Do’s and Don’ts of Writing Effective Multiple Choice Questions
Multiple choice questions (MCQ) are a commonly used and super-versatile question type. They can be used to assess various types of learning, from testing knowledge of basic facts and concepts to crafting thoughtful scenario-based questions. There are many possibilities with multiple choice questions, but it’s important to remember that with multiple choice questions, learners are choosing from a set of potential answers. This means the correct answer is given away in the choices. If you need a learner to recall information without any prompting or guidance, then MCQs might not be the right choice for you. Let’s take a closer look at the two parts of an MCQ: Stem: This states the problem or the question. Alternatives: This is a list of suggested choices. There are two kinds of alternatives: key: the correct or best alternative; the right answer. distractors: incorrect or inferior alternatives; incorrect choices. Whether it’s your first time writing quiz questions or you’ve been doing it for years, following are tips and guidelines you can follow to craft effective multiple choice questions: Do use plausible distractors Plausible distractors are one of the keys to writing effective MCQs. You want your incorrect choices to pose a challenge to your learners, causing them to pause and think about which answer is correct. Obviously incorrect or outrageous distractors defeat the entire purpose of your quiz, because they don’t make learners think. In fact, using them means you’re just giving away the correct answer. Coming up with plausible distractors can be quite challenging, so it might be helpful to talk with a Subject Matter Expert (SME), employee, or stakeholder who can provide crucial insights into the content. It can be helpful to identify common errors or mistakes and then incorporate that information into the distractors. It’s also a best practice to avoid “none of the above” and “all of the above” as distractors. They tend to be easy fallbacks that people use instead of crafting more meaningful, authentic distractors. The same goes for “true or false” questions; these are best avoided if you want to truly test knowledge and challenge your learner. Don’t give clues In order to make an MCQ fair and challenging, it’s best to refrain from including clues about which alternative is the correct one. Sophisticated learners may be on guard for inadvertent clues to the correct answer, such as differences in length or formatting of the alternatives. It’s therefore important that your alternatives are similar in both length and language. It’s also smart to avoid unintentionally giving away an answer to a question in another part of the quiz. Another clue learners may be on the lookout for is the use of extremes. Try to avoid using the words “never,” “always,” and “only” in your distractors. It’s also wise to steer clear of outlandish or unreasonable statements; that’s a dead giveaway of a distractor. Do balance placement of correct alternatives Correct answers (also known as “the key”) tend to be placed as the second and third option in a list of choices. Keep this in mind when you randomize your question choices. Have a mix of key placement, as first, second, and third choice. If you’re using an authoring tool that lets you randomize the order of choices (such as Articulate Storyline 360), you should go ahead and enable that feature. Don’t use negative questions The negative question asks learners to choose the answer that is incorrect; it’s one way that test designers try to challenge or “trip up” the learners. I personally think it’s best to avoid questions that are intentionally (or unintentionally!) misleading. Here’s an example of a negative question: Which of the following is not a company policy? Eating in your workspace Using the computer for personal use Taking a monthlong sabbatical Isn’t that confusing? Negative questions often lead to situations where learners have to work hard simply to decipher complicated choices and understand the question before they can even begin looking for the right answer. Do use other question types! Let’s face it: multiple choice questions tend to be overused. They are a crutch that instructional designers fall back on time and time again. Next time you’re considering using an MCQ, ask yourself: Is there a different or more original way of presenting this question? Would a matching drag-and-drop activity be more appropriate? Would a hot-spot interaction work instead? Try to think outside the box and be creative with the types of quiz questions you use. Mixing it up will also make your content more varied and interesting for your learners. Here’s a great article about Matching Question Types with the Skills You’re Testing. By following this list of do’s and don’ts, you’ll be well on your way to crafting engaging multiple choice questions with thoughtful choices that challenge your learners. Follow us on Twitter 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.Your One-Stop Shop for Storyline 360 Quiz-Building Tips
