Assessment Tool

Description:	In Blackboard, you can create and edit the following types of assessments: quizzes surveys self tests You can also preview the assessments to see how they will appear to Students.
Who can do what?	Designers can create and send assessments. Instructors can create and send assessments. Students can view assessments.
Demo	Show me how to create a quiz?
How To's:	Creating Assessments
Tip	To administer a negative score for selecting an incorrect answer, for each incorrect answer, enter the negative value (%). Under Settings, select Allow negative score. The quiz visibility can only be set once you have added questions to the quiz. The quiz will remain hidden until you have added questions to it and at a later stage you may access the properties of the quiz and change it to be visible.

How to Create Assessments

The steps to create an assessment are:   Adding questions to the question database Creating a quiz shell title Selecting questions to add to the quiz from the database Weighting the questions Completing the quiz settings   The question types the designer can create include:   Multiple-choice Matching Calculated Combination Short answer Paragraph Fill in the blank Jumbled Sentence True / False Blackboard will automatically grade all the question types available in the quiz except the paragraph question type.

Adding questions to the question database All questions are stored in the Question Database and can be used in multiple assessments. Creating questions can be broken down into three steps: Question titles and text: From the Build tab, under Course Tools, click Assessments. Click Go to Question Database. On the Question Database screen, click 'Create Questions' and select the question type. Enter a title that will identify the question when you are browsing the Question Database. Enter the question text: for a calculated, fill in the blank, or jumbled sentence question type, enter the variables in square brackets. you can enable HTML Creator to format your question. you can insert an equation into your question. If you want to include an image with the question, browse for the image and then enter a title for the image. Specify question settings. Settings vary depending on the question type. Specify more options for questions. Settings Specific to Question Types: True or False Questions: under Answers, select whether the statement entered in the question text box is true or false. Multiple Choice Questions: under Answers, select if this question has one correct answer or multiple correct answers. Then, enter the possible answers and, optionally, feedback for each answer. Finally, select the appropriate correct response check box(es): If you select only one, the answer is automatically attributed a value (%) of 100%. If you select multiple correct response check boxes, the answer values will automatically be divided equally to equal a value (%) of 100%, or you can enter your own values for each correct answer. If you want to provide students with more than five possible answers, click 'Create Additional Answers.' Under Settings, select other settings that determine how the question will appear, the grading scheme, and whether negative scoring is allowed (optional). Combination (Multiple Choice) Questions: most of the settings are the same as for standard multiple choice questions, except that you can’t assign partial values to combination questions. In the Create Answer Combinations area, you select combinations of the single answers and designate one as the correct response. As well creating combinations from the single answers, you can enter alternate answers, such as None of the above or All of the above, by entering text in the other text box. Fill in the Blank Questions: enclose words that you want to appear as blanks in square brackets. Then, click Generate Answers. Next, enter the value for each blank and the grading scheme for each answer. If you want to create alternate answers and specify a partial or full value for them, click Create Alternate. Jumbled Sentence Questions: With this question type, students are presented with a sentence with missing words. Drop-down lists containing several word selections appear for the missing words and students must select the correct word. To create the question and answer for jumbled sentence questions, enclose words that you want to jumble in square brackets. Then, click Generate Answers. Next, enter the value for each blank and the grading scheme for each answer. Matching Questions: use the Matching Pairs area to set up the pairs of answers that students must match. Use the Grading Scheme area to specify a grading scheme for the answers. Column Preview area allows you to determine whether students can see all possible answers (outside of the drop-down menus) as they make their matches. Possible answers are ordered randomly. Terms will remain in the order they were entered. These terms will be ordered randomly in a drop-down list. By default, the text boxes displayed are for short answers. Click to change to long answer format. Paragraph Questions: Paragraph questions must be graded manually by the instructor. Under Settings you can customize the height and width of the text box where students will enter their answers. Correct response appears in students’ graded questions. It can also be used as a reference for graders. Short Answer Questions: Students can be required to enter one or multiple answers. If multiple answers are required, you can require students to provide their answers in a specific order.     