DLE Weekly Update: Quizzes in Brightspace and News on Honorlock
Posted on Friday, February 12, 2021
As the Midterm exams season is here, we have put together all the information you need to know on Quizzes (midterm/final exams), with links to our KB articles.
There are two ways to create quizzes in your Brightspace course:
- By creating new quiz questions directly in your Quiz (Activities/Quizzes/New Quiz), either from scratch or imported from a .csv file from the Test Questions Generator.
Read about the different type of quiz questions and when you should be using them.
A quick way to import your questions into Brightspace when you already have them listed in a Word file, for instance, is by using the Test Questions Generator, which is a tool developed by our College.
2. By adding questions first to the Question Library (Activities/Quizzes/Question Library tab/New Section), and then importing them into a quiz. By creating a new Section first in the Question library, and then adding or importing questions there will keep the questions organized and easily to filter.
Note: The second option is the one we highly recommend, as all the questions created or imported into a section in the Question Library will be saved there and you will be able to reuse them later in another quiz, midterm or final exams.
Midterm Exam Settings in Brightspace
After you create the midterm in Brightspace, you might want to go over the settings one more time and make sure you have it set up correctly:
- Use Quiz Preview to check if your quiz displays the way you think you set it up (the number of desired quiz questions per page, shuffled questions, prohibit backtracking, etc)
- If you turned on the Disable right click option on the Properties tab, please note this might interfere with screen reading software. If this option is important to you, create a copy of the final exam, and use the Special Access options to make this version available to students using screen readers.
- If you set up start and end dates for the exam, make sure that the Hide for users option on the Restrictions tab is NOT checked off, so that the quiz becomes automatically visible to students on the start date.
- Important: Note that the start/end dates on the Restrictions tab controls ONLY the availability of the link to the quiz, while TIMING controls the length of time a student is allowed to work on the quiz, from the moment they access the link to the quiz.
- If you have students who require extra time, and you used the Special Access options, check if actually you extended the time by changing the number of minutes you entered under the Timing option. If you have allowed 60 minutes for the entire class, when using Special access, change the Timing to 120, if you would like to double the quiz time for those students. DO NOT extend the time by changing the end date (from 5 pm to 6pm for instance), if you need to allow more time to CAL students.
- If you need to limit the time students spend on the exam and have Brightspace prevent them from changing their quiz answers once the time is up, use the Enforced Time Limit, along with the Prevent the student from making further changes options.
- If you are using Honorlock for your final exam, note that as part of the exam linking process, Honorlock adds a password to your Brightspace Quiz, and this password should NOT be deleted. Access here the Honorlock Proctoring FAQ page on the LTS website.
- On the Assessment tab, make sure you have a gradebook column associated with the final exam. Also, under the Grades menu, on the course nav bar, double check if the grade column associated with the exam has the same points possible as the points for exam.
- If your exam has a mixture of questions graded automatically and some that require to be marked by you, the Allow attempt to be set as graded immediately upon completion option should NOT be checked off, in order to prevent students from seeing any grade once they submit the quiz. Also, under the Submission Views tab, edit the Default view and uncheck the Show attempt score and overall attempt score option. Students will view only a confirmation that they submitted the exam.
- If you need to reset a student attempt, please follow the steps from the Resetting a Quiz Attempt article.
How to deal with emergencies during the Midterm exam
Q 1. While taking an exam, if the screen freezes, or there is a short moment of no Internet connection, how will my students and I deal with this situation?
A 1. Once the problem is fixed, students will need to login again to Brightspace, access your course and click on the exam link. They will be allowed to continue the exam from where they left off, as answers are automatically saved, but the quiz timing will still go on while the student is out of the quiz. If they won’t be able to continue that quiz attempt, in an “one attempt” quiz situation, they will need to contact you, the teacher, and you will have to set up a second attempt using the Special Access options, OR you might want to reset the current quiz attempt and allow them to retake it.
Q 2. One of my students clicked on Submit for the exam before he/she answered all the questions. How do I allow them to continue the quiz attempt from the point they left off, prior to submitting by mistake?