If there’s one thing most e-learning courses have in common, it’s that they have a quiz. Whether there are knowledge checks peppered throughout or an evaluation at the end, it’s rare to see a course without a quiz question or two. We’ve rounded up our most helpful quiz-related content on E-Learning Heroes so you can easily get up to speed on creating quizzes in Storyline 360, as well as learn more about designing effective quizzes. And how about getting off to a running start with some free downloads? Tutorials If you’re new to creating quizzes in Storyline, first things first! Start by taking a look at these helpful tutorials: Creating Quizzes with Form-Based Questions Creating Quizzes with Freeform Interactions Adding Quiz Result Slides Instructional Design Tips Once you’ve got the technical side of things down, check out these articles for tips on designing meaningful quizzes: How to Write Good E-Learning Quiz Questions Do’s and Don’ts of Writing Effective Multiple Choice Questions 20+ Tips for Writing Great Quiz Questions and Response Options 6 Common Quizzing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them How to Quiz Your Learners at the Right Time How to Write Effective Quiz Feedback How to Match Question Types with the Skills You’re Testing Creating Quizzes: Choose a Passing Score How to Write Plausible Incorrect Answer Options for Quiz Questions Downloads Whether you’re short on time or just looking for inspiration, these downloads are just the thing: Countdown Quiz Game Movie Trivia Game Question Bank Template Italian Drag and Drop Quiz Multiple Choice Quiz with Badge Awards Color Gradient Quiz Process Interaction Quiz Combination Lock Quiz Dog-Themed Jeopardy Template Wrap-Up These tutorials, articles, and downloads should be more than enough to get you ready to build your next quiz. But if you get stuck somewhere along the way, we’re always here to help! Feel free to reach out to us in the discussion forums with any technical- or design-related questions you may have. Did you find these resources helpful? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter).How to Create a Personality Test in Storyline
Over the years, there have been countless discussions in the forums about how to create a personality test or magazine-style quiz in Storyline, like this one, or this one … the list goes on. Unlike standard quiz questions, personality quiz questions don’t have correct answers. That’s because the purpose of a personality quiz isn’t to check your knowledge; it’s to classify you into a given category based on your responses. Whether your categories are personality types or knowledge levels, these kinds of quizzes can be a useful tool. I decided to try building this type of quiz so I could share the wealth with you fine folks. But before we get into the nitty-gritty, first check out my example. If you’re really short on time, you can skip the instructions and just download the template. For those of you who are hungry to learn, let’s break it down here, step by step. 1. Define Categories Before you start working on your quiz in Storyline, make sure to define the different categories you want to sort learners into. In my example I chose to create four categories, but you can do more or less; it’s up to you. 2. Create Quiz Questions Next, insert your first multiple choice or “pick one” quiz question. I decided to pick a quiz template from Content Library so I didn’t have to worry about the design. I really liked the layout options for multiple choice questions in the Focus template, so I went with that. For my personality test, I kept it simple by sticking to four choices per question, each corresponding to one of my four categories. I also chose to keep the choices in the same order on each slide. This way all the “As” correspond to the same category, and all the “Bs” correspond to the same category, etc. Keep in mind that you don’t have to do it that way. You could have six choices per question, but only four categories. Or you could have an equal amount of choices per question and categories, but mix up the order to keep learners guessing. If you decide to opt for a more complex scenario, I recommend creating a spreadsheet to keep track of which choices correspond to which categories, so you don’t get mixed up. Before you move onto the next step, go into form view and set feedback to “None.” 3. Create Variables Next, create a number variable with an initial value of 0 for each category. Make sure to choose names that are meaningful to make it easy to identify which variables correspond to which category. For my example, I created four variables: A, B, C, and D. 4. Add Triggers Now, back in slide view, add a trigger for every choice that adds 1 to the corresponding variable when the learner clicks the submit button. Here’s my trigger for choice A: When the learner selects response A and clicks on “Submit,” variable A will be equal to 1 instead of 0. Copy and paste that trigger for each of your choices, making sure to swap out the variable and shape for each. Before you move onto the next step, make sure to move all these new triggers to the top using the arrow button: Otherwise, the interaction will be submitted before the triggers are executed and the variables won’t increment. If the value of your variables doesn’t change, the interaction won’t work. Your trigger panel should look like this: 5. Duplicate Questions Now that your first question is all set up, duplicate it for all your other questions. This way, if you keep all your choices in the same order, you only have to set up your triggers once. Easy-peasy! If you do decide to mix up the order, make sure to update your triggers so the appropriate variable is being incremented when the learners make their selection. 