Create and Edit a Quiz

Quizzes can be used to sup­port stu­dent learn­ing, as part of their over­all eval­u­a­tion or with lit­tle or no over­all final grade val­ue. They are used to engage learn­ers inter­ac­tive­ly, offer­ing imme­di­ate feed­back and per­son­al­ized pac­ing, which in turn fos­ters deep com­pre­hen­sion and con­ve­nient, flex­i­ble study. As an instruc­tor, you will also gain insights into your stu­dents’ per­for­mance, enabling data-dri­ven enhance­ments.

You can find the Quizzes tool under the Activ­i­ties menu. This tool lets you build online quizzes that can be grad­ed auto­mat­i­cal­ly or reviewed man­u­al­ly with­in Bright­space. It also includes the Ques­tion Library which allows you to orga­nize and reuse your ques­tions across oth­er tools, such as Self-Assess­ments and Sur­veys.

The Ques­tion Library is a cen­tral loca­tion where you can cre­ate, orga­nize, and man­age all your quiz ques­tions. It’s acces­si­ble from Quizzes, Self-Assess­ments, and Sur­veys, and works much like a file man­ag­er, but for ques­tions. It’s best to build your ques­tions in the Ques­tion Library first. This keeps them safe­ly stored, allows you to reuse them across activ­i­ties, and pre­vents data loss if a quiz is delet­ed. You can also import pub­lish­er or exter­nal ques­tions here and edit them before mak­ing them avail­able to stu­dents. If you did­n’t cre­ate your ques­tions in the Ques­tion Library you can always copy them back to the Ques­tion Library.

Creating New Questions

  1.   Once in the Ques­tion Library, click the New But­ton.
  2.  Choose Sec­tion and give it a name (e.g., Mid-term). Click Save.

*NOTE: Sec­tions group relat­ed ques­tions, mak­ing it eas­i­er to orga­nize and reuse them when build­ing quizzes. You can also shuf­fle ques­tions with­in a sec­tion so each learn­er sees them in a dif­fer­ent order.

  1. Select the Sec­tion you just cre­at­ed and click New.
  2.  Choose the Ques­tion type. Click to view what ques­tion types that are auto­mat­i­cal­ly eval­u­at­ed.
  3.  Add the rel­e­vant ques­tion text, includ­ing any mate­r­i­al from the HTML bar.
  4.  Choose the points val­ue for the ques­tion and the dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el for the ques­tion.
  5. Click Save or Save and New (this allows you to imme­di­ate­ly add more ques­tions).

 Importing Existing Questions

  1. Once in the Ques­tion Library, click the Import But­ton and either select Upload a File or Browse Exist­ing Ques­tions.
  • Bright­space only sup­ports the upload of for­mat­ted text files (CSV) or IMS QTI com­pli­ant course pack­ages (ZIP). Algo­nquin Col­lege has cre­at­ed a Quiz Ques­tion Gen­er­a­tor that pro­vides an easy way to cre­ate a col­lec­tion of ques­tions that can be import­ed into Bright­space.
  • Browse Exist­ing Ques­tions allows you to essen­tial­ly copy ques­tions from exist­ing course quizzes into the Ques­tion Library. Watch the video below to learn how to copy exist­ing quiz ques­tions back into the library.

Quizzes can include a vari­ety of ques­tion types such as: mul­ti­ple-choice, true/false, short answer and essay prompts. You can cus­tomize quizzes to fit your spe­cif­ic needs by set­ting time lim­its, adding release con­di­tions, ran­dom­iz­ing ques­tions, adding hints and more. To begin cre­at­ing a quiz fol­low the steps below.

Create a New Quiz

  1. Nav­i­gate to Activ­i­ties > Quizzes.
  2. Click New Quiz.
  1. Title the quiz and choose whether or not you want to add it to the grade­book. If the quiz in Not in Grade Book the total points will reflect total points of ques­tions. If the quiz is In Grade Book, the total points will reflect the max­i­mum points of the asso­ci­at­ed grade item.
  1. Add a Due Date and a Descrip­tion (Instruc­tions) for the Quiz. 

  1. Under Ques­tions, click Add Exist­ing (if you’ve already cre­at­ed ques­tions in the Ques­tion Library) and choose the appro­pri­ate option OR click Cre­ate New if you’re cre­at­ing a ques­tion that does­n’t already exist with­in the Ques­tion Library.

