles, and polygons.

For each shape, enter its associated label. When you finish adding the shapes and labels, you can save the question.

When taking the quiz, learners can drag the labels to the region of the picture that they think is associated with the label and get points proportionate to the regions that they label correctly.

Import QTI

To learn how to import a question bank, click here.

When the questions are added, you can use drag and drop to reorder them within a bank.

When all the questions are added, you can print the quiz and answer key to have it in an offline format. Note that to print the questions from the shared question bank, first you have to visit it in the Library.

Tagging questions

You can add tags to questions in a question bank and then select questions based on tags. For example, you could tag 5 questions in a question bank with #easy and 5 with #hard, then create a quiz that picks 2 #easy questions at 1 point and 3 #hard questions at 2 points.

To start adding tags click on the question.

Then click on "add" next to Tags.

You can add as many tags as you like by typing a comma to separate them. When you are entering the tags, the autocomplete option includes tags that were previously entered by you or anyone else on your site.

To remove tags, click on their "X".

When you are finished adding the tags, click on "save".

If "Advanced tagging" was enabled by the administrator and a tag group was associated with questions, when trying to create/edit a question, you will be prompted to select a tag value. To learn more about "Advanced tagging", please visit the Tags topic.

Settings for question banks

By default, all the questions in a bank are used when generating a quiz, and the points per question are the face value shown next to each question. You can replace this default rule with as many selectors as you like. To override the default setting, click [ change ] next to "All questions in the bank are selected".

Enter the number of questions to select from the bank and the points per question. Please note that you cannot set the points per question field to be blank since the platform needs to be able to calculate the total points that the bank is worth before the quiz is taken.

After selecting the number of questions and points per question, you can select competencies and add tags as part of the selector. The selector allows you to mix and match competencies with tags. Please note that you can only select competencies and add tags if the "Questions selected each time the question is taken" is not equal to "All".

If a course has associated competencies, then the question selector pop-up will include the Competencies dropdown, and you can click on it to select quiz questions based on their associated competencies. For example, you can create a quiz that uses 2 questions that test "Basic design knowledge" and 3 questions that test "Frame techniques". Please note that if you specify more than one competency, then all the specified competencies must be associated with the question for it to be selected.

The tags are selected via autocomplete, and you can add as many tags as you like into a single selector. When you are finished, click Save. 

If you override the question selection rule, the new rule is shown above the question bank. To edit or remove a selector, click the appropriate links.

To add another selector to the question bank, click "add selector".

When a quiz is generated, the following rules are used:

Please note that because of these rules, you should be careful when adding selectors and check that they can all be satisfied under any condition. Otherwise, learners may get a quiz with less than the expected number of questions.

If you configure a quiz to select questions randomly, we loop through each bank and use its associated question selection rule to randomly select questions from each bank. Then we randomize the final set of selected questions before presenting them to the learner. 

If you don't configure a quiz to select questions randomly, we loop through each bank and use its associated question selection rule to select the first N questions from each bank, and then we use the final set of selected questions in the order they were selected.

Adding competencies to quiz questions

You can add competencies to individual quiz questions. Please note that if you add competencies to a question, they will replace the existing assessment competencies.  

Each score for a question that has competencies is considered to be a separate data point for mastering that competency. For example, if you have two questions in a quiz assessment that are associated with the competency X, and the learner scores 5 out of 10 on one question and 8 out of 10 on the following question, then their rating for competency X would be the best (80%) or average (65%) depending on the mastery option settings for that course. Note that we don't currently support tagging questions with competencies in question banks, but we're going to add that later this year.

To add competencies to a quiz question, visit the question and click on the Set competencies tab.

Select the competencies, then click Save. 

To edit competencies, click on Edit. To remove all competencies for the question, click on Clear. 

If you visit the Questions tab for a quiz assessment, questions that have competencies are indicated with a green tag, and if you hover over the tag, the competencies are displayed.

For more details on competencies, please visit the Mastery topic. 

Assessment settings 

The 'Assessment' section allows you to set up different options for your quiz. Click on Edit to change your settings. 

In the Overview section, you can set up the following:

After the quiz is added, you can override the default "quiz timer", "allow late submission", and "max attempts" settings on a per-learner basis. Go to the learner's submission via the assessment's Grades tab.

Then click "edit" in the right column.

Enter the new settings, then click Save.

To set a minimum score requirement, visit the Completion tab.

Preview

To preview a quiz assessment, click "Take quiz" under Instructions.  

Submissions

To submit an answer, a learner clicks on "Take quiz", enters their answers, and clicks Finished.

Depending on the navigation options that are enabled, a learner can move to a question using the Next and Previous options, the pull-down question menu, or by clicking a position in the question grid.

If the quiz is not timed, a learner can click Pause to pause the quiz, in which case they can resume the quiz by clicking on "Resume quiz" in the assessment's submission section. Similarly, if the quiz is not timed, a learner can cancel a quiz submission by clicking on Cancel from the top right, in which case the submission is discarded and does not count as a submission attempt.

When the answers are submitted, the results are displayed according to the "Configure settings" described above. If a quiz contains free-form questions, learners are reminded that their grade is not final since the computer cannot grade this kind of question, and the instructor must grade them instead.

If a learner wants to retake a quiz and they have not exceeded the maximum number of submissions, they can click "Retake quiz".

If "autocomplete on retake" is enabled, if you retake a quiz, it uses the same questions in the same order as before and automatically copies across all the answers that were 100% correct. It includes all the questions in the quiz but automatically skips the ones that you got right before when you start the quiz and when you click Previous or Next. 

Learners can see their latest submissions in the Submissions tab. If they have more than one submission, they can click History to see the history of all submissions.

To access a particular submission, they can click its icon under Show.

Grading

To grade a learner's submission (only necessary if you want to excuse the assessment, grade freeform questions, or override the computerized scores), click their icon in the "To grade" tab. 

To see the time taken for the quiz to be submitted by a learner, go to the Course/Learners area, and view the learner's activity listing.

The time will be indicated after the quiz assessment.

Exporting results

To export a CSV file of the quiz results, click "Export" in the Analytics area.