Creating a Quiz

Quizzes can be used in collections, courses, exams and provide the building blocks for the analytics on Synap. Learn how to make rich engaging questions and use the different question types available.

Quizzes are a fantastic way to boost user engagement and increase knowledge retention, use quizzes in all areas of the platform:

Exams: Quizzes form the source of questions in static and dynamic exams
Collections: Quiz or quizzes for studying large question banks, let users generate their own quizzes from the tags available to them in a collection
Assignments: Quizzes can have pass marks in courses to block a user progressing until they reach a required score.

Using the platform question editor or importer to create different types of questions with different content to create rich, engaging quizzes.

pageQuestion types

This doc is going to take you though the basics, check out other articles in this collection for more in depth guides into the different areas for quizzes. See the video below for an example of the Synap quiz experience

❓ Question editor

Create and edit quizzes from Collections, Courses or the Library. When editing a new or existing quiz, navigate to the 'Questions' page where you'll be able to use the question editor to create and update questions.

🎨 Creating questions

From the question editor the system will prompt you to select the correct settings for each question type, there are 3 broad categories of question types:

Auto marked by the system (multiple choice, ranked, imagine answer options, multi correct),
Manual marked (free text, file uploads, audio recording)
Non marked questions (questions worth zero marks or informational types

Which ever question category or type you pick, you'll need a stem. For questions marked by the system they'll need to have the write and wrong answers inputted.

pageQuestion types

🤖 1. Auto marked - single correct, multiple correct and ranked

These are questions where the candidate is presented with a list of options. You will need to provide at least 2 options. For a single correct type, one of these must be incorrect

✍️ 2. Manual marked - free text, file upload and audio recording

These are questions where the candidate provides the answer. You don't need to provide any options for these types. You can edit the text box label which goes above the free text / file upload box for students

👓 Non marked

Informational question types, candidates only read these questions, they do not need to select or provide an answer

🌾 Additional fields on questions

To give you more control over your questions Synap also provides a set of optional fields to store on your questions, use these to make it easier for your team to manage your questions and content at scale.

Question name - an easy to read 'title' for the question. It will only be displayed to users on the question breakdown tab of the results page (if enabled)
Lead-in - you can use this option to provide candidates with a lead-in to the question, positioned separately from the stem
Feedback - you have the option to provide feedback to anyone who takes the quiz which is useful if you need to explain the answer further. Feedback can be written in the box near the bottom of the page. This is displayed after a candidate submits a question in practice mode, or after they submit the entire attempt in exam mode (if the question breakdown tab is enabled)
Tags - tags can be used to generate dynamic exams and be faceted to provide more detailed insights on performance within and across attempts. You can search for existing tags and create new ones in the quiz builder. Editing of labels and facets is done in the Portal > Settings menu under Tags

To add more questions, click on the 'Add question' box at the bottom of the page and repeat the process above.

Remember to click the green 'Done' button once you're finished with a question to save it before saving the quiz as a whole

Identity verification (Say cheese 📸)

On free text questions you can also enable an option to ask candidates to take a picture of themselves through the webcam.

This is a great option if you want to have some identity verification during an exam. Just create a free text question and enable webcam snapshots in the question editor.

pageQuestion types

🛠 Advanced question settings

Apply further configuration to each question in the editor using Placement, Configuration and Marking.

📍 Placement

Shows you the question position in a quiz (Order) as well as important information and identifiers associated with that question.

Synap ID - A unique alphanumeric string that is automatically generated a question when is created
External ID - Define your own unique External IDs for questions, this is helpful if you're managing very large question banks and plan on importing & exporting questions via csv.
Section - If sections have been created, select the External ID of the section that the questions should be in
EMQ Group - If the quiz has EMQs, select the EMQ you want to link this question to

pageInstructions & sections pageEMQs

🕹 Configuration

Auto - The system looks at the length of the stem and options to select the optimal layout (Top down or Side-by-side)

Top down - Question stem appears above, options shown below
Side-by-side - (Recommended) Question stem appears on the left hand side, options on the right hand side
Time in ms - Default time is 2 minutes per question, you can add a custom times into a questions in milliseconds

✅ Marking

Use the marking drop down to apply a custom number of credits to a question. When enabled you can also create mark schemes for each question.

