How to create a new test question

In this article, you'll learn how to create a new test question. Questions are a combination of the question and its answers/options. When you create a question, it is added to the test Questions view. This lets you use the question...

• When adding existing questions to another test in your course.
• In other sections or future instances of that same course.
• If enabled (by an Academic Admin), to be shared with other courses.

Here's how to add a new question:

1. In the Design view of the test, click Add question.
2. Fill in the question details and settings (described below).
3. Click Save.

1. Select the question type

You have seven question types:

• Multiple Choice: Your students choose one answer from several. Simply type the answers in the fields. Use the radio button to designate the correct (100%) answer, and use the drop-downs to mark partial credit (e.g. 50%) for incorrect answers.
• Short Answer: Your students enter free-form text answers. Leave the answer field blank if you wish to manually grade all answers to this question. You may also type certain common answers (correct or incorrect) and assign full, partial, or no credit so Populi can automatically grade them for you.
  • Check Use case-sensitive grading to require students to correctly capitalize (or not) their answers.
  • Automatic grading on short answers only works with exact matches. You'll have to manually grade non-matching answers in To Be Graded.
• Put in Order: Your students put a jumbled list in the correct order; full and partial credit are both automatically graded. Type the options in the correct order; Populi automatically jumbles the options.
• Multiple Answer: Your students check off all correct answers; these are automatically graded. Type the options and then check all that are correct.
• Essay: Your students submit essay-length answers in a large text area. Essay questions can only be manually graded. You can also select a rubric and whether to automatically check for plagiarism (if enabled).
• True/False: Your students check whether a statement is true or false. These are automatically-graded.
• Matching: Your students match terms to one another. Simply enter matching terms next to each other in their respective columns. You can also enter additional "dummy" terms in the right column. Both columns will be randomized.

2. Type your question

You can use text formatting in Questions and Answers.

You can also include a media file in the question:

1. Copy the EMBED code from any media file.
2. Paste it into the text of the question or text block.
3. In Design mode, the file may appear improperly sized; for an accurate view of what your students will see, check the Preview tab.

3. Add a file (optional)

Click to choose a file or drag and drop one onto the file upload area.

4. Enter answers

See above for details about what options you'll have for each question type. For automatically-graded questions, make sure you designate which options get full credit and which get partial credit (75%, 50%, 25%...).

5. Choose whether to randomize

Check to randomize the answer display for multiple choice and multiple answer questions. This presents the answer options in a different order to each student.

6. Enable partial credit scoring (optional)

Check to enable partial credit scoring for multiple answer, put in order, and matching questions (partial credit is particularly useful for matching questions with a lot of terms).

7. Categories (optional but highly recommended)

Categories are like tags for questions. Use them to distinguish questions from one another (i.e. "Easy" vs. "Hard"; "Iliad" vs. "Odyssey"; "Algebraic Geometry" vs. "Algebraic Combinatorics"; and so on). Among other things, categorizing question gives you the option to later include a group of questions from a category on another test.

• Type a new category name and press Enter/Return on your keyboard to save it.
• If the category already exists, select by clicking (or use your keyboard's up/down arrows and Enter/Return).
• You can add as many categories as you wish.
• Delete a category from the list by clicking .

8. Points & extra credit

Enter the number of points and check if the question is extra credit. Unless the question is extra credit, you can't enter more points than are left from the test's total points.