Creating Assessments

Quizzes and surveys | Using surveys | Pool Manager | FAQs

Quizzes and Surveys

There are two types of assessments available in Blackboard, Quizzes and Surveys. Quizzes are graded and attach a user name to the individual results. Surveys are anonymous and non-graded. Quizzes are graded immediately and the results are automatically entered into the gradebook. Blackboard provides an item analysis for quizzes, except for those created with random question pools. Blackboard also provides an item by item analysis of each survey, which makes them a perfect choice for course evaluations and demographic inquiries.

Using Quizzes

The first concern many instructors have regarding online quizzes is security. How can you be sure that the person taking the quiz is the student in your class. Unfortunately, in most cases, you can't. But that does not mean that online quizzes cannot be used effectively in your class. There are two main ways to safely use this feature in Blackboard. The first is to use quizzes for review. Practice quizzes can reinforce the content and also orient students to the types and styles of questions asked. The Pool Manager can assist the review process, by allowing random sampling quizzes so students could re-take the practice quiz with a new set of questions.

Another use is to create proctored quizzes. The quiz feature allows you to password protect the quizzes and change the password as often as you like. If there is a computer lab available in your department, students could check in to the lab, show their ID to the lab attendant and receive the password for the quiz. Passwords could be changed hourly and the time the student takes the quiz is logged and could be cross-checked with the lab sign-in.

Using Surveys

Surveys are great for any type of information gathering where you either don't need or don't want specific names attached to the results. For example, a course evaluation or a survey to determine the demographics of your course. You could use a survey to poll your students for their level of knowledge of various issues related to your content. This would give you a baseline of where they are, then you could repeat the survey at the end of the semester to determine learning. Surveys are also good when determining the students perspective on the entire course, or certain portions (like a particular assignment or guest speaker) when anonymity would provide more honest results.

Pool Manager

The Pool Manager allows you to create pools or stockpiles of questions and then create quizzes using either selected or random questions from the pools. For example, if you create a pool of 50 questions, you can then create an assessment (quiz) from this pool using just 20 of the questions. If you choose the random question option, the system will create each quiz using 20 different questions from the pool. This feature can help address the problem of cheating or sharing of answers, because each student essentially gets a different quiz. You can also create quizzes using a variety of pools where the final quiz might have 5 questions from pool 1, 5 questions from pool 2, and 5 questions from pool 3. Question pools can also be imported and exported between different Blackboard courses which is a nice way to share questions with other instructors teaching the same course. Pools are a good way to create and store your questions, because you can use them in multiple quizzes without having to re-enter them, which can be time consuming.

More Information:

Can my students preview a quiz?
No. Instruct your students not to take or "preview" the quiz until they are actually ready to take it. If the students "preview" the quiz or begin taking the quiz and then log out (manually or by quitting out of the browser) Blackboard will not let them back in to take or finish the quiz. The students will receive a "Sorry… you already took this assessment on (date) and (time)" message. You may opt to clear the student’s attempt in the gradebook and allow that student to re-take the assessment.

However, you can choose to allow multiple attempts on the quiz. This means that a student can take the quiz as many times as they would like. Blackboard always retains the most recent score, not the highest score. This function is good for practice or review.

NOTE: If a student resizes the window (Netscape browsers) the assessment will stop and no score will be recorded. In the Online Gradebook you will receive an "Incomplete Attempt" message for that student. You may opt to clear the student’s attempt and allow that student to re-take the assessment. We recommend that students take quizzes using Internet Explorer to eliminate this problem. Also, when using essay questions in your quiz, we recommend that students write their essays in a word processing program and copy and paste them into Blackboard. This way, if the individual computer crashes, or there are problems with the server, the students work would not be entirely lost.

Can my students print out a quiz?
Yes , students can print a quiz, however if a student prints out a quiz, then leaves Blackboard without actually answering any questions, the system will consider the quiz "taken" unless you have specified "Allow Multiple Attempts." Blackboard considers a quiz has been attempted every time it is entered regardless if any questions have been answered. This means that if your student enters the quiz and prints out a copy in an attempt to look up the answers, they will not be able to re-take the quiz unless you clear their attempt.

Some of my students did not complete their quizzes because of computer problems, what can I do?
If a student has made an unsuccessful or incomplete attempt of a quiz, instead of a score you will see a red exclamation point next to their name in the gradebook. Click on the exclamation point or the actual point total to bring up the quiz report. Click on the Clear Attempt button at the top right corner of the page. This will allow the student to take the quiz again.

When I try to make a quiz unavailable I am told that all grading associated with that quiz will be deleted. Is this a common problem?
It’s not a problem, it’s the way the software is supposed to function. The idea behind this logic is that since some of the students may have already taken the quiz and been graded, it’s unfair to change the quiz mid-stream.

The way to make a quiz unavailable without losing grades is in the Page Editors, Assignments area, not the Assessment Management area. Also, delete any announcements that might contain a link to the quiz. Essentially, you’re making links to the quiz unavailable, but the quiz and grades still exist. You can also make the quiz unavailable by placing a password on the quiz. Without the password, students cannot access the quiz.

When I created my quiz I noticed there were a number of different options, what do the different assessment options mean?