○ Set up the Assessment activity
Scenarios
- You would like to set up an activity in the learning journey for which learners can pass or fail.
- You would like to use the assessment as a trial exam that can be done several times so the learners can prepare themselves for the actual exam.
- You would like to offer learners multiple attempts, or retakes, to pass the assessment.
- The assessment must comply with exam terms, which you would like to use in combination with a threshold per term.
Would you rather follow a brief learning journey about creating assessments? Follow the Mini Masterclass in our Academy and click the link below:
Mini Masterclass - Creating assessments
Which roles do you need?
Designer
Author (if you also have to create questions)
Navigate to the tab and click next to at the template you want to edit.
At the Template tab and the Blocks & Activities tab you can click to add the assessment activity.
Select the Assessment activity and click .
1) Add questions under the 'Activity Content' tab
You can select A) fixed questions or B) add questions based on exam terms.
A) Fixed questions
If you also have the author role, you create and add questions via. Click Select question if the questions have already been created.
By choosing the Fixed questions setting all selected questions will be part of the assessment.
You can also choose the option Ask questions in random order. The questions will then be asked in random order.
By choosing Random set of questions, you can create an assessment that offers random questions from the selection of questions to the learners. Set up the amount of questions that the system should choose of the selected questions.
B) Based on Exam terms
If the assessment must comply to exam terms, you could link the questions in the assessment to an exam term. The questions are then compiled randomly by exam terms, so that each assessment will be different.
Before you can use this option, you should have added exam terms to the questions that you have linked to your template.
Read more about Exam terms here.
If you choose Random across all terms you can select the amount of questions the assessment should contain. The system then chooses that amount of questions randomly across all terms.
The option Specifically per term allows you to select the exam terms that should be part of the assessment and the amount of questions per exam term that should be part of the assessment.
You can let learners pass a term by setting a threshold for the minimum number of questions they need to answer correctly.
If you make a random assessment using random questions or exam terms, it is not possible to link learning objectives to the questions and to include them in an adaptive learning path.
2) Set the number of attempts of the assessment
Go to the Properties tab. Under Attempts you can set up the number of attempts of the assessment.
If you choose One time the learner can complete the assessment only once.
If you choose the option Multiple times then you can set up the maximum number of attempts. You can also choose when the next attempt should become available
Example: If this is an official exam where you would like to offer one retake, then choose the settings below.
If you choose Multiple times, it is not possible to link the questions to learning objectives and to include them in an adaptive learning path.
Deteremine when the assessment activity should have the status completed if the learner can do multiple attempts
If the learner can do multiple attempts in the assessment activity, the assessment will be marked as 'completed' after the first attempt, even though the learner failed this first attempt.
If you enable this setting, you can set up that the assessment activity will be marked as completed when the learner completed all available attempts or if the learner passed the assessment activity.
If you enable this setting and no maximum amount of attempts has been set up (so the learner is able to take the assessment an unlimited amount of times) then the assessment will only be marked as completed when the learner passess the threshold.
Only use incorrectly answered questions in next attempts
You can select this option when you selected Multiple times. If you enable this option, the next attempt will only use incorrect answered questions from the previous attempt. This way a learner can repeat those questions, potentially raising the overall score of the assessment.
This option is only available when you chose Fixed questions under the tab Activity content.
Example: a learner does the first attempt of their assessment which contains 10 questions. They correctly answer 7 out of 10 questions, giving them a score of 70%. With this option enabled, they do their next attempt. That attempt includes only the 3 incorrectly answered questions. The learner answers one of those correctly. The score for their second attempt is then 33%, but their overall score for the assessment activity increases to 80%.
3) Determine when the activity should be marked as completed*
When a learner can do multiple attempts in the asessment activity, the activity will be marked as completed after the first attempt by default, even though the learner doesn't pass the assessment.
Under the option Complete Activity you can decide when the activity should me marked as completed.
With the first option After the first attempt (regardless the score) the activity will be marked as completed after the first attempt, even though the learner didn't pass the activity.
With the option After the score meets the threshold or when the maximum number of attempts has been reached the assessment activity will be marked as completed when the learners passed the activity or when the learner has reached the maximum number of attempts.
4) Set a score
Set up a score
The easiest way to set the threshold is to choose Percentage under Measure score by. Would you prefer to round by decimals, whole or half digits? First read the article How do I correctly set the threshold of an assessment, in relation to the score.
Set Measure score by to None if you do not want the learner to pass or fail for the assessment. This is only possible if the next option is turned off in Step 2: New attempt is only available when the learner has failed the previous attempt.
