Blackboard Tutorial: Creating Tests in Blackboard

Tests

Tests are designed to be taken online and may be either marked automatically with immediate results available to students (depending on the question format) or added to the Gradebook for making later. All test results are recorded in the Online Gradebook. Test and quizzes are best used as formative assessment, to help students learn. Remember, if you are using a Blackboard quiz for summative assessment (to count towards the final course mark), you should design it as an open-book test.

Note: Tests differ from surveys in that they are not anonymous – surveys do not identify an individual’s response to a question, just the number of individuals who answered in a certain way.

Creating a Test

1. Control Panel > Test Manager
2. Click on the “Add Test” button
3. Enter in the name, description and instructions which your students will see when taking the test and click on submit.

The Test Canvas window will now open

Creation Settings for the test

You can now specify some default settings which will apply to the test by clicking on the Creation Settings button

Provide feedback gives you the opportunity to add a comment on each question the student answers, as opposed to only giving feedback for correct or incorrect responses. The only questions this does not apply to are True/False, Multiple Answer and Matching Questions.

It is recommended that you specify default point values for questions in your test. You can modify this setting later if you need for individual questions. This option must be selected if you are uploading questions from a text file.

Select the settings you wish to apply to the test by ticking the corresponding boxes and click on submit.

Now start adding the questions.

1. Click on the drop down box to select the format you require and click “GO”
2. enter the question and maximum points possible (this can be different from the default setting you may have specified above)
3. Enter the answers
4. Enter the feedback
5. Submit
6. add more questions by using the “Add more questions here” link or by repeating steps 1 to 5.

Enter as many as required by repeating the above steps.

Tip: You can also add questions from a question pool, prepared in advance or exported from a different course, or from another test (assessment). If you want to make sure that your students get different questions from a selected pool, use an option to add a random block of questions from a question pool.

You can also upload questions from a file, prepared in advance. This is a faster and more efficient way of creating tests than creating questions in Blackboard.

For instructions on how to do this click here

You can re-order test questions by clicking on the number beside them. You can make changes to a question by using the Modify button and you can remove questions.

When happy you are satisfied with your test design, layout and content click on the Ok button.

Making a Test available

Go to the content area you wish to add the test to. Control Panel > Content Area > Course Resources and click on “Add Test” icon at the top of the active window.

Select the test you wish to add in the list under “Select Test Below” and click on submit. Click ok to acknowledge the receipt.

Now to customise and make the Test available to your students click on “Modify the Test options”

In this section you will be able to make the test available and set options for how it will be presented to students.

To make your test available to students click Yes for “Make the link available”. Once the test is made available students can take it straight away, unless you select a later date under “Display After”. Make sure that you make all the changes to the test before you make it available to students.

Do you wish to allow students to take the test more than once? If so the multiple attempts option should be ticked. This feature allows students to take an assessment multiple times. Only the most recent score is saved, not the highest one

Do you wish to impose a time limit? To so this, use the Set timer option. If this option is selected, students are warned before their time is about to run out,but their access to the test if not cut off. Instead, you will get information about how each student went over time in doing their test when looking at their results in the Gradebook.

You can also restrict the viewing of the test to a specified time frame.

Under Test Feedback options – you can provide as much or little feedbacl as you want. Select those which are appropriate for your test.

Under Test Presentation options – select whether you want students to see all test questions at once on the same page, or present them one at a time. You can also randomise the order in which questions are presented to minimise opportunities for cross-checking test results between students, if the test is marked.