6. Set Up Results Slide Insert a graded results slide and delete all the objects on the slide except for the retry button (unless you don’t want to allow learners to retry the quiz). Go ahead and delete the incorrect and correct slide layers as well. Then, insert a layer for each category. Next, add a trigger to display each category layer when that variable is greater than all the other variables: Then, insert an additional layer called “Tie” in case learners end up with an equal amount of answers from two or more categories. Before you add a trigger to show this layer in case of a tie, create a chart like the one below to figure out all the possible combinations resulting in a tie: Then write them down in a table to make it easy to set up the trigger correctly in Storyline. Now add a trigger to show the “Tie” layer when the timeline starts if any of the variables are equal. Your trigger should look like this: When you’re selecting the other conditions, make sure to select “or” (not “and”) so that no matter which combination is present, the learner will see the “Tie” layer. Finally, when your trigger is all set up, move it all the way to the top of the slide triggers list using the arrow. If you don’t, the “Tie” layer will appear when two variables have the same value even if there’s another variable that’s greater than both of them. This is what your trigger panel should look like: 7. Add Dynamic Results Graph (Optional) If you want learners to see how many of their answers correspond to each category, like in my example, it’s fairly easy to set up. This step is entirely optional, so if you don’t want a dynamic results graph, go ahead and skip to the next section of this article. If you do want to create a dynamic results graph, start by figuring out how many steps you’ll need. In my example I have five questions, so I created five steps. Once you’ve determined the steps you want, insert a rectangle. In my example I gave my rectangle a height of five pixels. Then, add a custom state for each step. In my first state I changed the height of my rectangle to 25 pixels. From there, I added 25 pixels to my rectangle for each step. In the end, my states looked like this: Next, copy and paste your rectangle until you have one for each category, adjust the colors, and add labels. Now, add a trigger to adjust the state of your rectangles based on the value of the corresponding variable. For example, if variable A is equal to 1, I want the state of rectangle A to be 1 as well. You’ll need to add the same amount of triggers as you have states for each object. My triggers look like this: Since you can copy and paste your triggers and just swap out the variable name and value, this actually takes a lot less time than you’d think. 8. Configure Quiz Reset (Optional) If you want learners to be able to try again, add a trigger to set each number variable back to zerowhen they click on the retry button. Your trigger should look like this: Once you’ve created the trigger, you can copy and paste it for all the other variables. Don’t forget to swap out the variable each time. If you added a dynamic results graph, you’ll also need to add a trigger to each object to reset the object’s state to “Normal” when the user clicks on the retry button. Your trigger should look like this: Go ahead and copy and paste that trigger for all the shapes in your dynamic results graph, swapping out the object each time. Then, move all of these triggers up using the arrow button so that they’re above the “Jump to” trigger. When you’re done, the triggers on your retry button should look like this: More Resources That’s all there is to it! As you can see, the most difficult part about this kind of project is figuring out the logic behind it. Once you’ve got that down, it’s super-easy to build in Storyline! If you feel like you’ve followed all the directions, but your interaction still isn’t working, check out this article on troubleshooting advanced interactions. Nicole shared some great tips that are sure to get you back on the right track. And of course, if you have any questions or comments, please let me know in the space below! Want to try something you learned here, 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.How to Customize the Review Quiz Experience in Storyline 360
With Storyline 360, it’s easy for learners to review their answers to a quiz and see how they did. By default, there’s a Review Quiz button on the result slide that takes them back through the quiz, where they’ll see a “correct” or “incorrect” banner across the bottom of each question. But often, learners want to know more than just whether or not they got a question right—they want to understand why. So why not tap into that teachable moment by providing some additional helpful content during the quiz review? With Storyline 360, you can do just that! And it’s super easy. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to enhance your quiz review with question-specific content like remedial help, supplemental tips or links, movies, text, images, and audio. Here we go! 1. Open the Question Editor First, open your question slide and click the Form View button above the trigger panel to open the question editor. 