This article is for any instructor who wants to use Courseware's graded quizzing engine. The engine allows students to take quizzes, automatically grades the quizzes, and then delivers the results to a grade book. The engine has these features:
- Premade quizzes instructors can assign as is
- The option to edit which questions appear in any premade quiz
- The option to edit any preexisting quiz question or answer
- The option to create new quiz questions
- Student performance reports to a gradebook
With these features, instructors can quickly assign a premade quiz, edit any premade quiz as needed, or author new quiz questions and quizzes. Instructors can also track student performance.
In addition to the information below, this Spring 2020 webinar walks through the features in Courseware version 2.5's instructor quiz and question banks.
Watch a complete 45 minute tutorial of creating and assigning quizzes:
The Quiz and Question Banks
Quiz assignments are made up of one or more quizzes from the Courseware Quiz Bank. You can use it to test your students' knowledge.
Before creating a quiz assignment, a common workflow is to edit premade quizzes or quiz questions to suit your needs. When you launch the Courseware Quiz Bank or Question Bank, using the “Filter by” fields or the keyword search quickly narrows your results to the most relevant pre-made quizzes or quiz questions.
For both the Quiz and Question Banks, you’ll find the following features (pictured below):
1. Select the “Create New Quiz” or “Create new Question” button to start a new quiz or question.
2. Author field: filter your search results by creator
- Visible Body premade custom quiz or question content
- any other custom quiz or question content made by Courseware users at your institution
3. Question Type field: filter by Multiple Choice, Short Answer, or Dissection questions
4. Topic field: filter by body system
5. Subtopic field: filter by subtopic to further refine your search in the topic field
6. Bloom’s Level: filter by Bloom’s Taxonomy level
7. Keyword search: enter a keyword to search for relevant quizzes or quiz questions. Keyword search does not search by text within a quiz or question, only by the keywords assigned to it.
Results of your filtering/keyword search will appear below on the left, with a preview feature on the right of the highlighted quiz or question.
Creating a Graded Quiz Assignment
- Start by selecting the "+ Create New Assignment" button in the upper right corner of your course.
- Under the "Visible Body Content" header, choose "Graded Quiz Bank" and select "Continue."
- Use the filters and search bar to find the graded quizzes that you want to assign.
- Use the checkboxes to select your quizzes and then select "Continue" in the top right corner.
- On the following page:
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- Name your quiz assignment.
- Select a due date.
- Choose if you want to delay your quiz assignment's release. If so, select "Yes" in the dropdown and choose a release date.
- Select a folder for your quiz assignment or create a new one.
- Select a point value for the quiz, and whether to display the grades as points or percentages in the grade book.
- Choose the number of attempts your students will have on the quiz. You can also choose which score to keep. Short answer quizzes can only have one attempt.
- Choose whether or not to give your students partial credit.
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- Yes: Students will get credit for the questions they answer correctly. They will get no points for questions they answer incorrectly or did not complete in the allotted time. Graded quiz assignments created before Partial Credit was available (January 21, 2021) have also been set to Yes as a default.
- No: Students will get no credit for the quiz if they do not finish in the allotted time.
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- Choose if you want to add a limit on the amount of time all students have to complete the quiz.
- Choose if and when you want to display correct answers to students.
- Add an optional description.
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- Select “Save Draft” or “Publish.”
- Note: You can let students know the graded quiz assignment is available by checking “Send Email Notification” before selecting “Publish.”
- In the popup that asks “Are you sure you wish to publish?” select “OK.”
Quiz Feedback Options
What is the difference between the feedback settings for “Feedback During Quiz” vs. “Feedback After Quiz” on the Assignment Details page when creating graded quiz assignments? These two separate settings are available on the page entitled “Create a new assignment”.
Feedback During Quiz
This setting refers to the feedback students view as they are actively taking a quiz.
- If you select "At the end of the quiz", students will only view their performance on each question after they have submitted the quiz. Once the quiz is submitted, students can review their detailed quiz results immediately.
In the detailed quiz results screen, students will always see a list of how they performed on each question. When they answer a question correctly, they’ll see a green checkmark next to the question. Incorrect questions are marked with a red x.
Note: Instructors and students can also view detailed quiz results in the Gradebook for each quiz attempt. - If you select "After each question and at the end of the quiz", students will receive feedback after each question during the quiz. This means they’ll see an indicator of “correct” or “incorrect” each time they submit an answer to the question. If their question is incorrect, they will have three attempts to correctly answer the question. Students can select "show answer" at any time to see the correct answer. Students will also see their detailed quiz results at the end of the quiz as shown above. Note: This feature is different from the "Attempts" field under “Quiz Style” settings, which refers to the number of attempts allowed for the entire quiz.