Under Threshold you set up the score a learner should achieve in order to pass the assessment.
Do you want to show a score, but not 'Passed' or 'Failed'? Choose the No threshold option.
If the learner is allowed to do more attempts, you will see an additional setting under Display score. Here you can setup the score that should be shown on the activity overview of the learner. The last achieved score shows the score of the last attempt the learner did.
The highest score of all attempts shows the highest score the learner achieved of all attempts.
By default learners see 'Passed' in green and 'Failed' in red when you set a threshold. It is possible to edit the assessment terms and colours.
Set up the advice
Collapse the Advice to write a general advice text. The learners will see the text after they finished the assessment. You can write an advice when passed and an advice when failed. You can setup an advice per threshold by clicking the +Advice button.
Make the advice more personal by adding the name of the learner in the text by using parameters.
Maximum score settings when using exam terms
If you chose the option Based on exam terms in Step 1 and you set up a threshold per exam term, you can set up a maximum score for the assessment when the learner failed one of the exam terms.
Example: if a learner has not answered 3 questions correctly from the 'Culture' exam term, they will never be able to get more than 80%.
With the Show score per exam term option, at the end of the assessment, learners gain insight into how they have scored on each exam term.
5) Set up feedback
Under Feedback you can choose the type of feedback you want to show to the learners and when they will see this feedback. There are ten options:
1. All after assessment: the result, score and advice will be shown after completing the assessment.
The learner can also navigate to the questions and see which questions have been answered correctly and incorrectly.
2. Only score after assessment: only the achieved score will be shown. The learner cannot navigate between the questions in the activity and see the (in)correctly answered questions.
3. Only advice after assessment: only the advice will be shown. The learner cannot navigate to the questions and see the (in)correctly answered questions.
4. All after date: the result, score and advice will be shown after a specific date you can set up. You can set up this date in the field that becomes available after selecting this option.
The learner is also able to navigate to the questions and see the (in)correctly answered questions.
5. Score after date: only the score will be shown after a specific date. You can set up this date in the field that becomes available after selecting this option.
The learner is not able to navigate to the questions and see the (in)correctly answered questions.
6. Answers after date: the learner will only see the answers after a specific date.
7. All after several days*: the result, score and advice will be shown after several days after completing the assessment. You can set up the days in the field that becomes available after selecting this option.
The learner can also navigate to the questions and see which questions have been answered correctly and incorrectly.
8. Score after several days*: only the score will be shown after several days. You can set up the days in the field that becomes available after selecting this option.
9. Answers after several days*: only the answers will be shown after several days. You can set up the days in the field that becomes available after selecting this option.
10. None: after completing the assessment the learner will see an empty screen without a score or advice.
* these feedback settings are only available when there is only one attempt available for the activity.
The option Show check button allows learners to immediately check whether the answers are correct or not, by clicking the Check button.
6) Time settings (optional)
Under Time you can set up two options. First the Estimated activity duration which informs the learners how long the activity will take.
The other option is the Maximum duration. The learner needs to complete the activity within the given time limit.
7) Navigation during activity
With these settings you can choose if and how a learner can navigate within the assessment.
Allow learners to navigate back to alter their answers: the learner is able to navigate back to previously answered questions within the activity and edit the given answers.
Allow learners to leave the assessment, and continue later on (back to overview): the learner is able to go back to the overview of all activities during the assessment activity and can come back later to complete the activity.
Allow learners to skip questions: the learner is able to navigate to the next question in the activity without answering the current question first.
8) Other options
Under Other options you can choose if learners mark essay questions themselves or if instructors mark the essay questions.
If instructors mark the essay questions, you can also enable the option that the activity can be reassessed.
If the MemoTrainer is switched on in the template, you can enable the option that the questions from the assessment will become available in the MemoTrainer after the assessment has been completed.
To make the questions available in the MemoTrainer, select the option Make questions MemoTrainable after the assessment has been finished.
You can also (optionally) add an Explanation at the start of the activity which will be visible for learners when opening the assessment for the first time.
Adjust the assessment after it has been published
If an assessment has been published and learners have already achieved results, you can still add or hide questions.
Some other settings cannot be changed. You can find the details in the following articles:
- Activities and what you can and cannot change after publishing
- Hiding and adding questions in a published assessment
Related articles
- General settings of activities
Help with setting the rest of the options. - Select content for use in a template
If you want to use an assessment with exam terms, select the questions for use in the template. In the assessment you only choose about which exam terms the assessment should be. - What are exam terms?
- The features of the Text Editor
To add an advice to a score