Every so often I talk with a Quizmaker user who wants to create what some folks call a “magazine-style” assessment. You know the kind  — it’s the type of quiz that guides people through a series of questions and then, based on their score, tells them what category or type they fall into.

Contrary to the quizzes you might see in actual magazines on your supermarket checkout racks, these sorts of assessments don’t have to be tacky or cheesey. If they’re well-designed, the assessments can be a great way to create engagement and interactivity in your course. Personality-type quizzes are common examples, and so are quizzes that have titles like “Find Out Your Risk Level for…" (Heart Disease, Identity Theft, Investment Loss, Sun Damage, or some other thing).

So, how do you build a magazine-style assessment in Quizmaker ‘09? At first, it might seem challenging because currently, the results that learners see at the end of a quiz are based on just two outcomes: pass or fail (rather than on specific scoring brackets). But all it takes is some consistency in the way you craft your questions, and a little creativity with the Slide View of the results slide, to help learners interpret their scores based on whatever scoring categories you choose.

Here’s a walk-through of how to do it:

To sum up, these are some things I'd recommend:

  • Be consistent with questions and scoring. When you craft your questions, use the same question type throughout, and use the same scoring rationale on each question. For example, in my sample quiz above, I give the learner just two response choices per question — if the learner picks the response that suggests a more visual learning style, I give them 6 points. If they pick the other response, I give them zero points. You can use this same approach if you prefer multiple-choice questions rather than true/false. You'll want to Score By Answer and assign a staggered point value to the possible responses. For example, if I were to allow 3 choices per question, I’d score them incrementally, like maybe 0 points, 3 points, and 6 points.  
  • Turn off question feedback. Since I didn't want the learner to feel there's a specific right or wrong answer to each question, I eliminated the pop-up question feedback that normally appears after the user submits each answer. You can do this by setting the Feedback selector on each question to None. Or, you could achieve a similar experience for your learners by changing your quiz player template’s navigation to Submit All At Once, since question feedback isn’t used with that navigation method.
  • Remove scoring info from the player. I didn't want any scoring info (such as the possible points on each question, or the points earned so far) to appear on my quiz player, so I removed all that. Brian Batt has a good tutorial about how to do it, and you can find it here.
  • Make the result slide look less “quizzy.” On the Pass Result and Fail Result, I removed all references to “passing” or “failing” the quiz, and I even removed the score percentage. I also made both the Pass Result and the Fail Result slides look identical, since I didn't want learners to feel this is a test that they’ve passed or failed. It’s really more about showing them their score and giving them a way to interpret what that score means. Which brings us to the final point…
  • Include an intuitive key on the result slide. You want to make it easy for learners to see what their score means. An easy way to do this is by including a scoring bracket on the result slide. If you open the Pass Result or Fail Result slide and switch to Slide View, you can design your slide to include whatever information you like. In my example, I added a simple key which shows three scoring brackets and a brief description of what each one means. This way, learners can compare their score with the key to find out which category they fall into.
40 Comments
Daniel O'Brien
Kathy Hartman
Jeanette Brooks

Hello Venkat - to offer your content in multiple languages, you'd want to create a separate version of your course for each language. As far as building your content, you can enter your French or Spanish content right in PowerPoint/Presenter, Engage, or Quizmaker, but the translation of the content will be up to you (the software won't translate your content for you). The software will, however, enable you to localize the player, including the menu options and buttons that your users see when they launch your course. Check out the tutorials here: https://community.articulate.com/series/articulate-presenter-09/articles/changing-your-player-to-a-different-language (for Presenter), and https://community.articulate.com/series/articulate-quizmaker-09/articles/changing-your-quiz-player-to-a-diff... Expand

Jeanette Brooks