To indicate acceptable answers and their values and grading schemes: Enter the answer text and the value for each answer Select the grading scheme. For example, if student answers must match exactly what you’ve entered in the answer text box, select Equals. If you want students to enter answers in a specific order – for example, you’ve asked students to identify planets in order of distance from the sun – you must: -Under Settings, specify the number of answer boxes to be shown to students. -Under Allow in answer box, select the specific answer box. Under Settings, you can also specify the answer box width and whether answers are case sensitive. Calculated Questions: First, you design the question using variables in place of numbers. Then you enter a formula to randomly generate values for each variable in the question. Each student receives one of several unique number sets for solving the problem. To create a calculated question and answers: Enter the formula and enclose variables in square brackets. This formula is used to generate values to replace the variables within the question text. The variables will be replaced with values when the student views it. Indicate the answer units, whether they are required, and what percentage of the answer they’re worth. Click Analyze Variables to display the settings for the variables and answers. Enter variables in brackets. Enter the minimum and maximum values for each variable. For the Answer Set, select how many answer sets should be generated, the number of decimal places, and the answer tolerance (the range of answers that should be considered correct). Click Generate Answer Set. More Options for All Question Types Under More Options, specify the following settings: For General feedback, enter any feedback that should appear to all students when the question is graded. For Section Designer notes, enter any notes to be stored with the question and displayed only to you. If you have added a custom column to the Question Database, you will be able to enter the information here. If you want to place the question in a specific category in the Question Database, select an existing or create a new category. If you want to view the question as it will appear to students, click Preview. Note: You can also preview a question that is already saved in the Question Database: From the Question Database screen, click the question’s ActionLinks icon and click Preview. Click Save. Note: when a custom column is added to the Question Database, a field appears here in order to add information. Place the question into a new or existing Question Database category. Creating a quiz shell title Click the Assessments link in the left hand Course Tools menu. Click on the Create Assessment button. Type in the title for your assessment in the Title text box. Type in the description for your assessment in the Description text box. This is optional and it is a description of the link. Note: The Item Visibility can only be set once you have added questions to the quiz. The quiz will remain hidden until you have added questions to it and at a later stage you may access the properties of the quiz and change it to be visible. The grade book column name is normally the same as the title of the quiz and will be automatically added to the grade book. The Types of assessments available are Quiz, Survey or Self Test. Select the Quiz radio button beneath the Type heading. When creating a quiz, you have the option to base the quiz on an existing assessment. Select the Base on an existing assessment radio button if you want to base this quiz on an existing assessment. Then, select the assessment you are basing the quiz on from the Base on an existing assessment drop-down menu. Note: When you select the Base on an existing assessment option you are making an exact copy of an existing assessment using the same questions. Select the Apply assessment settings only check box if you only want to apply an assessment setting and not include the actual questions. Selecting questions to add to the quiz from the database Click the Assessments link in the left hand Course Tools menu. Click on the title of the quiz that you want to access. . Click on the Add to Assessment button. Note: that you may add questions by using the Create Questions button and create new questions from the nine different question types available. You may add Existing Questions or you can add a Question Set. Existing Questions: this option lets you add questions to your quiz that already exist in the Blackboard Question Database. Question Set: A question set is a collection of questions that are the same level of difficulty and value that you add as a set to the quiz. Blackboard then randomly selects a set number of questions (that the designer specifies) from the question set and adds it to the quiz.   Adding Existing Questions to the assessment: Select the questions that you want to add to the quiz by clicking on the check box to the left of each question title. Click on the Add Selected button. By default Blackboard allocates ten points to each question you have inserted. You then need to allocate the amount of points you would like per question. Place your cursor in the Points text box for the first question and type in the amount of points the first question is worth. Click on the Update Total button. Select the action link to the right of the question title that you would like to preview. Select the Preview option from the drop-down menu. Click on the Close button once you have seen the preview and decided on the points for the question.   Adding Questions Sets to the assessment: Click the Assessments link in the left hand Course Tools menu. Click on the title of the quiz that you want to access. Click on the Add to Assessment button. A drop-down menu appears. Select the Question Set option from the drop-down menu. The questions in the Question Database screen displays. Select the questions you would like to add as a set by clicking on the check box to the left of each question title. Click on the Add Selected button. The Quiz screen displays with the Question Set added. Select the number of questions you would like the student to answer from the Question Set by clicking on the Select drop-down menu. Click on the Update Total button. The quiz total is updated. You may also add question alternates to a question set if you require to add more questions to the set Completing the quiz settings Click the Assessments link in the left hand Course Tools menu. The Assessments screen displays. Click on the action link to the right of the assessment title. A drop-down menu appears. Select the Edit Properties option from the drop-down menu. The Title and Description for the quiz is already there. You may edit these if necessary. Review the options given in the different categories and select the appropriate ones.