The Quizzes Tool

LMS Weekly Update: Respondus Lockdown Browser Pilot and Quiz Feedback

Respondus Lockdown Browser Pilot

As promised, here’s the official announcement about this upcoming pilot!

AC Online has entered into an agreement to pilot Respondus LockDown Browser. This pilot will run from May 1, 2020, through August 31, 2020, and includes unlimited installations of LockDown Browser software. Respondus LockDown Browser is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Brightspace. When students use LockDown Browser, they are unable to print, copy, go to another URL, or access other applications.

You can find more details about this Pilot on the Respondus Lockdown Browser Pilot page.

Providing Quiz Feedback

Did you know that, when grading your students quizzes, you have multiple ways of providing feedback? Also, your students have different ways of accessing the feedback, depending on the way you chose to enter your comments.

  • Overall Feedback – general feedback for all of the quiz attempts.
  • Attempt Feedback – feedback provided for each quiz attempt.
  • Question Feedback – feedback entered for each individual quiz question, for each student.

Overall Feedback

There are two ways to provide overall feedback, along with the grade for a quiz, regardless of the number of attempts your quiz allows:

  • Overall Feedback entered from Grades/Enter Grades – The feedback will automatically update in the Overall feedback text box available to you when you grade the quiz.
    Want to save time? When you need to provide all students with the same overall feedback and have it personalized for some of them, while you are still here in Grade/Enter Grades, select all student’s names and click on the Add Feedback button. The comments entered here will populate the Overall feedback area for all those students.
  • Overall Feedback entered from Activities/Quizzes/Grade – When you grade the students’ quiz attempts from the Activities/Quizzes, choose Grade from the contextual menu of the quiz. On the Users tab you will see all students who have completed an attempt. Click on the Overall Grade (highest attempt) and then scroll down at the bottom. Here you will see details on the student’s quiz attempt(s) and also the feedback that you entered from the Grades.

Note 1: It is recommended to enter the overall feedback starting from the Grades, as currently there is an issue with updating the feedback in the Grades, if you do it the other way.

Note 2: The Overall Feedback will be visible to your students even when you keep the Default View on the Submission View tab, in the properties of the quiz, when only the quiz score will show up after students submit the quiz.

How do students view the Overall feedback? Students will access the overall feedback either from their Grade menu, or from the Activities/Quizzes in the Evaluation Status column.

Attempt Feedback

If you allow your students to have one or multiple quiz attempts, you will have the option to provide feedback for each attempt. From Activities/Quizzes, click on Grade from the contextual menu. The Users tab will display your students names and their quiz attempts. Click on the attempt (1, 2, 3, etc) you want to give feedback to and enter the comments in the Attempt Feedback text box. The Attempt drop-down list gives you the option to select different quiz attempts for the same student, while the arrows at the top of the screen allows you to move to the next student.

Note: The Attempt Feedback will be visible for your students without you, the instructor, needing to change the Default Submission View.
How do students view the quiz attempt feedback? They need to go to Activities/Quizzes and click on the Feedback link in the Evaluation Status column and then on each Attempt link.

Feedback per Quiz Question

If you want to give feedback for individual quiz questions (for instance, for written response type of questions), then you will need to set up a different Submission View for your quiz, other than the default one. In the Submission View for the quiz, either “Show questions answer incorrectly”, “Show questions answered correctly”, or “Show all questions with user responses” must be selected.
Click here in order to read about Submission Views.

How do students view the feedback for individual questions? Students will need to go to Activities/Quizzes and click on the Feedback link from the Evaluation Status column. Once there, there will be a link to their quiz attempt.

Important! For the type of feedback that requires students to go to Activities/Quizzes, the quiz (active or inactive) needs to be displayed on that page. Even if you don’t want the quiz open anymore, you will just need to keep it active an set up an end date under the quiz Restrictions tab.

 

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

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.

LMS Weekly Update: Tips on Brightspace Quizzes

Quiz Feedback

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.

Printing 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.

Student Persona

Switching between the “instructor” and “learner” roles helps you understand how students see the course content. If you feel that you need to take an extra step in making sure your course activities (quizzes, assignments, discussion boards, etc) are perfectly set up or you want to become a pro in setting up that special access for a quiz or assignment, request a student persona by emailing us at brightspace@algonquincollege.com. Click here to learn how to use a student persona account.

LMS Weekly Update: Creating and managing quizzes

Are you aware of all the features that are available to create and manage quizzes? Today’s tips from your LMS team provide insights into how to create a question pool with a unique random bank of questions, how to reset a quiz attempt, and how to submit quizzes that are still in progress. You also can access the Brightspace Essentials module about quizzes here.

In addition, we want to remind you that Blackboard will be decommissioned by the end of this month. Check out the FAQs about the Blackboard decommission here.

LMS Weekly Update: Tips for Quizzes

Are you having issues with quizzes in Brightspace? Your LMS team is here to help.

If you are looking for quizzes training sessions, you can register here.
We have online resources for how to use quizzes that can be accessed here.
We also offer one-on-one support for quizzes. Faculty can book an appointment with us here.

Keep in mind these four quick tips when working with quizzes:

1. Quizzes are still visible to students under Activities > Quizzes when they are hidden or deleted within a Content module.

2. Blackboard quizzes were imported into Brightspace as Active and are visible to students. Make them Inactive.

3. Check off Automatic Grade and Auto Export to Grades in order to see student quiz results in the Grades Centre.

4. Set default Submission View to what you want students to see upon finishing the quiz.

View the Quick Tips: Important Quiz Settings document for details.