*NOTE: A Ques­tion Pool allows you to choose a select num­ber of ques­tions from your repos­i­to­ry. This fea­ture is nice as it allows you to cre­ate unique quizzes that are dif­fer­ent for each stu­dent. 

  1.  Once you’ve pop­u­lat­ed your Quiz with ques­tions, you can now add restric­tion set­tings (e.g., ‘Avail­abil­i­ty Dates & Con­di­tions’, ‘Tim­ing & Dis­play’, ‘Attempts & Com­ple­tion’ and ‘Eval­u­a­tion & Feed­back’). See the tabs below for more infor­ma­tion.

Setting Quiz Restrictions

The quiz edit win­dow includes 4 wid­gets on the right side that can be col­lapsed and expand­ed; each wid­get con­tains set­tings that can be adjust­ed in order to tai­lor a quiz to your needs. See the infor­ma­tion in the tabs below to learn more about the set­tings found in each wid­get.

You can set date restric­tions for your quizzes as well as add release con­di­tions and spe­cial access for spe­cif­ic stu­dents when need­ed.

  • Start and End Dates: Start and end dates auto­mate when stu­dents can access an assign­ment, so you don’t have to man­u­al­ly tog­gle the visible/hidden icon. If you set a Start Date and time, stu­dents won’t be able to open the assign­ment until that date and time. If no Start Date is set, the assign­ment is avail­able as soon as it’s cre­at­ed and made vis­i­ble.
  • Due Dates: Due dates con­trol whether a stu­dent sub­mis­sion is flagged as over­due. It’s not required to have a due date on an assign­ment, it’s sim­ply a way to track late sub­mis­sions.
  • Release Con­di­tions: Release con­di­tions let you con­trol when stu­dents can access an assign­ment or oth­er course items based on spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria. For exam­ple, you could make an assign­ment avail­able only after a stu­dent has viewed a par­tic­u­lar mod­ule, com­plet­ed a quiz, or achieved a min­i­mum score on a pre­vi­ous activ­i­ty.
  • Spe­cial Access: This tool allows you to accom­mo­date stu­dents who require access out­side of the assign­men­t’s set para­me­ters (e.g., ear­li­er or lat­er access, extend­ed due date, addi­tion­al attempts or time allot­ted). You can allow cer­tain stu­dents to have Spe­cial Access to an assign­ment or only stu­dents with Spe­cial Access to access the assign­ment. The first case is use­ful if you need to pro­vide accom­mo­da­tions, the sec­ond option is best used for reme­di­al assign­ments. For more detailed instruc­tions, see the accor­dion titled Pro­vide Spe­cial Access to a Quiz.
  • Pass­word: You can add a pass­word require­ment so that stu­dents need to enter a pass­word pri­or to access­ing the quiz.
  • IP Restric­tions: You can set it so that only learn­ers com­ing from IP address­es that meet the defined restric­tions can write the quiz.
  • Ses­sion Restric­tions: You can set it so that each attempt is locked to a sin­gle login ses­sion.

Tim­ing & Dis­play options let you con­trol how stu­dents inter­act with your quiz (time lim­it, pag­ing options, ques­tion shuf­fle, dis­play options).

  • Set time lim­it: You can set the time lim­it in min­utes and decide how the timer is applied to the quiz (e.g., Asyn­chro­nous, Syn­chro­nous) and what hap­pens when the time lim­it expires.
  • Pag­ing: You can choose to have 1 ques­tion dis­played per page, 5 or 10 ques­tions dis­played, all ques­tions dis­played togeth­er, or a page break applied after each sec­tion.
  • Shuf­fle Quiz: You can choose to have ques­tions and sec­tions shuf­fled in a quiz.
  • Dis­play: You can opt to: allow hints, hide ques­tion point val­ues, dis­able email, instant mes­sages and alerts with­in Bright­space.
  • Head­er and Foot­er: You can for­mat the head­er and foot­er of the quiz using an HTML edi­tor.

Choose how many attempts stu­dents will receive on the quiz by click­ing on Man­age Attempts. By default, stu­dents only get unlim­it­ed attempts at the quiz and the high­est attempt is used to cal­cu­late the grade. You can adjust these set­tings to per­mit a lim­it­ed num­ber of attempts (between 1 and 10), and you can choose to use the high­est, low­est, first, last or an aver­age of all attempts to cal­cu­late the grade. You can also set the retake option to show only incor­rect ques­tions from a pre­vi­ous attempt.