Feedback After Quiz
This option refers to the detailed quiz results for Multiple Choice quizzes, which students can access immediately following quiz submission and in the Gradebook.
Note: Since Dissection quizzes can sometimes have multiple correct answers, correct answer feedback is not available; however, correct (green checkmark) or incorrect (red x) answers are indicated. For Short Answer quizzes, you have the option to include feedback for students when you grade their submissions.
- "Show correct answers after every quiz attempt" means if you have allowed multiple quiz attempts, the students can view feedback about their performance on each question, including correct answers for any questions they answered incorrectly, every time they submit the quiz.
- "Show correct answers only on the last quiz attempt" means if you have given multiple quiz attempts, the students can view feedback about their performance, including correct answers for any questions they answered incorrectly, only on the last quiz attempt.
- "Don't show correct answers" means students will never see the correct answers to questions they answered incorrectly in the detailed quiz results presented after the quiz. Students will only see the list of which questions they answered correctly and which questions they answered incorrectly. In the Gradebook, they cannot view the correct answers to questions they answered incorrectly.
Changing the Parameters of an Assigned Quiz
I want to change the due date: If you change the due date for a published assignment or quiz in your course, note that this will be a global change in the Gradebook. You will see the following warning:
If you select “OK”, any existing individual student quiz options will be erased. After changing the due date, you will need to return to the Gradebook to reset the individual quiz options:
I want to change the release date to a future date: If you change the release date to a future date, any students’ existing grades in the Gradebook for that assignment or quiz will be hidden until the new release date arrives. Not to worry! The grades will be visible in the Gradebook on the release date.
I want to unpublish my quiz assignment: Your ability to unpublish a quiz assignment depends on whether students have taken the quiz yet.
- No students have taken the quiz yet: Ungraded quiz assignments may be unpublished at any time. Students will no longer see this assignment in their course. You will receive this notification when you select the "Unpublish" button on the assignment page:
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At least one student has taken this quiz: You are no longer able to unpublish quiz assignments with student grades in the Gradebook. However, you may delete the quiz assignment to:
- remove any existing student grades in the Gradebook for this quiz assignment.
- remove the assignment from your students' view.
- remove the quiz assignment from the course itself.
I want to change the content of a published quiz: If you have published the quiz, you will not be able to edit the content of the quiz. You will need to unpublish the quiz assignment first, edit the quiz, then republish. See above regarding unpublishing a quiz that students have already taken.
I want to remove a quiz from a multi-quiz assignment: If you publish an assignment with multiple quizzes, you will need to unpublish the assignment, remove the quiz from the assignment, then re-publish. See above regarding unpublishing a quiz that students have already taken.
Note: If you choose to edit an unpublished assignment, go right ahead! You may edit the description, due date/release date, and content, then select “Publish”.
Creating a Quiz Using Existing Questions
Follow the steps below to make your own custom quizzes using questions from the Courseware Quiz Bank or some questions of your own.
- Log in to your Courseware dashboard and choose the Quiz Bank.
- Select “+Create new quiz.”
- Use the dropdown list to choose the type of quiz you’d like to create and select “Continue.”
- Use the filters to find the questions you want, and select them using the checkboxes. Once you’ve chosen the questions for your quiz, select “Continue.”
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- If you want to write a new question, select “+Create New Question” to access the Question Bank. This will save your quiz as a draft.
- For more information, read about writing quiz questions here.
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- In the Create Your Quiz page
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- Name your quiz
- Categorize your quiz
- Configure your quiz (determine question order, pool the quiz, assign point values, preview questions, delete questions, and add more questions)
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- Save the quiz.
Editing a Quiz
Note: Your editing options for a quiz are determined by whether you are the author of that quiz.
- If you author a quiz, you will have the option to delete, edit or clone your quiz.
- If you publish a quiz you authored, you will have the option to edit or clone the quiz only.
- If anyone else authors the quiz, you must create a clone of the quiz first to edit it.
Follow 6 simple steps to edit Visible Body’s graded quizzes.
- Log in to your Courseware dashboard and choose the Quiz Bank.
- Choose a quiz using the filters or keyword search bar, and select “Clone.”
