LMS Weekly Update: Quizzes in Brightspace and the Availability of the Winter 2020 Courses

Posted on Thursday, November 28th, 2019

ALL You Need to Know on Brightspace Quizzes

This week we have some tips on the Quizzes tool, in addition the documentation that exists in the Essentials for Faculty course in Brightspace that is available to all instructors

  • RECOMMENDED workflow to create quizzes: There are two ways to create quizzes in your Brightspace course: 1. By adding new questions directly to your Quiz (Activities/Quizzes/New Quiz), either from scratch or imported from a .csv file created with the Test Questions Generator and 2. By adding questions first to the Question Library (Activities/Quizzes/Question Library tab/New Section) and then importing them into a quiz. Note that by creating a new Section first in the Question library, and then adding or importing questions there will keep the questions organized and easily to filter.

The second option is the one we highly recommend, as all the questions created or imported into a section in the Question Library will be saved there and you will be able to reuse them later in another quiz or final exam.
Important: The questions created directly in your quizzes will NOT be available for you to import in another quiz or the Question Library.

  • What to do if your students completed a quiz, but you don’t see the grades under Grades? Go to the quiz’s properties, to the Assessment tab and check if you have a Grade item linked to the quiz. If not, create one using the Add Grade Item link. Also, make sure that the Allow automatic export to grades option is checked off.
  • Need to distribute an unique set of quiz questions to each of your students? This video explains how to to create a quiz with a randomized set of questions. Make sure that your questions exist under a Section, in the Question Library. Also, you can have multiple randomized sets of questions in one quiz, by extracting a number of questions from different Sections from the Question Library.
  • Need to set up practice quizzes, but without the associated columns in the course gradebook? When you set up the quiz, on the Assessment tab, leave None for the Grade Item, but check the box to “Allow attempt to be set up as graded immediately upon completion.” No column will appear in the gradebook, but students will be able to view their score and any other options that you set up under the Submissions View tab.
  • Need to change the answer to a quiz question and regrade student submissions? From the Activities/Quizzes click on the chevron for that particular quiz and then on Grade. On the Questions tab, click Update All Attempts and then on the question you need to regrade. You have the options to give to all students points value for that particular question or re-grade only the attempts that have a particular answer
  • Need to hide the quiz grades from your students view? Make the quiz unavailable (from Activities/Quizzes) AND also hide the gradebook item from Grades: Enter Grades view, click on the chevron for the title of the column and choose Edit. Click on the Restrictions tab and then on Hide from Users.
  • How to set up quiz feedback for your students? When students complete quizzes, they will be eager to see their results AND feedback. The default quiz settings show only the overall grade, and nothing else. In order to release more information to students (i.e. questions, correct/incorrect answers, class averages, etc.) you need to either edit the default submission view or set up an additional submission view. Click here to learn more.
  • How to print a quiz? There are times when you would like to have a paper copy of an online quiz. Currently, there is no option in Brightspace to allow you to do that, but this work around might save you some time. Access the quiz from Activities/Quizzes and make sure you have the quiz setup so that all questions are displayed on a single page. Preview the quiz and then click on the Start quiz button. Copy the entire quiz (Ctrl+C), paste the content (Ctrl+V) to a Word file, and then print it from there.
  • Need to clear an attempt for one of your students? Go to Activities/Quizzes, and from the Manage Quizzes, click on Grade from the context menu for that particular quiz. Select the check box for each attempt you want to reset and then click on Reset Icon (trash bin).
  • How to submit an “in progress” attempt on behalf of a student? When a learner takes a quiz but fails to submit it, Brightspace shows no submission or grade. The learner’s quiz becomes an “attempt in progress.” You can search for the attempt and then submit it by “impersonating” the learner so that the quiz can be graded.

Winter 2020 Course Shells NOW Available in Brightspace

Winter 2020 course shells have been created and made available in Brightspace as of today, Friday, Nov 29th. If you don’t see your courses in Brightspace, check ACSIS and/or with your support officer to ensure your course(s) are assigned to you. Email us at brightspace@algonquincollege.com if you still don’t see them listed in 48 hours.

Also, check out the Brightspace Course Readiness Checklist in the Brightspace Essentials course for steps you need to get your course ready for your students! If you don’t have access to the “Brightspace Essentials for Faculty” course, please send an email to brightspace@algonquincollege.com.

Combined Courses: When teaching multiple sections of the same course, combining those sections into one shell might save you some time. To learn more about the two options available and also how to deal with the content of a combined course, click here.

Reminder: End of Life Internet Explorer (any version), starting January 1st, 2020

As previously announced in the August release, Microsoft Internet Explorer is approaching End of Life (EOL) status as a supported browser. To provide more visibility about this upcoming change, when you login to Brightspace using Internet Explorer, a banner informs the user about the approaching EOL date. The banner also includes a recommendation to upgrade your browser. We recommend using Chrome while working with Brightspace.

Stay tuned for the next week’s update on Tips on Gradebook.


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