Create Effective Quizzes
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- List some best practices for writing good quizzes.
- Start writing awesome quiz questions.
What’s in a Quiz?
Every unit on your enablement site requires a quiz.Recall that a unit (like this one!) covers specific learning objectives. When a learner completes a unit, they should have gained some new knowledge or skill. To help make sure that your objectives were successful, challenge learners with a few questions that assess how well they retained information from your unit.
In this unit, we show you how to craft good multiple-choice quiz questions. To help demonstrate, let’s check in with Cindy, a content creator at Pure Aloe, who’s responsible for writing quizzes for her units.
Cindy wants to make sure that both quiz questions reflect the material covered in the unit. She does this by mapping the questions to one of the unit’s learning objectives (and makes sure the unit content covers the learning objectives!).
Here are some ways she approaches quiz questions.
Ask the Learner to Assess
Assessment questions ask the learner to apply the information they learned from the unit to evaluate a scenario and choose the appropriate action. The unit should provide the information the learner needs to make that call.
Here’s an example of an assessment question, at the end of a unit that describes the qualities of helpful feedback.
Chang gave this feedback to Jane in a 1:1: “I want to give you some feedback. In the meeting with the team yesterday, you did a great job. It really helped us clarify our agenda.” How can Chang best improve his feedback?
- Provide feedback in a more timely manner.
- Add constructive criticism to the feedback.
- Give the feedback in a public forum.
- Provide greater detail on Jane’s actions.
Ask the User to Analyze or Identify
Questions that ask the learner to analyze or identify are similar to assessment questions. But, rather than choose a course of action, learners use what they’ve learned to break a problem down into parts.
NOTE: We find that non-recall questions are best for quizzes because they engage the learner more actively with the content.
Here’s an example of an analysis question, at the end of a unit about field data types in Salesforce.
Universal Containers has a custom object called Shipping Container. Each record must indicate the types of transport devices with which the container is compatible. Which field type best meets this requirement?
- Checkbox
- Multi-select Picklist
- Formula
- Text Area
Write the Stem
The stem is the question itself, and the response items are the list of possible answers.
To write a good stem:
- Keep the question as brief as possible. You don’t need a lot of context or extra information.
- Phrase questions as complete sentences.
- Avoid questions with negative phrasing (“Which of these is not …?” or “All of the following apply, except …?”). Readers have trouble processing words like “not,” “except,” and “only.”
- Make sure the question covers concepts explained directly in the unit.
- Don’t ask tricky or overly complex questions. Make sure all questions are fair.
Write the Response Items
Follow these guidelines to write relevant, effective response items.
- Create at least four response items for each question.
- Provide only one correct answer per question.
- Vary the position of the correct response from question to question. For example, the correct response shouldn’t always be option C.
- Keep the response items grammatically consistent. If one response starts with an imperative verb, make sure the rest of the responses do, too.
- Avoid “All of the above” and “None of the above.” These can confuse learners.
- Try to make all responses roughly the same length. Make sure that the longest response isn’t always the correct answer.
Incorrect response items are called distractors. Writing them is often the hardest part. There’s no magical formula for writing distractors, but brainstorming with someone else who knows your module and the subject matter can help. Avoid distractors that are obviously wrong, too complex, or too silly.
Those are some general rules to follow, but if you’re interested in learning more about how to write effective quizzes, check out the Resources section.
Put It All Together
Throughout this module, we’ve explored how Pure Aloe can adapt its content strategy into drafts of trails, modules, units, and quizzes. That’s a lot of information you’ve absorbed! Pause and let yourself celebrate. Next, we recommend that you continue to the Trailmaker Content Basics module. This module shows you how content creators can take their drafts into Trailmaker Content, the app in an enablement site where writers create their actual trails, modules, units, and quizzes to be published.
