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Tests and Quizzes

From Information about Isaak, Brock University's Sakai-Based LMS

To complete the procedures in this article, you must be assigned a role having the necessary permissions. This often excludes Students and TAs by default. To determine your role, follow the directions in Participant roles.

For a basic understanding of roles and permissions, see Permissions and roles.

1 About
2 Articles about important Tests and Quizzes elements
3 Key Concepts
4 Common Tasks
- 4.1 Instructors
- 4.2 Students
5 Video
6 Things to consider and known issues
7 Related Articles

[edit] About

This tool allows you to create online assessments (i.e., tests, quizzes, and surveys) for delivery via a web interface to your students or other groups. You will use it mainly to administer tests, but you may also create assessments to gather survey information or informal course feedback.

You can include multiple question types in an assessment, including ones that require your students to upload files. You then can choose how to organize, deliver, and collect that assessment. You can choose to scramble questions so that they appear in a different order for each student. Questions can be organized into question pools, allowing you to re-use questions. You can also import previously created tests and surveys.

Most grading is done automatically, and grades can be posted automatically to the Gradebook.

By configuring an assessment's settings, you can control a wide range of conditions for taking an assessment. For example, to specify locations for taking an assessment you can indicate a range of IP addresses. Via the settings, you can determine when an assessment will become available, set time limits, determine how many times a student can take an assessment, and indicate whether or not late submissions will be allowed.

[edit] Articles about important Tests and Quizzes elements

There are two methods for creating new Tests and Quizzes:
1. The common web based method of Creating a new assessment by entering questions followed by an answer(s) and distractors
2. The Quick Create method which emulates how one might type out a test or quiz in a word processor or on a typewriter
Calculating Final Grades
Add Questions to Question Pool
View Student Scores And Answers
Taking an assessment

[edit] Key Concepts

[edit] Creating a test

When you click Create on the Assessments page, you are naming and setting up the test, and entering the assessment editor. From here, you can go on to create the test content, including questions and the parts (i.e., sections) that will contain them.

"Create" allows the user more controls at the time of quiz creation. For example, randomize questions, providing feedback for right or wrong answers.
"Markup Text" is much quicker but does not allow tweaking of settings.

[edit] Question editor

Click Here

This tool makes use of the Sakai Text Editor.

Our Text Editor article includes a number of tips including how to add images or paste content from MS Word.

Within the question editor, you not only create the question and its possible answers, but you can assign the question to a part or a question pool, add feedback and metadata, and choose whether or not to require a rationale.

[edit] Parts

Every assessment must contain at least one part (i.e., section). Each new assessment will include an automatically created part called "Default". If you do not change the "Default" part's name, its heading (i.e., gray divider) will not appear on your assessment. Any questions or images you place in this part will appear; only the heading will be hidden.

[edit] Settings

From the Assessments page, you can view and modify the settings for all your assessments. Within the settings, you can create an introduction for your assessment, determine its delivery dates and to whom it will be released, set security levels, specify time limits and the number of submissions allowed, add graphics, feedback, and metadata, and determine how the assessment will be graded.

To make your quiz visible to students, be sure to click on "Save Settings and Publish".

More on Test and Quizzes settings can be found in the articles:

Test and Quizzes: Settings

Test and Quizzes: Settings: Frequently Asked Questions collection

[edit] Question Pools

You can organize questions into question pools so that you can reuse them in other assessments. You can subdivide question pools into subpools to organize questions by subject matter, section number, question type, or any other criteria desired. For example, an instructor can create a question pool called "Biology 105", and then create subpools called "Basic concepts", "Cell biology", and "Genetics".

{{Template:Side NoteNote: You cannot share your question pools with other instructors within the application; question pools are available only to those who create them. You can, however, export a question pool and give the file to another instructor, who can then import it.}}

[edit] Common Tasks

[edit] Instructors

Creating a new assessment These are also the same steps for creating an anonymous survey, just be sure to choose the relevant options and add some explanatory text for participants about the test-taking terminology.
Publishing an assessment
- Republishing an assessment for a subset of students for extra time or other considerations
Modify Test and Quizzes Settings

[edit] Students

[edit] Video

YouTube/Podcast - Assignments / Tests and Quizzes


Find more videos for instructors at the Welcome To Sakai Webinar article, or look in the Video Category

[edit] Things to consider and known issues

Issue: Surveys/Quizzes with more than ~400 questions often refuse to be exported to Excel etc. This is better than the previous ~200. Other solutions are being explored https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAM-846 and the CTLET currently has options to work around this bug.

This is a known issue and the Sakai Project has been notified.

You can track the progress here:
http://jira.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-16560

It can take a few tries for students to feel comfortable taking online tests. Consider setting up a practice run in a lab environment.
Assume all the issues concerning take-home exams also apply to online tests.
Consider linking a test or survey to a Schedule item.
The feedback settings for your test can be important. The tool can grade only true/false, multiple choice, and fill-in-the-blank question types; it can't grade short answer/essay or file upload questions at all. If your assessment includes questions that you'll need to grade by hand, you might prefer that your students not see the results of their automatically graded questions until you have reviewed the whole test.
Note: You should not use the feedback option in Tests & Quizzes when assessing learning, as it may provide information students can use to correct their answers before submitting a test.
If the application times out while a student is working on your assessment, there is a chance the student's work will be lost. The time out settings for the application are determined by the system administrators.
Surveys/Quizzes with more than 400 questions/responses often refuse to be exported to Excel etc.