Creating a quiz in Study Direct
Creating a quiz in Study Direct is actually a three stage process.
1. Firstly you need to add a quiz to your Study Direct site, initially an empty
‘container’ with various general settings.
2. Next you create a category and a question bank
3. Finally you add questions from the bank to the quiz.
1. Adding a quiz to your site
In the section where you want the quiz to appear, click on the Add an activity button
and select Quiz from the menu
Give the quiz a meaningful and unambiguous Name.
In the Introduction explain clearly what the students have to do, any pre-quiz
requirements and so on. Note you can use the Editor to add links, images etc..
There a number of settings you can change e.g. how long the quiz is available to students,
how many attempts students can have at completing the quiz. For the purposes of this
guide, however, the default settings will be used.
Click Save and display.
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2. Create a category and create a question bank.
Study Direct uses a
Question bank to store
and organize questions so
a question in the bank
may be used in more than
one quiz.
Your new quiz has no
questions, so you will need
to create some questions,
provide the answers and
feedback within the bank.
Before creating the questions themselves, you need to create a Category. Making
effective use of the Categories will help you organize your quiz and allows for a strategic
re-use of quizzes across the School.
A. To create a Category, click
on the Categories link and
go to the box entitled add
category.
B. You can choose the level at
which you want your category
to be placed.
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Study Direct site
School or department
System
Give your category a
meaningful title - for
example ‘questions for the
Brain and Behaviour module’.
Then add some additional
information about the
category, for example ‘this
category contains questions
that test student
understanding of the lectures
on the Brain and Behaviour
module’
C. Then click the Add category button.
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You will then be taken to a page that displays the Categories to which you have access.
You are now ready to start adding questions to your question bank.
A. Click on the Questions link
To create a new question, click on the drop-down list, choose the questions type you
would like to use from the list.
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A. The Question name is a descriptive
title to identify it in the bank (the student
can’t see this title).
B. The Question text is what the
student will see, you can add images etc.
C. Every question needs a grade, by
default it is set to 1.
D. A penalty factor of 0 means the
student can try as often as they like and
still get the full marks.
If you want to use an image you need to
upload it into your file directory in the
usual way. You can then either insert it
into the window where you write your
text or select it from the Image to
display drop-down menu.
General feedback is some text
that gets shown to the student
after they have attempted the
question. The same text is shown
to all students, unlike the
feedback that can be included
after each answer, which
depends what response the
student gave.
You could use this General
Feedback box to give students
some background to what
knowledge the question was
testing, or to give them a link to
more information they can use if
they did not understand the
questions.
You can select One or multiple answers, whether choices are shuffled and the choice
numbering format.
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In the Choice area, you
provide the possible
answers and the Grade
(whether the answer is
correct or not). If there is
only one correct answer
select 100% for the
correct answer and None
for the rest. If there are
two correct answers select
50% for both of the
correct answers and None
for the rest.
Complete the feedback on
for each answer.
Once you have set the question, grade, answers and feedback click on Save Changes at
the bottom of the page to add it to the Question Bank.
3. Add the questions from the bank to the quiz
Once questions have been created in the Question bank, they can be added to the quiz.
A. Click on the Quiz link
The Question bank (on the right of
the screen below) lists all questions
available to use. The quiz (on the
left in the image below, currently
empty) uses questions from the
Question bank.
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There are various actions you can apply
Add into the Quiz – This will add the single chosen question from the bank into the
quiz.
Preview – This will open a new window with the question, it provides a quick way of
checking the design of a question.
Edit – This will open the question editor to make changes on the question.
Re-Order – Move questions within the bank.
Delete – Permanently delete the question from the bank.
Select – Select the question for multiple question actions (see below).
You do not have to add questions individually, Select the one you want to add (or Select
all then click Add to quiz.
B. The Preview link allows you to test your quiz.
4. Looking at results
To review answers and results once the quiz has taken place, click on the quiz name, then
click on the Results link.
The Quiz Results will show every student enrolled in the course, the time they started
and completed the quiz, the amount of time they took and the final grade received. You
can also look at how the entire cohort of students answered each questions – this can be
really useful in identifying which topics students are or are not understanding.
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Other information about quizzes
General
When first setting up quizzes, confusion can arise from the fact that when you add a quiz to Study
Direct through the ‘add an activity’ page, all you are doing is creating an empty shell to which you
will later add your questions. The hub of the quiz tool is the question bank. It is within this bank
that questions are created - you can then choose to add some or all of the questions from the
bank into your quiz.
Question types in Study Direct quizzes
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Multiple Choice
The respondent chooses from multiple answers. There are two types of multiple choice
questions - single answer and multiple answer.
Short Answer
The respondent types a word or phrase. There may several possible correct answers, with
different grades. Answers may or may not be sensitive to case.
Numerical
A numerical question looks just like a short-answer question. The difference is that
numerical answers are allowed to have an accepted error. This allows a continuous range of
answers to be set.
True/False
The respondent selects from two options: True or False.
Matching
A list of sub questions is provided, along with a list of answers. The respondent must
"match" the correct answers with each question.
Embedded Answers (Cloze)
These very flexible questions consist of a passage of text (in Study Direct format) that has
various answers embedded within it, including multiple choice, short answers and numerical
answers.
Random Short-Answer Matching
From the student perspective, this looks just like a Matching question. The difference is that
the sub-questions are drawn randomly from Short Answer questions in the current category.
Random
A random question in a quiz is replaced by a randomly-chosen question from the category
that was set.
Calculated
Calculated questions offer a way to create individual numerical questions by the use of
wildcards that are substituted with individual values when the quiz is taken.
Essay
The respondent writes an answer in essay format.
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