Index of Links
-
Test Creation Basics
-
Prevent Printing of Tests & Enforcing Test Timers
-
Quiz/Test Generator Sites
-
Creating Pools from Generated Tests/Quizzes
-
Setting up a Random Block in a Test
-
Adding Questions to an Existing Test from Other Existing Tests
-
Obtaining Survey Results
The Basics for Creating a Test/Quiz for Your Class
- While in your course, go to the Control Panel and choose Course Tools. From here click on Tests, Surveys, and Pools.
- Click on Tests and then on Build Test
- Enter a name you would like to use for the test (e.g. Chapter 1).
- Enter any instructions or descriptions and then click Submit.
- You are then taken to the Test Canvas where you can begin creating questions for your test.
- You can choose from many different question types.
- Create as many or as few as you need. You will create questions one at a time with this method. When finished, you can click OK.
- Now that your test is created, you can deploy it in one of your content areas (e.g. Assignments)
- Go into the content area you wish to deploy the test…
- Go to Evaluate and then Create Test
- Choose the test you created from the list and click Submit.
- You will be taken to the Test Options window where you can make the test available or choose the dates you wish it to appear for students to take. Once you have chosen the options you want, click submit and you are finished!
Preventing the printing of tests by students: Is this possible? Can I force them to submit their attempt after the timer has expired?
Yes! Instructions for doing so are now included inside of the editing window for the tests.
This involves editing both the test header and the test options. Just follow the instructions in each specific section!
Using the Bb Quiz Generator site to create a question pool
Recommended site: http://www.csi.edu/blackboard/bbquiz/Default.aspx
Documentation and examples on how your text should look when copying and pasting into this site can be seen here.
Steps to create a pool of questions in Blackboard:
- Create a TEXT file of your questions and answers, matching the format required by the Quiz Generator.
- Submit that text through the Quiz Generator Web site.
- Download the resulting “.zip” file to your computer.
- Use the “Import Pool” function in your Blackboard site to get that file of questions and answers uploaded.
Sample multiple-choice-question input for the recommended site above:
1. When did Martin Luther post his “95 Theses”?
a. 1511
b. 1513
c. 1515
*d. 1517
The Blackboard Quiz Generator is a great way to create question pools in Blackboard. You can work with multiple choice, multiple answer, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, matching and essay questions. See the Quiz Generator Web site for samples of the input formats for all of these types of questions.
The Quiz Generator operates with PLAIN TEXT input only, and that condition means that you generally cannot use text directly from a Microsoft Word document. (Some Quiz Generator users prefer to use Windows Notepad, because they can use what they type directly with the QG site.) The problem with Microsoft Word files is that they ordinarily contain so-called smart characters—”curly” quotation marks and apostrophes, long dashes, graphical symbols for fractions and ordinals, etc.—which cannot be processed by the Quiz Generator. But if you save your Microsoft Word files appropriately, you will succeed in creating Blackboard question pools!
To save a Microsoft Word document into the PLAIN TEXT that can be used with the Quiz Generator, follow these steps very carefully:
- When you are ready to save your file, open the Word menu and select “Save As.”
- On the “Save As” dialog box, look for the menu labeled “Save as type:” or “Format,” and click to open the drop-down menu. On the list of formats, look for the entry that says “Plain Text,” noting that you may need to scroll the menu to find it. If you have several “text” choices, select the one with no qualifiers, and do not select anything that includes “line breaks.” You may name your file anything you like, noting that “.txt” is the correct file extension. Click to Save the file.
- Immediately after you click to Save the file, you are likely to get some warnings that formatting will be lost , etc. That’s exactly what you want to see, and your action at this point is CRUCIAL to your success with the Quiz Generator site. You will see a box labeled “File Conversion,” and you should click the radio button for MS-DOS and also click the checkbox to “Allow character substitution.” Those choices are the real keys to be sure that all unacceptable characters get replaced with their plan-text equivalents. Click OK to finish saving the file.
- CLOSE THE FILE on your display, and then OPEN THE SAVED FILE freshly. This is VERY IMPORTANT; you must not try to use what is displayed on the active window. When you open your saved file freshly, you will see the PLAIN TEXT of your questions and answers—and then you can use copy-and-paste to push that text into the Quiz Generator site.
When you have the downloaded file from the Quiz Generator site on your computer, you are ready to go into your Blackboard site and use it! Open Course Tools > Tests, Surveys and Pools > Pools, and then click IMPORT POOL. Browse to the file you saved and click Submit. Your questions and answers will now be visible as one of your Pools.
(Note for readers familiar with HTML codes: There is a trick that you can use to force HTML codes through the Quiz Generator site! In your input file, use the strings < and &rt; for the left and right angle brackets. Send the input through the QG site. When you import the resulting .zip file in Blackboard, your coding will be displayed as the “regular text” for the questions and answers. To get the HTML working, open the Edit window for the question, and then use copy-and-paste to move the displayed text into the HTML window.)