2. Add Text to the Post-Quiz Review Field At the bottom of the question editor, you’ll see a field called Post-Quiz Review. In that field, enter some text. When text is present, Storyline automatically creates a new layer on your question slide called Review. This layer is what learners will see if they choose to review their quiz. 3. Customize the Review Layer Next, click on Slide View to see the review layer you’ve just created. From there, you can customize it with whatever content you want learners to see during the quiz review—for example, audio, video, or imagery. Wrap-Up & More Resources Now that you know how to customize the review layer, you can transform a standard quiz review into a content-rich experience that’ll help your users extend their learning! And it only takes a few minutes. Pretty cool, right? And if you’re looking for more tips on making top-notch quizzes, check out these helpful resources: How to Match Question Types with the Skills You’re Testing How to Write Good E-Learning Quiz Questions How to Write Plausible Incorrect Answer Options for Quiz Questions 4 Ways to Use the New Quiz Tracking Features in Storyline 360 Want to try something you learned here, 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.Put Learners to the Test With These Quizzing Examples
When designing an e-learning course, it’s important to not just teach information to learners but also to test their understanding with knowledge checks and quizzes. Rather than a standard exam, get creative with the features in Rise 360 and Storyline 360 to design quizzes that engage learners and get them thinking deeply about the course content. To give you a jump start on your next quiz—or just to see what’s possible—we’ve gathered some inspiring examples created by the E-Learning Heroes community. Read on to see their unique approaches to testing learners! Storyline 360: Pre-Test Template Guide learners to specific course content based on how they perform with this customizable project by Nicole Legault. Rise 360: Phishing 101—What You Need to Know Check out this information security course by Trina Rimmer to see how you can incorporate knowledge checks, sorting activities, and an embedded quiz from the web. Storyline 360: Flashback Quiz Go back in time with this themed quiz by Sarah Hodge to see how you can use a simple click and reveal to test learners’ knowledge. Rise 360: 1912 Anatomy Quiz See how to transform a hundred-year-old exam into a fresh drag-and-drop experience like Rema Merrick does in this modernized quiz. Storyline: Course Template with Pre-Check and Final Evaluation Give learners the option to take the course or test out of it with this customizable template by Allison LaMotte. Rise 360: A Quiz to Build Buy-in for More Learning This employee engagement course by Trina Rimmer guides learners to additional content that fits their needs based on their quiz scores. Storyline: Unconscious Bias Quiz Get inspired by Steve Andrews’s game-like quiz that uses a playful approach to testing learners’ knowledge. Rise 360: Workplace Safety 101 Ensure learners complete all required content—including the final quiz—like Nicole Legault does in this injury prevention course. Storyline: Gamified Quiz Template With Timer Insert a healthy dose of competition by having learners race against the clock with this colorful template by Sarah Hodge. Rise 360: Food Allergy Awareness Before diving into course content, why not start with a pre-test to see what learners already know, like Allison LaMotte does in this attention-grabbing course. Wrap-Up Hopefully, these community-created examples inspire you to put your own quizzing skills to the test! With so many creative ideas, the possibilities for evaluating learners’ knowledge are truly endless. And if you’re looking for even more inspiring projects, check out our weekly challenges, downloads, and examples—you’ll be sure to find fresh ideas and resources you can incorporate into your next course. What are your favorite ways to test learners’ knowledge? Share your thoughts in a comment below. For more information on creating quizzes, take a look at these articles: How to Quiz Your Learners at the Right Time How to Write Good E-Learning Quiz Questions How to Match Question Types with the Skills You’re Testing Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter).4 Ways to Use the New Quiz Tracking Features in Storyline 360
Quizzing is an integral part of most e-learning courses. It’s how you gauge learner understanding and ensure everyone has taken their assigned training. But quizzing isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation. When it comes to e-learning projects, each one has its own unique set of requirements. And it’s your job—as the e-learning designer—to come up with creative solutions that meet your tracking needs and provide your learners with an optimal learning experience. We’ve been working on some great new quiz tracking features that make it even easier for you to design custom quiz experiences for your learners. Let’s look at some of the ways you can put these robust features to good use. 1. Allow Learners to Test Out of Your Course If you’re creating an e-learning course for learners with differing levels of prior knowledge on the topic at hand, why not give advanced learners the opportunity to test out of your course from the get-go? That way, if they already know the content backward and forward, they won’t waste any of their valuable time clicking through your course. And if it turns out they don’t know as much as they thought they did, they can take your course to learn more. Here’s an example of what that experience might look like: View interactive version|Download the template With the new Expanded Quiz Tracking feature in Storyline 360, you can create a course with both a pre-check and a final assessment. If the learner passes the pre-check, the score they received will be sent to the LMS when they exit the course. If they fail, they can complete the course, take the final assessment, and that score will be reported instead. And it’s super easy to set up! Simply open the LMS tracking options and ensure you’ve selected Pre-Check for the first quiz and Final Assessment for the second one, as shown below: 2. Create One Course with Multiple Learning Paths Have you ever needed to create a course on a topic for different populations? Let’s say you’re building a course on conflict management for individual contributors and people managers. You could create two separate courses, but since a lot of the information overlaps, that might create extra work for you down the line if any of the content needs updating. Not to mention that with two courses, you’d have to upload and track them separately in your LMS. What a headache! Another way to handle this situation would be to create one course with multiple learning paths, like in the example below: View interactive version|Download the template But if you have a quiz for each role, how do you track only the quiz that the learner viewed? With the new Expanded Quiz Tracking feature, it’s easy. All you need to do is ensure that both quizzes are marked as Final Assessments in the LMS tracking window, as shown below: 3. Give Learners More Than One Way to Succeed Another way to tackle training a group of learners with varying degrees of knowledge on a topic is by giving them a few different ways to complete your course. For example, let’s say the majority of your learners have no prior knowledge of your content, so you’d like to ensure they’ve viewed a certain number of slides in order to get credit for the course. But then let’s say that another group of learners has a great deal of prior knowledge on the topic. Instead of forcing all the learners—even those who are already well-versed in the subject matter—to take your course from start to finish, why not give everyone the best of both worlds? allow advanced learners to complete the course by passing the pre-check AND allow novice learners to complete the course by viewing a certain number of slides With the new Track Multiple Completion Criteria feature, you can do just that! You can select one, two, or all three of the possible completion methods in the LMS tracking window: Then, whichever one the learner completes first is submitted to your LMS. It’s as easy as that! 4. Create a Quiz That Adapts Based on the Learner’s Responses Want to really dig in and determine whether your learners have grasped the content of your course? Try building a quiz that dynamically adapts the questions learners see based on their responses. For example, let’s say a learner answers a question about Topic 1 incorrectly. Before presenting them with a question on Topic 2, you might want to ask a follow-up question about Topic 1. By giving them another chance to test their knowledge of Topic 1, you can determine whether they need a refresher. Here’s an example of what that might look like when you’re authoring: View interactive version|Download the template In the example above, you can see there are a total of seven possible questions, but each learner only sees three. Now, you might be wondering, but how do I ensure that learners aren’t penalized for the questions they skip over? Thanks to the new Score Only Viewed Questions feature in Storyline 360, it’s simple. Once you’ve set up your branching, just navigate to the results slide, open the quiz settings, and check the box next to Only Score Viewed Questions: Storyline 360 takes care of the rest! More Resources We hope you’re as excited about these new features as we are! We can’t wait to hear about all the great ways you put them to use. For more detailed information on these features, check out this tutorial. And for more tips on creating effective quizzes with Storyline 360, be sure to dig into all the great resources in this article: Your One-Stop Shop for Storyline 360 Quiz-Building Tips. Want to give these hot new features a spin, but don’t have Storyline 360? Start a free 30-day trial of Articulate 360, 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.How to Customize This Storyline 360 Flexible Quiz Scoring Template