Credits: By default users are given one credit for answering a question correctly. You can customise the number of credits each question is worth. This comes in handy for free text question that require an essay response.

Create different areas and assign Max credits to those areas. If you are making lots of questions with the same mark scheme use the Clone question button to copy the mark scheme and questions.

🚨 Only questions in exams can be marked & mark schemes cannot be created in the importer.

🖼 Images

Images can be added to questions and/or feedback by selecting the image icon to upload your chosen file

👀 Previewing

Once you're happy with your questions and possible responses click 'Save' to save any changes. You can then click the 'Preview' button to quickly take the quiz from a student perspective. This will open in a new tab.

We recommend doing this before making the quiz public to ensure everything is clear and displaying in the way you want it to.

🗄 Organising

All quizzes that you create on Synap will be available in your Library. Go back into your created quizzes at any time to:

Add questions
Delete questions
Change questions

To delete a question, open it using the drop down arrow and click Delete

Changes and deletions are not made permanent until you click 'Save' in the top right-hand corner

You should not delete questions from quizzes that are being used in live exams

Depending on whether your quiz has Sections or not will dictate how you organise your questions. For a test without Sections just click the Organise button in the top right hand corner of the screen. You will then be able to drag and drop the questions into a different order.

For a test with Sections, click Organise Section at the bottom of the Section.

📍 Instructions & Sections

You can include sections in your quiz to split questions up. Sections can either be hard (candidates cannot view a previously submitted section) or soft (candidate can view a previously submitted sections but they cannot edit their responses)

You can also add instructions that are displayed before starting a quiz and that can be accessed at any point during the quiz. More below:

pageInstructions & sections

🧮 Configure Marking - quiz level

Marking on Synap works by allocating points to correct responses. Free text, Audio recording and File upload question types can be manually marked. All other question types are marked automatically by the system. By default all correct responses are given 1 point per question, you can customise each question to be worth a different number of points. Or set a new default on the quiz

Points - Are what is awarded for a correct / partially correct response. If negative marking is being used then points are what are deducted for an incorrect answer

Credits - The maximum points up for grabs for answering a question correctly

Partial credits - the points allocated for a partially correct response eg a multi correct question where a user only got 1 out of the 3 correct responses correct.

Penalties - Maximum points that can be deducted for an incorrect option (negative marking needs to be enabled on the quiz)

🏆 Grades

Depending on the type of quiz you have, you may want to include some grades or passing boundaries. To create grades navigate to the grade builder using the sub menu. Once there you'll need at least one pass and one fail grade.

The boundaries outlined in the image above translate to:

A = 80% = pass : users with 80% or above will achieve the A grade, and pass

B = 70% = pass : users with 70% or above will achieve the B grade, and pass.

E = 40% = pass : 40% is the lowest someone can possibly score in order to pass.

Fail = 0% = fail : users with between 0% and 39% will fail this exam.

You can choose the names and required percentages for each grade.

🏗 Experience

Set the quiz, results, settings and experience style from the Configure page. More on quiz and results configuration.

pageQuiz Experience

💡 Top Tips

- Preview your content: When you're building a quiz you'll want to keep previewing everything. Make good use of the preview made offered on the question page and take your quiz as a student before you release it!

- Different question styles: Using multiple question styles presents users with a new challenge. It can keep your questions fresh and engaging.

- Clone questions: A huge time saver especially if you've got very similar questions with the same credits / mark schemes. Look for the little clone question button on each question in the editor

- Make use of external ids: Although external ids on questions and emqs aren't enforced, if you're going to end up with huge question banks we recommend you give them a unique id that easily identifies the question to your team eg great_expectations_magwitch_mcq1

- Tag your questions: If you want to get insights from your questions you'll want to give them tags. Tags let you group questions across quizzes. You can create as many tags as you like, and manage them in the Tag manager (Settings > Tags)

- Bulk import / export. Once your quiz gets to a certain size it may become easier to manage it off a question sheet. See our guide on using the question importer

👯‍♀️ Clone a quiz

Go to the 'Quiz details' tab of the quiz you wish to clone. Then at the bottom right of the description box, you'll see the 'clone quiz' button. Clicking this will clone the quiz you are currently on. This will: