How to Create Quizzes with Both Random and Static Questions in Rise 360

With the latest Rise 360 feature, question banks, you can draw from personal and team question banks to craft randomized quizzes. But what if you only want to randomize a few of the questions? You can do that too! 

Using both static questions and random draws lets you test every learner on a set of specific questions while also ensuring that learners who retake the quiz see at least some new questions. This keeps learners on their toes and keeps your legal and compliance teams happy.

Let’s walk through how to set this up in Rise 360. 

1. Create Anchor Questions

First, let’s get a little bit of terminology squared away. “Anchor questions” are questions that always appear in the same place in a quiz. It could be that certain questions are required for regulatory purposes or you need to make sure learners have understood a particularly important piece of information. Whatever the reason, anchor questions ensure learners answer certain specific questions whenever they take your quiz. 

You can add these questions manually or, even better, create a question bank that has all your required questions in one place, then insert them into your quizzes. Here’s how that works:

1. In your quiz, click Add Question.
2. Select Draw from Question Bank.
   
   
3. Navigate to and select the question bank you want to draw from.
   
   
4. From the Draw selection settings dropdown, choose Specific questions.
5. Click the checkboxes to select questions, then click Insert Questions.
   
   

The questions you picked are added to your quiz. They’re fully editable, just like manually added quiz questions. 

Note: If you make changes to a question after inserting it, it won’t update the original version in the question bank. If you want to add a modified question back to your question bank, that’s easy to do but it still won’t overwrite the original.

2. Add Random Draws

Now that you have your static anchor questions, it’s time to add a bit of randomization! Especially if learners take the quiz more than once, randomized questions will ensure every attempt is slightly different. Here’s how to add in the randomization:

1. In your quiz, click Add Question.
2. Select Draw from Question Bank.
3. Navigate to and select the question bank you want to draw from.
4. From the Draw selection settings dropdown, choose Random questions.
5. Choose how many questions from the bank you’d like to include, excluding any questions if necessary, then click Insert Draw.
   
   

Pro tip: Do you want to exclude a question from a draw? It’s super-easy to do! Simply select fewer questions than you’ve created in the Number of questions in draw dropdown menu, hover over the question, and click Exclude from draw. Now that question won’t display in the random question draw.

3. Try It Out!

Once you’ve got a mix of anchor questions and dynamic draws, preview your quiz to make sure everything works the way you want it to. You should see your anchor questions in the same spot every time. Wherever you’ve inserted a draw, you’ll see a randomized selection of questions from the source question bank. 

Wrap-Up

As you can see, the new question banks feature in Rise 360 is a flexible and powerful way to quiz your learners. Even better, you can share your question banks with teammates so that everyone is on the same page when creating quizzes. 

Want to try it out for yourself, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.