Configure Quiz Settings

The nice thing about WebCT is the myriad of options you have for presenting the quiz to your students, but the choices can also seem overwhelming at first.

  1. If you are not at a screen like the one pictured below, click on the title of the quiz for which you want to configure settings.
    (If you cannot click on the title, be sure you are in Designer view.)
    Click on the "Edit quiz settings" button in the Options area#
    Highlighting the button in options for Edit Settings
  2. The first portion is titled "Basic Settings" and involves options for how students will view and interact with the quiz.
    Screenshot of the Basic Settings portion
    1. Quiz title: At this point you could change the title for the quiz.
    2. Question titles: If you've hidden a clue to the question purpose, topic, or answer in the title, you would not want to select this option.
    3. Question delivery: Choosing to have one question at a time can cut down on the ease of copying and pasting the quiz questions to another format such as a Word document.
    4. Quiz duration: You can select any number of minutes, hours, or days students have to finish the quiz once they've started it. Also, if the time limit is important to you, you should select the option to "Disallow answer submission if time has expired."
    5. Attempts allowed: You can let students take the quiz 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or unlimited times. Later down the page you can select which will be scored if you allow more than one attempt.
    6. Attempts separation: If you do allow more than one attempt, then you can specify a number of minutes, hours, or days students must wait before retaking the quiz.
  3. Availability determines the time period within which a student can take a quiz. If you have no timetable for quizzes in your course, then you can just press the "Allow access now" button, which will make the quiz available immediately to students. If you leave the "Available until" area blank, then the quiz will be available indefinitely - including semester to semester.
    Screenshot of drop down options for setting quiz dates
    If you prefer to control the pace of the course with quizzes, then you'll want to create a window of opportunity for students by selecting the first available date and time and the last available date and time using the drop down options for year, month, date, and time. This option requires that the dates be reset for each semester you use the course.
    The "Deny access now" button stops students from being able to take the quiz as soon as you have clicked on the button. It will replace whatever date is in the "Available until" area with today's date and current time.
  4. You may use the selective release option to provide a modified version of your quiz to a student with special needs or to give a student with a legitimate reason for missing your window of opportunity for the quiz a chance to take it late without resetting the dates for everyone in the class.
    To do this you would click on the "Select" button, which will open a window with a list of all students. You just check the ones to whom you'd like to release the quiz.
    Screenshot of the select button and other form fields for selective release
    You could also choose to only release the quiz to students who have met some other criteria (i.e., a certain score on a previous quiz, submitted an assignment via the assignments tool). To release based on a previous quiz, for example, you would select the name of the quiz in the first drop down option, equal to or greater than in the second option area, then the numeric score for the minimum required amount in the text area to the far right.
    Finally, you can hide any selectively released quizzes from the quiz listing for students who don't meet the criteria# This would be especially helpful if you did have a student with special needs for whom you've created a special version of the quiz.
  5. The next section, Security, has been rarely used at UHCL. If you were requiring students to come to campus to take the quiz and wanted to log them in yourself, or be sure they are actually in a certain lab taking the quiz, then it might be useful.
    Form options for security settings
  6. You have the option of having an email sent to each student upon submitting the quiz. It's one of the few places in WebCT which will accept and send a message to an external email address (i.e., johndoe@aol.com). Should you choose to send a message, it might be something along the lines of, "Now that you've completed unit 2, please begin the readings for unit 3."
    Screenshot of option to enter text and an email address for student upon submission of quiz
  7. Student score: The first part of the Results section only applies if you have opted for students to have more than one attempt at the quiz. You'll need to select how it will be scored. Your choices are: First, Latest, Highest, Average.
    Screenshot of the first two Results options, a pull down option and radio option
    Student score release: Here you'll need to decide when students will be able to view their score on the quiz. The options are:
    1. "Release the score once the quiz has been submitted." In this case students will see the results immediately.
    2. "Release the score once the quiz has been submitted and all the questions have been graded." This really only applies if you have a paragraph (essay) question in the quiz which you need to grade manually.
    3. "Release the score once the availability period has ended." If you had a window of opportunity within which students had to complete the quiz, then no one will see the scores until that period has ended.
    4. "Release the score once the availability period has ended and all the questions have been graded." Again, this only applies if there are paragraph questions in the quiz to be graded manually.
    5. "Do not release the score." If you choose this option you could release the score via the grade book at a later time of your choosing.
  8. Release column: Applies to the line in the grade book for this quiz and whether students will be able to view the quiz score if they have access to the "My Grades" tool.
    Radio button for releasing column or not
  9. You have many options as to what students will see when they view the results of the quiz. You will notice that some options require others to be selected or are exclusive of others. The default settings provide the students the most information about the quiz.
    Series of checkboxes for how students will see results
  10. The final step in the quiz settings process is to click the "Update" button at the bottom of the page, applying the setting immediately.