- In the popup, enter your quiz name in the text box and select “Save.” This brings you back to the Quiz Bank.
- Find your quiz copy at the top of the list in the Quiz Bank, and select “Edit.”
- In the Edit Your Quiz page, you can
- Change your quiz name
- Categorize your quiz
- Configure your quiz (change question order, pool the quiz, change randomization settings, change point values, preview questions, delete questions, and add questions that exist in the Quiz Bank)
- Save the quiz.
After you’ve saved your quiz, you can
- Assign it
- Create another quiz
- Select "Done" to return to the Quiz Bank
Content in the Quiz and Question Banks
The Courseware Quiz Bank contains hundreds of quizzes created with questions from the Question Bank, which has thousands of choice questions, short answer questions and dissection questions. These quizzes are ready to be assigned as-is and are great for testing students' general knowledge.
Multiple Choice Questions
Multiple choice questions consist of four to five answers, one of which is the correct answer. You can also upload a picture along with your question to help illustrate your quiz topic.
By writing in your own answers, you can frame questions in many interesting ways, not only asking students to find the one correct answer. Distractors could be all true statements with one false answer, or each answer could be a list of steps in a physiological process with only one being in the correct order.
Short Answer Questions
Short answer questions offer a more open-ended format for students to really express everything they know on a topic. You can upload a picture to go along with your questions, just like in multiple-choice questions, but students now have a large text box to offer long-form answers.
Note: Because short answer quizzes require manual grading, you may only allow one attempt for this assignment. There are no limits on attempts for multiple choice or dissection quizzes.
Dissection Questions
Dissection questions feature a 3D view for students to manipulate and explore to find the prompted anatomical structure.
When creating a dissection question, you can select as many or as few correct structures as you like. This allows for a wide range of questions, from big picture systems overviews to granular single structure identification.
Editing an Existing Quiz Question
Note: Your editing options for a question are determined by whether you are the author of that question.
- If you author a quiz question, you will have the option to delete, edit or clone your question.
- If you assign a question you authored, you will have the option to edit or clone the question only.
- If anyone else authors the question, you must create a clone of the question first to edit it.
Follow 4 simple steps to edit Visible Body’s graded quiz questions.
- Log into your Courseware dashboard and choose the Question Bank.
- Find a question using the filters or keyword search bar.
- Select “Clone” next to the question to open the question editing page. This will create a copy of the quiz that you can edit.
- In the question editing page:
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- For multiple choice questions, you can edit the question and answers, add an image, categorize your question, and then select “Save and Preview” or “Save Question.”
- For dissection questions, you can edit the question, replace the 3D view, change the correct answer selections, categorize your question, and then select “Save and Preview” or “Save Question.”
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Authoring a New Quiz Question
- Log into your Courseware dashboard and choose the Question Bank.
- Select “+Create New Question.”
- Choose the type of question using the drop-down list, and select “Continue."
- In the Make a New Question page:
- For multiple-choice questions, write your question and answers, add an image if desired, categorize your question, and then select “Save and Preview” or “Save Question.”
- For short answer questions, write your question, add an image if desired, categorize your question, and then select “Save and Preview” or “Save Question.”
- For dissection questions, write your question, choose a 3D view, select correct answers, categorize your question, and then select “Save and Preview” or “Save Question.”
Note: Instructor accounts have a file storage limit of 10 GB. Every time you upload a file or image to Courseware, you use up some of this space. You can check how much storage you have used by selecting the dropdown menu in the upper righthand corner of Courseware.
Check Spelling with Fill-in-the-blank Questions
With some creativity, there’s a wide array of quizzing possibilities with this tool. Another option is to use these questions as a way to check your students’ spelling of anatomical terms as seen here:
Step1: Create your view in Visible Body Suite.
- Zoom into your structure and make sure all important details are visible.
- Use the draw tool to add an arrow to designate a structure.
- Use the “Download Screenshot” button to save the picture.
Step 2: Create your quiz question.
- Create a short answer style question with your picture from step 1. You can be as creative or direct as you like asking about your designated structure!
Step 3: Make your quiz.
- Follow all the same steps for creating a quiz as usual, but remember to uncheck the “Randomize question order” option in step 3.
Creating Hard Dissection Quiz Questions
With a little planning and creativity, you can create more challenging dissection quiz questions. This video shows how Courseware can be used to require the student to dive deeper and dissect, zoom, reposition, and rotate the 3D figure to find the correct structure to answer a quiz question.