A 2. Unfortunately, once an exam has been submitted, the student can not continue that attempt. You can allow them another attempt, by using the Special Access option. You also have the option to reset the existing attempt, allowing them to restart the first attempt (No need in this case for working with the Special Access).
Common Quiz Questions
What to do if your students completed a quiz, but you don’t see the grades under Grades?
Go to the quiz’s properties, to the Assessment tab and check if you have a Grade item linked to the quiz. If not, create one using the Add Grade Item link. Also, make sure that the Allow automatic export to grades option is checked off.
Need to distribute a unique set of quiz questions to each of your students?
This video explains how to create a quiz with a randomized set of questions. Make sure that your questions exist under a Section, in the Question Library. Also, you can have multiple randomized sets of questions in one quiz, by extracting a number of questions from different Sections from the Question Library.
Need to change the answer to a quiz question and regrade student submissions?
From the Activities/Quizzes click on the chevron for that particular quiz and then on Grade. On the Questions tab, click Update All Attempts and then on the question you need to regrade. You have the options to give to all students points value for that particular question or re-grade only the attempts that have a particular answer. This DLE Weekly update article has step-by-step instructions on how to deal with regrading a quiz in Brightspace.
Want to hide the quiz grades?
Make the quiz unavailable (from Activities/Quizzes) AND also hide the gradebook item from Grades: Enter Grades view, click on the chevron for the title of the column and choose Edit. Click on the Restrictions tab and then on Hide from Users.
Watch this video where we are explaining in details how to hide two types of gradebook columns: associated with a Brightspace activity (quiz, assignment or discussion) and columns without any associations.
How to set up the quiz feedback for your students?
When students complete quizzes, they will be eager to see their results AND feedback. The default quiz settings show only the overall grade, and nothing else. In order to release more information to students (i.e. questions, correct/incorrect answers, class averages, etc.) you need to either edit the default submission view or set up an additional submission view.
How to print a quiz?
There are times when you would like to have a paper copy of an online quiz. Currently, there is no option in Brightspace to allow you to do that, but this work around might save you some time. Access the quiz from Activities/Quizzes and make sure you have the quiz setup so that all questions are displayed on a single page. Preview the quiz and then click on the Start quiz button. Copy the entire quiz (Ctrl+C), paste the content (Ctrl+V) to a Word file, and then print it from there.
Another option to print a quiz is described in this KB article.
Need to clear an attempt for one of your students?
Go to Activities/Quizzes, and from the Manage Quizzes, click on Grade from the context menu for that particular quiz. Select the check box for each attempt you want to reset and then click on Reset Icon (trash bin).
This article shows you the steps to follow in order to reset a quiz that has already been attempted by one or multiple students.
How to submit an “In Progress” attempt on behalf of a student?
When a learner takes a quiz but fails to submit it, Brightspace shows no submission or grade. The learner’s quiz becomes an “attempt in progress.” You can search for the attempt and then submit it by “impersonating” the learner so that the quiz can be graded.
News on Honorlock in Brightspace
This semester, the Honorlock configuration in Brightspace has been modified to restrict the Honorlock deployment to specific courses. The previous configuration had Honorlock available in all courses on the Brightspace Academic site. If you are trying to add Honorlock to your course, but can’t find the Honorlock External Learning Tool in your course, or if your previous integration now displays a broken link, please contact lts@algonquincollege.com to get authorized to use Honorlock.
Read more about Honorlock on the LTS website.
Important: If you have copied quizzes that had Honorlock enabled, but you are not using Honorlock in your current course, you need to take 2 steps in order to make sure that the students are not getting confused by thinking that they need to install the Honorlock browser extension. First step is to remove the Honorlock logo from the quiz description (edit the quiz from Activities/Quizzes and delete the image from the quiz description, on the Properties tab). The final step is to remove the password that is automatically inserted when Honorlock is enabled for a quiz (edit the quiz and remove the password from the Restrictions tab).
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