Have you ever needed to create a self-assessment, a personality test, or another quiz type that requires custom feedback depending on the score (e.g., What type of manager are you?)? If so, this Storyline 360 Flexible Quiz Scoring template is the perfect starting point. In this article, I’ll walk you through how to customize this template to fit your needs. I’ll show you how to: Add questions Edit the point values of each choice Add more feedback options Display a score or percentage on the results screen What’s the fastest way to add questions? The template includes a total of five questions. To add more questions, simply: Right-click a question slide Select Duplicate That’s it! I also included the question number along with the total number of questions in the quiz. I personally like adding this detail so learners can see their progress. And because I used the built-in slide number variables, there’s no need to update the numbers manually. When you duplicate a slide, you’ll see both the question number and the total number of questions in the quiz update on all slides—automatically. Pro tip: If you want to customize the look and feel of the quiz slides, making these changes before you duplicate them will save you time. Can I change how many points each choice is worth? Absolutely! By default, Storyline 360 lets you assign a point value for getting the question right and another point value for getting it wrong. But did you know you can also assign a different score to each answer choice? That’s exactly what I did for this template. For each question, I assigned a different point value to each choice—one choice is worth one point, one is worth three points, and the other choice is worth five points. If you want to edit the point value for each choice, simply: Select a question slide Click Form View In the Points column, edit the number value for each choice You’ll notice I included the point values for each choice in Slide View. This can be helpful for development or review purposes. Just remember to delete the point values before publishing your course so the learner is focused on their options rather than on how much each option is worth. Pro tip: If you edit the point values and want to keep the same scoring for all quiz questions, delete the other question slides in the template, and duplicate the one you customized. How do I add more feedback options? For this template, I decided to use a blank results slide so I could design the slide from scratch. I created three custom feedback layers: low score, medium score, and high score. If that works for your project as well, then simply edit the feedback text as needed and you’re all set! But what if you want to include more than three possible outcomes? No problem! Just follow the steps below. 1. Duplicate layers Start by duplicating the existing layers as many times as needed and editing the text. It’s always a good idea to rename the layers so they’re easy to identify. For template purposes, I included the text—high/medium/low score—in the results to indicate which layer is showing. You can customize it or delete it altogether so it’s not visible to learners. 2. Add/edit triggers on the base layer Once you have your layers in place, you’ll need to add/edit the triggers on the results slide (base layer). Since my template has three possible outcomes, I created three triggers to show the appropriate layer depending on the score. If you have four possible outcomes, then you’ll need to add one more trigger so that you have a total of four triggers. For five outcomes, you’ll need five triggers, and so on. Once you’ve added your additional triggers, make sure you edit each trigger to show the correct layer. You’ll also want to edit the point values that display each layer to match your own scoring rubric. What if I want to display a score or percentage on the results screen? If you’re creating a quiz that requires you to display a score or percentage at the end, you’ll want to add variable references or the following text to the results slide (base layer): Display Type Add the Text Score %Results.ScorePoints% Percentage %Results.ScorePercent%% Pro tip: Since the feedback text is on the layers, make sure you place the score/percentage text where it will be visible. One idea would be to replace the icon at the top with your chosen scoring method. Before After Wrap-Up I hope this article helps you to easily create a more personalized experience for your learners by customizing this Storyline 360 Flexible Quiz Scoring template. If you need help or have any additional questions on updating this template, please leave a comment below. Want to see more customizable quiz templates? Check out these free downloads: Storyline: Gamified Quiz Template with Timer Storyline: Countdown Quiz Game Storyline: Risk Assessment Quiz Storyline: Unconscious Bias Quiz Storyline: Timed Quiz Challenge Storyline: Around the World Quiz Want to try customizing this Storyline 360 quiz, 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.How to Write Effective Quiz Feedback
