Best Practice - Tests - Instructor

Tips for Successful Assessments

• Split up long exams.
  • This is especially important if your exams are presented all at once. The connection to the server can be lost while the student answers a long series of questions or completes a long essay.
•  Present questions one at a time rather than all at once.
  • This method will keep the connection to the server alive by saving each of the answers as the student moves from one question to the next. Should something happen and you or the instructor has to intervene, the student’s progress is saved up until the point they had a problem. However, it is not recommended to randomize the question ordering within the test options when presenting the questions one at a time, regardless of how many questions the test contains.
• Turn off force completion.
  • With force completion on, if a student encounters a problem or gets kicked out of a test, the test is then submitted, just as if they had completed it. The student will not be able to complete the test, but will have to have the instructor delete that attempt and start over. Without force completion on, a student is able to open the test back up and complete it from where they left off. Please note that this is different from allowing multiple attempts, as they are simply finishing their first attempt.
• Random question sets.
  • When the quiz or test is made up of a random block of questions, be sure not to set the test options to randomize. When this combination is present, it leads to problems displaying questions to the students. We are not sure why there is a problem, but know that it happens
• Large Exams.
  • Avoid randomizing answer responses within questions when the question pool is greater than 200 questions.
  • Keep question pools under 200 questions. It is better to use more smaller pools, than fewer larger pools.
  • Do not use the randomize question order setting in the test options if your test has more than 150 questions.