If you would like to print these instructions, please download the Word file located here.
Creating a Test from a Pool
1. After using the Quiz Generator site, go to Course Tools > Tests, Surveys and Pools > Pools, and use the Import link to upload the “.zip” file you saved.
2. To review the questions in the Pool, click the down arrow on the pool’s name and select Edit.
3. To create the test, go to the content area where you want students to find the link.
4. Click Evaluate > Create Test. Give it a name and (optionally) add a Description and Instructions. The Description is what will be displayed along with the link, before students take the test; the Instructions are displayed inside the test. When you click Submit, you will see the Test Canvas.
5. On the Test Canvas page, open the Reuse Questions menu. There are two choices:
a. “Create Random Block”: This is the simplest choice, providing a test of “x” questions for each student, displayed in a random order. When you make this selection, you must choose the pool you created, set the number of questions that each student shall get, and set the point value per question. After submitting this information, the block appears as a “single question” on the Pool Canvas.
b. “Find from Pool or Test”: This option lets you bring in any or all of the pool questions, and lets you know that each student will see the same questions in exactly the same order. When you make this selection, you must choose the pool you created – be sure to locate it among the POOLS on the list – and then click Search. After clicking Search, the questions will be displayed in alphabetical order by the question text. If you had them arranged by question type in the pool, you can group them that way by clicking the ‘Type’ header on the first column. The groups will be in alphabetical order (e.g. Fill in the Blank before Multiple Choice), but within each group, the questions will appear in the same order as they did in the pool. On the “Search Pools and Tests” window, there is a handy checkbox at the top left, above the list of questions, that will select all of the questions on that window. (NOTE that if this display has more than one “page,” as shown at the top right, you should scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Show All,” before using the checkbox at the top right, to get all of the questions in the pool included at once.) Click the “Add Selected” link to push the questions onto the Pool Canvas.
6. When you click OK at the extreme bottom right of the Test Canvas, you get to the Test Options page, where the MASTER SWITCH for the visibility of the link is in the second section. Set this answer to “Yes” when you are ready to let students take the test. (If it is set to “No,” you are still able to preview the test from your instructor account, but you cannot take it from your pretend-student account until you make it available.)
To print the information in this section, please download the Word file located here.
Return to Top of the Page
Setting up a Random Block or Question Sets within a Test
Blackboard 9.1 now allows you to select a pool and type(s) of questions from which to create a random block within a test you are creating. Once you have done so, you can set the number of questions as well as the number of points to assign to each question. This option allows you also see the questions that will be included in the random block as well as placing the “points” adjustment box in a convenient spot to compare the block with other questions on the same test. See the image below:
Random Blocks require that the questions be contained within one or more pools and selecting the questions is limited to filtering the question types.
Question Sets allow you a much more expanded search capability:
- You can choose questions from all existing Pools and Tests
- You can filter according to keywords, category, etc.
- You can individually select/reject questions returned in the search
Whichever you choose to work with, once you’ve identified the questions to be used, you next must specify the number of questions you want to use. Once that is done, Question Sets allow you to edit the question database, adding or rejecting additional questions. This cannot be done with Random Blocks.
Adding Questions to an Existing Test from Other Existing Tests
Blackboard 9.1 allows the instructor to be able to use questions from other tests that exist in the course. To use these questions on an existing test try the following:
- Select the test you wish to edit and choose the “Edit the Test” option from the down arrow
- From the Reuse Question menu, select “Find Questions”
- Next, choose the Find Question Mode. If you choose ‘Link to Original Questions’ and change any of the questions themselves, the questions will change in the original test they were in as well. It is recommended that you choose “Copy selected questions” instead so this will leave the originals intact.
- A new window will open that contains all questions from all tests. You will need to pare down the list to the questions you want by selecting from the menus on the left. Note that you need to deselect the “All Pools” or “All Tests” choice to narrow the list properly.
- Once you have made your choices, choose Submit. The questions you selected will appear in the test you are editing.
Obtaining Survey Results
- On the Course Control Panel, expand the Evaluation section
- Select Grade Center
- Navigate to the Survey’s column
- Click the down arrow in the column’s title
- Select Attempt Statistics. The results will be displayed in a Statistics page.
Please note: Results of a Blackboard survey are displayed ‘anonymously.’ From the Grade Center, the instructor can see which students responded to the survey, but there is no way to connect an individual student with any particular answers. Also, answers to open response survey questions are presented in random order, so the instructor cannot correlate what is displayed as the first answer to one question with any particular answer to another question. To get correlations and/or other analyses, questions must be deployed via a Test rather than a Survey.