Exams can be set up using blocks, which is a defined set of related questions that will be displayed together and can have common instructions or title. This article will provide a step-by-step approach to enabling Exam Blocks in the Exam Editor.
Path: Home > [Course Screen] > Assessment > Exams > Manage Exams > Select Exam to Edit > Home tab > Click Settings
On the Exam Editors Home Tab, there are required settings that must be enabled to set up Blocks in an Exam.
- Use Blocks: When set to Yes is activated, this option will let you organize questions into blocks of questions, with an additional option to specify difficulty level and a random selection of a subset of questions by difficulty level.
- Display in Blocks: If Yes, then questions will be grouped in their blocks and displayed accordingly.
Standard randomization of questions will not work within a block. Instead, the block will be treated by question randomization process as one question.
Path: Home > [Course Screen] > Assessment > Exams > Manage Exams > Select Exam to Edit > Exam Blocks tab
A Block is a collection of questions that will be displayed together within the Block. In order to do this, a Block record must be created and this can be done on this screen.
Click on the + icon in the top right corner of the screen.
- Name: This field is used to identify the block in various reports and is a required field.
- Sequence: This field defines the sorting order of blocks within an exam. It is a required field.
- Description: This is where you can create a text that will be displayed to the student. If displayed it will appear at the top of the block. This is an optional field.
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Show Block Prompt
- NO: No prompt (description) or visual indicators will be displayed to indicate which questions belong to the block (i.e., there will be no block border).
- YES: The prompt for the block will be displayed at the top of the block with a border drawn around the block to emphasize related questions.
- Copy Flag: If set to Yes, block questions will be copied into the current exam creating questions. The advantage of the Yes option is that you will have more control over what you can do with the questions in the current exam. If No, then the exam will link directly to the existing questions.
- Grade Book Course: This optional field will allow you to select a course to be attached to the questions in this block. This course assignment will be used to determine the grade book that will receive the score for these questions. Courses in the search are limited to courses in the current year and next year.
- Click Save Record to save/update and close the Block record.
Click the Question Count to add Exam Questions to the Block.
Once Questions are added to the Block, the option to assign difficulty levels for the Questions, and define how many of the Questions of each difficulty level, within a block, will be presented to the students.
- Click the Pool Sets Count to add Exam Questions to the Block.
- Select Assign Difficulty Level to Block Questions.
- Using the radio buttons, select the number that reflects the difficulty level for each Question in your Block
To define the number of questions of a defined level of difficulty that will be selected from within the current Question Block select Block Pool Settings. This is used as part of the random selection of questions per Question Block known as a multi-block randomized selection.
Click on the Maximum Count number to set the maximum number of Questions to display at the indicated difficulty level.
This number indicated here must be less than or equal to the total number of available questions. If not, the system will simply select as many questions as are available.
Click Clear Block Pool Settings to reset all Maximum Counts for assigned difficulty levels.
This will reset all Maximum Counts to 0 for questions with assigned difficulty levels in the Block.