The Eval­u­a­tion and Feed­back set­tings in a Bright­space quiz con­trol how attempts are grad­ed, what feed­back is pro­vid­ed to learn­ers, and when results are released. You can choose:

  • To Auto-pub­lish attempt results imme­di­ate­ly upon com­ple­tion, which will show stu­dents their result imme­di­at­ley after they click Sub­mit.
  • To Syn­chro­nize results to grade book on pub­lish, which will push the scores to the grade book when results are pub­lished. *NOTE: if you’ve select­ed to auto-pub­lish attempt results imme­di­ate­ly upon com­ple­tion, grades will be pushed to grade book imme­di­ate­ly upon com­ple­tion. If you want to delay show­ing grades in the grade book, make sure this set­ting is off. You will then need to man­u­al­ly pub­lish grades when ready.
  • To dis­play Attempt grade and select­ed results to learn­ers. There are options to show:
    • No ques­tions
    • Incor­rect ques­tions only, with cor­rect answers
    • Incor­rect ques­tions only, with­out cor­rect answers
    • All ques­tions, with cor­rect answers
    • All ques­tions, with­out cor­rect answers
  • To Cus­tomize Quiz Results Dis­plays in order to delay stu­dents from view­ing grades and results until a lat­er date. Watch the fol­low­ing video that shows how to set up an Addi­tion­al View.

The Spe­cial Access tool allows you to accom­mo­date stu­dents who require access out­side of the assignment’s set para­me­ters (e.g., ear­li­er or lat­er access, extend­ed due date, addi­tion­al attempts or time allot­ted). You can allow cer­tain stu­dents to have Spe­cial Access to an assign­ment or only stu­dents with Spe­cial Access to access the assign­ment. The first case is use­ful if you need to pro­vide accom­mo­da­tions, the sec­ond option is best used for reme­di­al assign­ments.

  1. From the Avail­abil­i­ty Dates & Con­di­tions menu click Man­age Spe­cial Access.
  2. From the Man­age Spe­cial Access win­dow, choose the first but­ton to allow spe­cif­ic stu­dents spe­cial access. Choose the sec­ond but­ton to allow access to ONLY stu­dents with spe­cial access.
  1. Adjust the dates and check the box next to the stu­dent with accom­mo­da­tions. Click Save.

You may need to edit a quiz ques­tion dur­ing its avail­abil­i­ty or after learn­ers have attempt­ed it if you dis­cov­er an error, unclear word­ing, or an incor­rect answer key. When mak­ing these edits, it is impor­tant to con­sid­er how the change may affect learn­ers who have already com­plet­ed the quiz and whether grades or attempts need to be updat­ed accord­ing­ly.

When a stu­dent runs into trou­ble dur­ing a quiz, instruc­tors may need to either reopen or restore their attempt.

Reopen

Reopen­ing a quiz attempt allows the stu­dent to resume a sub­mit­ted attempt from where they left off, often used when a quiz was sub­mit­ted too ear­ly or inter­rupt­ed by a tech­ni­cal issue. Instruc­tors can also add extra time dur­ing the reopen­ing process before the stu­dent con­tin­ues.

Restore

Restor­ing a quiz attempt brings back an attempt that was pre­vi­ous­ly delet­ed, allow­ing the instruc­tor to view or grade it again. The stu­dent can­not con­tin­ue work­ing on the restored attempt, it is sim­ply recov­ered for record‑keeping and eval­u­a­tion.

You can pre­view quizzes before deploy­ing them to stu­dents. This will help you to find small errors and ensure the assess­ment meets your goals. In the Quiz edit win­dow, click on ‘Pre­view’ OR in the ‘Man­age Quizzes’ area click on the arrow next to the Quiz you’d like to pre­view and select ‘Pre­view’. To see what your stu­dents will see click ‘Start Quiz!’. When you’re fin­ished click the ‘Exit Pre­view’ but­ton in the top right-hand cor­ner of the screen.

Quiz Tool Overview

This video is a short tour of all the fea­tures of the quiz expe­ri­ence and the vari­ables and set­tings you can use to cre­ate and edit your quiz.

Learn More