In my experiences as an instructional designer, one of the most challenging aspects of designing quizzes is writing effective and meaningful feedback for learners. What is feedback and why is it important? Feedback is what learners see after they make a choice or answer a quiz question. Feedback serves as a way to communicate with the learner, and it can have both motivational and coaching value: well-crafted feedback can really drive home key points and serve as a great learning tool. Here are some basic tips you can apply when writing feedback to ensure it reinforces your learning objectives and is helpful for learners. Be Timely Give feedback to your learners as soon as possible. Timely feedback creates a direct link between the answer they chose and what you’re saying to them about that answer. If you wait too long, learners won’t remember the question or their answer. Don’t Present New Information It’s not fair to use feedback to present new information to learners. Make sure that the information presented in your quizzes and in the feedback was already covered for learners at some point in your course. Be Sensitive Use a delicate and sensitive manner for feedback—especially for feedback about an incorrect answer. Instead of saying “WRONG!” in red caps, try to present feedback in a neutral way that doesn’t make your learners feel like they’re idiots for getting it wrong. Remember to focus your feedback on behaviors that can be changed, not personality traits. Demonstrate Real-Life Consequences Feedback is a great time to show the potential real-life consequences of a wrong answer. Here’s an example that illustrates the difference between well-crafted feedback vs. poorly crafted feedback. Imagine you’re creating a quiz about sun safety. Your quiz question asks what sun protection learners should wear in the summer, and your learner replies, “None.” Which of the following pieces of feedback is most meaningful: Feedback Example #1 Feedback Example #2 That is incorrect. You should always wear at least two forms of sun protection. Without sun protection, you could end up with second-degree burns on over 50% of your body, which could land you in the hospital overnight. It could take you up to a week to recover from that. Next time, apply at least two forms of sun protection to prevent dangerous and costly health situations. Be Clear and Concise Be clear about the behavior your feedback addresses, and get right to the point. Don’t overload your learner with text—just make your point as concisely as possible. In a straightforward manner, link the information to their job and how it will help them perform better. Remember: your feedback is a great teaching opportunity. If you follow these five simple guidelines for writing feedback, you should be well on your way to designing great training that will make an impact on your learners. Follow us onTwitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any comments, please share them below.How to Randomize Quiz Questions in Storyline 360
A big part of being an e-learning developer is creating quizzes. Choosing question types, writing plausible choices, crafting meaningful feedback—these all go into building a great quiz. When putting together your quizzes, you might have encountered a situation where you’ve wanted or needed to randomize the questions in your quizzes. Why randomize questions? Perhaps your subject matter expert (SME) has provided you with more questions than you actually need to test learners on, or you might want to ensure that the order of the questions is different every time learners take the quiz, to minimize cheating and keep it interesting. Whatever your reason for randomizing quiz questions, one simple and straightforward way to do so in Storyline 360 is to use question banks. Here are the steps you can follow to randomize questions in a bank: Create a Question Bank Your first step is to create the question bank. To do so, you’ll head to the slides tab on the Storyline 360 ribbon. There you’ll notice the Question Banks button with a small arrow pointing down, indicating there is a dropdown menu. The Question Banks button is located under theslides tab on the ribbon. Click the Question Banks dropdown and select Create Question Bank. Once you’re in the Question Bank view, you can either import existing questions you already have in your .STORY project, or you can create new questions from inside the question bank. Once you’ve got all your questions inside the bank,you can also easily set all of your attempts and points in one fell swoop. A question bank that has been populated with question slides. Keep in mind you can have multiple question banks within one Storyline 360 project. You might create one bank of easy questions and one bank with more advanced questions. Or you might have one bank of questions for customer service reps and a different set of questions banked for sales reps. You can have as many question banks in your project as you need. Insert a Slide Draw Once you’ve set up your question bank, the next step is to insert a slide draw into your project. The slide draw is the slide in your project that displays the question bank to the learner. To insert a slide draw, head to the Question Bank dropdown button once more and click New Draw from Question Bank. The slide draw is inserted into your project and has a question mark on it, as indicated in the image below: Slide draw appears as a slide. Adjust Slide Draw Properties You can now double-click on the slide draw slide you’ve just inserted to open up the Draw Questions from Bank window. From here, you can control all the settings for how the question bank will appear for learners. Question Bank dropdown. If you have multiple question banks, use the Question Bank dropdown field to select the question bank you want to pull from on this slide draw. Edit Question Bank. Click this to open the selected question bank and make changes to the questions and slides contained within it. Draw Questions Randomly. Ding! Ding! Ding! This is the option you will select if you want to randomize the order of your questions. Include X Questions