The Quiz module has a lot of moving parts and can be confusing for new users. The following are recommended best practices for the Quiz module for teachers. We also recommend reviewing our Getting started guide.

Set a proper time limit

When creating a quiz, determine how long you think it will take a student to complete the quiz. For example, if your quiz contains only ten multiple choice questions, students will not need two hours to complete the quiz. Students who have studied and are properly prepared for the quiz will complete the quiz in a couple of minutes. Providing too long of a time limit will allow students who did not study, to look up each question without having properly prepared for the quiz. If you have used the same or similar quiz in iLearn before, review the past submission times to get an idea of how long the quiz will take students to complete. See the Creating a Quiz shell guide for more information on this option.

Shuffle choices

If your quiz contains multiple choice questions, we recommend in the quiz settings to set the Shuffle choices option to Yes. This will shuffle the answer choices on each student's quiz attempt. This will make it more difficult for students to pass along potential questions and answers to other students who have yet to attempt the quiz as the answer choices will be in a different order for each student. See the Creating a Quiz shell guide for more information on this option.

Shuffle questions

We recommend on the Edit quiz to enable the Shuffle questions option. This will shuffle the order questions appear in on each student's quiz attempt. This will make it more difficult for students to pass along potential questions and answers to other students who have yet to attempt the quiz as the questions will be in a different order for each student. See the Manage questions in a Quiz shell guide for more information on this option.

Pull random questions from large question pools 

Teachers may create large question pools within a question category and direct iLearn to pull a certain number of questions from the question category and place them on each student's quiz attempt. The questions would be randomly chosen from the question category for each student. This will make it more difficult for students to pass along potential questions and answers to other students who have yet to attempt the quiz as each student's attempt would contain different questions. See the Create question categories guide for more information on how to create question categories.

Properly name questions

When creating new questions, it is recommended to put short but descriptive names in the Question name field. We do not recommend entering names such as "Question #1" as if you have multiple quizzes, you may not be able to tell what quiz that question is meant for. This name will not be visible to students.

Understand Review options section

In the quiz settings, in the Review options section, teachers can decide what students can see after they submit their quiz attempt and when they can see it. We recommend leaving the default settings as that will provide a consistent experience for students trying to review the quiz. If you choose to change the Review options section, we recommend reviewing the example described in the Creating a Quiz shell guide.

Fixing faulty questions

If, after opening a quiz, a student indicates that there is an issue with a question (ex: spelling error, confusing/misleading text, incorrect choice set as correct answer, etc.) we recommend waiting until after the quiz availability period has closed (ie. no more students can attempt the quiz). We do not recommend you try and fix the issue during the open availability period as that may affect students currently in the process of taking the quiz and/or alter the attempts for students who have already completed the quiz.

Consider a similar situation of administering a paper exam: If a problem with a question is discovered after you have already provided students with the paper exam, you cannot recollect all the paper copies, correct each copy, and then pass out the exam a second time.

Question layout

By default, iLearn will create a new page every five questions. Students' answers are saved as they move between pages. We do not recommend altering this setting to show all questions on a single page or to have a new page every question. In the former scenario, if a student loses internet connection during their quiz attempt, they may lose a large amount of answers they never progressed to a new page and had their answers saved. In the latter scenario, having a single question per page may slow students down as they would need to wait for their browser to load a new page every question. For long quizzes with a time limit, this could accumulate into a large amount of missed time for a student. The default of five questions per page is a safe amount to make sure students' answers are saved frequently and also avoiding missed time as each new page is loaded.

Unsure of a setting, leave the default

The default settings of all resources and activities are set based on the most commonly sought experience by teachers and students. In addition, these default settings strive to avoid common pain points or issues reported to the iLearn Support Services team in the past. If you are unsure of a setting, we recommend leaving it at its default status. If you are interested in learning more about a setting or have questions about a setting, contact the iLearn Support Services team (ilearn@sfsu.edu).

For additional assistance, contact Academic Technology: (415) 405-5555, at@sfsu.edu, LIB 80