Questionmark - Staff

Create questions in QMOD – the basics

If you don’t have a Questionmark OnDemand account at this stage, please see our getting started with QMOD guide which steps you through how to get access.

Add a new question

Once logged in to Questionmark OnDemand (QMOD):

• Click on Authoring then select Standard Item Bank from the drop-down menu.
• Locate the module folder/sub-folder where you want to create your new questions.
• Click on +New and select a question type (e.g. multiple choice) from the drop-down menu.
• The question editor will indicate the information that has to be added (e.g. question wording, choices)
• Remember to set a correct answer and amend scoring if appropriate
• Add feedback if required
• Depending on the question type chosen, you may want to shuffle the choices so that students don’t see them in exactly the same order. You can choose shuffle all, none, all but last or all but last two.
  • Unless otherwise instructed, the Assessment team will set the question options to be randomised where suitable.
• Once finished, remember to click Save & Exit or Save & New (if creating more questions).

Note: It is important that the marking regime used should be made clear to the students in advance of any assessment, particularly if negative marking is to be used.

Editing questions

If a question is to be radically changed, copy and paste the question then make the changes to the copy. Remember to change the question description in Edit question properties. If the original question is no longer valid, change the properties to Retired.

You can carry out basic editing by clicking on the question description or if you require more complex editing (e.g. adding additional outcomes), tick the checkbox next to the relevant question and select Advanced from the toolbar.

Adding feedback to questions

For quizzes and formative assessments it can be incredibly beneficial to include immediate feedback for the students. This can be provided at different levels in the assessment. Within a question, you can chose to provide feedback at the choice level (e.g. if you want to provide differing feedback depending on which choice was selected by the student), at question level (e.g. if you want to provide the correct answer, or a link to further information / reading on the topic), or assessment level (e.g. depending on the score the student achieves you can provide varying feedback)

Resources in questions and feedback

You may wish to include resources in your questions and/or feedback. In QMOD, it is possible to include images, video, and audio (which can be useful for language based assessments).

You can also include weblinks which are particularly useful when it comes to adding feedback to a question. You can point students to further reading or resources on a topic rather than having to copy the information into the feedback.

To add a resource, navigate to the question editor and select where in the question wording or question choice you want to add the resource (e.g. question wording, choice or feedback). You can then select the appropriate option from the text formatting toolbar: Add/Edit Link, Add Image, Add or Embed Video, Add Audio.

• Always edit/crop/resize any images prior to importing to Questionmark.
• Remember to specify Alt Text for any images added to a question.
• Consider the name of the file and the Alt Text being used – if the image does not display to students during the assessment for any reason, they will be presented with the Alt Text/name of the file and you don’t want this to give away the correct answer!

Try out your question

After creating or editing a question, you can preview it to ensure it displays and functions as expected before adding it to an assessment.

A few things to note about the Try out feature:

• The layout and choice options can be previewed
• For most question types you can check the scoring and feedback are as expected
• The preview uses Questionmark’s default template to present the question
• Only one question can be previewed at a time

To try out a particular question, tick the checkbox next to the relevant question, select Try out from the toolbar and a new tab should open where you can try out the question. (If you have a pop-up blocker configured on your browser, you may be prompted with the message “Click here if a new window did not open automatically for try out” in order to try out the question.)

Publishing questions

If you want specific questions to be included in a QMOD assessment when it is delivered to students, the questions must first be published. This is not something that staff have access to do in QMOD, however this is part of the process the Assessment team carry out before scheduling your assessments to students.

You should be aware that if you edit a question after it has been published by the Assessment team, you will need to request that the question is republished. Only the last published version of a question is included in an assessment and delivered to students.

Tips

• There is no option to delete questions (or topics) in QMOD. If a question is no longer used, you can set the status to retired. If you have created a question in error, then you can chose to Archive the question.
• We would recommend that you don’t copy text in directly from a Word document. (You may want to copy to Notepad or similar to strip out all of the Word formatting.)
• For some question types like Drag & Drop, if you want to make any alterations other than changing the text, then it can often be quicker to re-create the question!

Register for QMOD Support pages

Check out the Questionmark support site for lots of advice and information. You may need to sign up for a Questionmark Communities/Support account in order to access the information.

Next steps...

The steps outlined above will enable you to create some basic questions in QMOD. To move onto pulling these together, head to our guide on Creating an assessment in QMOD.