dropdown. From this dropdown you can select “All” or specify the number of questions you want included in the draw. Include in Shuffle dropdown. This can be set to “Randomly,” “Never,” or “Always,” depending on how often you want a question to appear. Here’s an example of how I can customize my question bank settings: I want to create a question bank that randomly draws five of the seven questions included in my bank, but I always want Question A to be included. I would simply set the Include X Questions dropdown at “5” instead of “All,” and I would change the Include in Shuffle option for Question A to “Always.” These settings will randomly draw five questions from the bank.Question A will always be included in the shuffle. Test Your Slide Draw Once you’ve set up your slide draw with all the right options, you’ll want to preview the scene that your question bank is in to test it out and see how it all comes together. Run through your question bank a few times to ensure that the correct number of questions are drawn, and in a random, different order each time. Hopefully these simple steps will help you create your own randomized quizzes. If you want to learn more about using question banks, here are a few additional helpful articles: 5 Things You Should Know About Storyline 360 Question Banks 3 More Tips for Using Question Banks Like a Pro Want to try something you learned here, 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.How to Create a Successful E-Learning Knowledge Check
Knowledge checks give learners an opportunity to gauge how well they’re grasping material. They’re typically not graded or tracked, so they’re a less formal means of providing feedback to learners after content is introduced, but before the final quiz or assessment. Let’s take a look at a few steps you can follow to quickly add knowledge checks to your courses. Create Simple and Effective Knowledge Checks The first step to creating a successful knowledge check is to define clear and measurable learning objectives. That way, when you align your knowledge checks to course objectives, they’ll feel more meaningful and help reinforce your course goals. What you teach should be linked to real performance, so think about what the learner is going to be able to DO with the skills and information you teach them. Avoid using words such as “understand.” That’s not clear. Instead, find the basis for understanding and then build your objective around that. For example, instead of saying “Understand how to respond to a customer complaint,” put a little more thought into what the word “understand” means to your learners. A better objective is to state what the learner will be able to DO with the new information. In this example, a more measurable objective would be: “Identify the most common customer complaints and learn the necessary steps to respond to them quickly and appropriately.” To learn more about writing learning objectives, check out our recent blog post, How to Create Learning Objectives for E-Learning. Build Interactive Knowledge Checks Once you’ve outlined your objectives, it’s time to get them active—as in interactive. One of the easiest ways to bring your static content to life is to reframe your existing content into the form of a question. This is a great way to create informal, interactive knowledge checks without extending your project’s timeline. Articulate Storyline’s Convert to Freeform option makes this process really easy. To learn more about how to use this technique, check out our blog post How to Transform Static Content into Interactive Knowledge Checks. When creating knowledge checks, keep in mind that you want to give learners a realistic view of how well they’re mastering course content without throwing them for a loop. You don’t want to use tricks such as confusing or inauthentic questions, but you do want to challenge learners so they have a true view of how they’re performing in the course. Use Feedback in Knowledge Checks Once your questions are ready, it’s time to think about what type of feedback you want to give your learners. Well-crafted knowledge checks provide learners the opportunity to explore correct and incorrect choices while receiving valuable feedback about each choice. This additional context and feedback helps learners gain confidence and familiarity with the content before proceeding through the course and completing the final, graded assessment. Most e-learning authoring tools can provide question- and choice-level feedback. As a best practice, use choice-level feedback to address all correct and incorrect choices so the learner understands why his choice was correct or incorrect. Additionally, you can build performance support options into the knowledge check so learners can revisit previous information or additional information that helps them master the content. The Bottom Line Knowledge checks are an important e-learning tool that helps learners prove mastery of the course concepts and objectives. So, the next time you’re looking for a simple way to challenge learners to apply what they’ve learned, try these simple steps to get a better idea of whether your learners have truly met your course’s objectives. New to e-learning? Sign up for our E-Learning 101 email course, a series of expertly-curated articles that'll get you up to speed with course development.
