What is Exam on OpenLearning, and where can you create them?
What is an Exam on OpenLearning?
The ability to create an exam for learners to partake on OpenLearning
Insert the exam into a course page
Add question from the question bank to the exam
Pro tip: Grade items, such as exams, are automatically linked to the class in which they are created. However, you can reuse these items in other classes by copying them. This feature saves you time and effort, especially when teaching the same course across multiple classes.
How is this different to our quiz?
Exam is a separate environment solely for assessment purposes. This will cater to requirements such as:
Exam timer
Questions from Question Bank
Assessment tab in course sidebar
Examination tool is a new feature on OpenLearning. To create an exam, please make sure that you are able to see the Assessment tab in your course’s sidebar. The Assessment tab will appear to a Course Admin, Assessor and Assessment Designer.
Creating an exam from the Gradebook
From the sidebar, select Gradebook. Gradebook is the page where you add any items that you would like to be graded. For more information about the Gradebook, click here.
To create an exam, click Add grade item button located at the top of the table. In an empty state, the “Add grade item” button will be located in the center of the page. Fill in your exam name and exam description and click Add to grade book.
This will take you to the main Gradebook section. In this section, you need to set up the following:
1. Weight: Assign the weight or score for your grade items.
2. Visibility: Select the appropriate visibility setting for your learners' view and click Save. The default visibility of the item is Fill report on release. The other available options are Score only and Hidden.
3. Action: Click the three dots, select Edit to continue modifying your grade item report, or choose Delete to remove the grade item report.
Add your exam questions
In the Gradebook dashboard, open the exam that you just created to populate your exams. The “Edit exam” drawer will be opened where you can:
Change your exam name
Change your exam description
Define a time limit
Select whether you’d like to randomise the order of questions in the exam
To add the questions in, select the “Questions” tab in the drawer. You will be given two choices:
To select manually which questions you would like to add from the question bank
To create a random question set from the question bank
Selecting questions from the bank and adding them to the exam
1. To select manually which questions you would like to add to the exam, simply click Add questions.
2. A modal will open where you can select the question bank and the questions that you'd like to add. You can use the checkbox to add more than one question at one go.
3. To preview the question content, simply click the question name.
4. Once you are happy with your choices, click Continue.
5. It will close the modal and you will see the questions that you have added in the "Questions" tab.
6. Set points for each question type and click Save once you are done. You can also click Preview exam to see what the exam will look like in a real setting.
Create a random question and add them to the exam
If you choose to create a random question set for your exam, simply select the “Random question set” option. This tool is especially handy if you have a question bank with a lot of questions, and you’d like to create exams that pulls questions easily from that bank. Instead of all students receiving the exact same set of questions, the system draws different questions randomly for each individual or group of students, ensuring that each test or quiz is unique. In the modal, you will need to fill in:
The number of questions
Points per questions
From which question bank
Which question type
In the example below, I chose to create a random question set of four questions taken from my own question bank. Each question will have 2 points.
What happens if I have insufficient questions in my bank when I’m trying to set up my random question set?
You can still create a random question set even if your question bank has insufficient questions. This allows educators to set up their exams first and build their question banks later. However, an exam with a random question set that lacks sufficient questions cannot run in the exam runner.
To ensure educators complete their exam configuration, four labels will appear, indicating that the exam has insufficient questions and requires attention.
Label 1: “This is less than the number of questions you specified”
Label 2: “There are not enough questions to populate this question set”
Label 3 LEARNERS ONLY - In the block page, it will say, "exam is still under construction". The Start exam button will be disabled.
Label 3.1 EDUCATORS/COURSE ADMIN ONLY - In the block page, it will say that there are some issues with the exam setup and they need to resolve it.
Assign points to the questions that I have added
After adding the questions into the exam, you can assign points to the questions.
The points stored on the question level can affect learner's score in the exam, especially in a multi-part question.
In the example below, the question consists of 2 response widgets, each with a score of 1. The total score of this question is 2 in the question bank.
When the question is added to an exam, the question will be given a default score of 2 in the exam.
If a learner only gets the MCQ component of the question right, and gets Short Answer wrong, the learner will point 1 score in the exam.
If the question is worth 10 scores in the exam, the learner will point 1/2 x 10 = 5 scores in the exam.
Randomise the order of the questions of my exam to each learner
To randomise the order of my exam, simply tick the radio button Randomise question order for each learner from the Settings tab.
Adding access time to my exam
To set a time window for an exam, select Restrict access time. This will open a date selector where you can choose the exam’s start and end times.
Rules:
The open time must be before the end time.
The end time must be after the start time.
If the exam should always be accessible, select Allow access at any time.
Protip: This information will also be displayed on the Administer Learners > Timeline page if a course has an exam with an access time.
Adding a time limit to my exam
To add a time limit to my exam, simply tick the radio button Set time limit from the settings tab.
Previewing an exam that I just created
To preview the exam, simply click the Preview exam button from the drawer. In order to preview, you will need to save your exam first.
Copy an exam from another class
If you have created an exam for one class (e.g., Class of 2023) and want to use the same exam in a different class, you can simplify the process by using the Copy exams from another class option.
