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.

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Last updated 5 months ago

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Creating a Quiz

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.

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

From the editor Questions (V3) page, select the 'Add question' option editing a new or existing quiz, you'll be prompted to select the question type. The main decision you'll be making here is whether the questions will be auto marked by the system or require manual marking by a marker.

Auto marked questions: Single correct, Multiple correct, Ranked, Cloze drop down, Cloze drag and drop.
Manual marked questions: Free text, Audio recording, File upload
Non marked questions: questions worth zero marks or informational types

Informational questions cannot be marked, they are given zero by default (use them as breaks between questions).

Learn more about the available question types in the doc below

Once you've selected a type you'll be taken to the editor where you'll need to fill out the information for the question, different question types will have different configuration options

❓ Creating questions

Once you have selected the question type the modal will expand to show multiple tabs for the different elements of the question

Here you enter the name, stem, lead in and feedback for the question

Name (optional) - This will appear in the quiz builder when the question builder is not open so use it as a reference to quickly identify the question. It will also be displayed to students if you enable the question breakdown tab on the results page
Stem (required) - This is what you're actually asking the student to do. It will appear to the left of the screen in the side by side layout (see the configuration tab) or above the answer options in the top down layout and when the question is linked to EMQs
Lead in (optional) - If you add a lead in then this will appear immediately above the answer box. If you're using a lead in then the stem gives context to the question being asked and the lead in becomes what you're actually asking the student to do
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)

Answer

Here you set what tools a user has to answer the question. This tab will appear differently depending on what question type you chose:

Single correct / multiple correct / ranked - Enter the text or image options (between 2 and 26) that a user can select, including specifying which answer(s) are correct. For ranked questions you will need to specify the correct order for the answer options. You can also choose to randomise the option order here, this is a good anti cheating method.
Free text / file upload / audio recording - Enter the label which appears above the text entry box / upload button / audio recording tool.
- Free text - You can choose to display the word count and enter a limit. The limit won't stop users entering more but it will notify them when they've exceeded it. You can enable webcam screenshots on free text questions which can be used as a id verification check
- Audio recording - You can add a limit of up to 60 minutes to for the recording as well as limiting attempts to one and restricting pausing of the responses
Cloze - Enter the sentence or sum including adding responses where at the point where users need to enter their response
- Drag and drop - Enter the options for a user to drag and drop into the response slot(s). Select the correct option from the drop down menu for each response slot
- Dropdown - Enter the options which will appear in the drop down menu below the response slot(s). The correct option will default to the first in the list, select the - icon next to a different option to select that as the correct option
- Free text - Enter any answers which should be marked as correct if entered by the user. Choose whether these should be case sensitive

ID - This is a unique, autogenerated, alphanumeric code used to identify the question. User may reference this if they have an issue with a questions
External ID - An id you can give to the question. You cannot have spaces in this, us _ instead
Layout - Side by side will place the question on the left of the screen and the answer box on the right. Top down will place the question at the top and the answer box below. If you select auto then system looks at the length of the stem and options to select the optimal layout (Top down or Side-by-side)
Time in seconds - Determines how much time this question will contribute to overall exam time. Does not restrict time for a specific question
Reveal question stem after some time - Question stem will be hidden until the defined timer has elapsed

Audio stem configuration

Restrict play count - Restricts the number of times an audio stem can be replayed
Auto play when question is displayed - The audio stem will begin playing once the question is displayed
Disable progression until audio is played - Candidates will not be able to progress to the next question until the audio stem has finished playing
Hide answer options until audio is played - Answer options will be hidden until the audio stem has finished playing

📸 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.

🖼 Images

Images can be added to questions, set as answer options, instructions and included in feedback 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 pencil icon 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

To change the order of questions, simply drag and drop using the icon to the left of the question name

📍 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:

🧮 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.

💡 Top Tips

- Preview 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)

👯‍♀️ 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:

Make a copy of all the questions with new ids
Copy over existing external ids
Make a copy of any EMQs with new ids
Duplicate sections, titles and anything else in the quiz into a new one.

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

📍 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

🕹 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