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Overview

The following will walk through the process of creating quiz-style questions from training materials.These questions will be created via a template and placed into a pool of questions for use testing the knowledge of future employees on the related subject area. 

Tip
titleBest Practice

Create questions that are tough, but fair. You might find yourself faced with similar questions, or even your own, at some point.

Panel
titleTable of Contents
borderStylesolid

Table of Contents
maxLevel3

Complete the Training

Whether it is a video, a document, an instructor-led course or some other format, fully satisfying the course expectations and absorbing all of the material is the first step towards creating great content based upon it.

Tip
titleBest Practice

Take notes early and often. The more material you have to work with once the training is complete, the easier it will be to create a list of questions in both great quality and great quantity.

 

Get the Template

The following Excel txt file provides a template for training material-based question creation.

QuestionTemplateQuestion Template.xlsxtxt

 

Understand the Template Fields

General Fields

QID

Description

The QID or Question ID is a unique value to identify the question within the spreadsheet. This field should already be populated for you.

Example Value

0

Submitter

Description

This is you, the user submitting the question. Select your name from the drop-down list.

Example Value

Mark Chadbourne

Course Fields

Fields pertaining to the course from which the question is derived.

Site

Description

What site is the material from? 

Example Value

www.practice.com

Name

Description

What is the name of the course this question is derived from?

Example Value

Awesome Questions in 5 Easy Steps

URL

Description

What is the specific URL that will take me directly to the course content (not just the site it's hosted on)?

Example Value

www.practice.com/awesome

Tag Fields

Fields that help to categorize and describe the question for future lookup.

Discipline

Description

Is this content Professional (e.g. business-, conduct- or communication-related) or Technical (anything else)

Valid Values

Professional, Technical

Category

Description

Provide a single word or phrase describing the high-level category the content falls under.

Example Value

Communication

Tip
titleBest Practice

Keep categories consistent. If a Languages Category has already been created, don't create a Programming Languages Category - re-use existing labels that apply to your content first and only create new ones when necessary.

Subject

Description

Provide a lower-level categorization further defining this content. Within the realm of the Category you just selected, what Subject does this course focus on?

Example Value

Questioning

Difficulty

Description

How difficult is this question and how difficult is the material it covers? Be sure to consider both when selecting a difficulty.

Valid Values

Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced

Applicability

Description

Does this question pertain specifically to the content covered in the course, or can it be answered with general knowledge on the topic (without having completed the related course)?

Valid Values

Course, General

WarningIt's OK to focus specifically on the source training on occasion, but steer clear of opinions and be sure to set the Applicability field to Course. Wherever possible, try to create questions with broad applicability that test topic knowledge independent of course-specific material

Category

This is the category of the question, if you do not see the category you want on the list provided on the template please request it be added.

Current Category List

0 Generic

1 Java

2 Axure

3 JIRA

4 OOP

5 SDLC

6 Communication

7 Unix Scripting

8 HTML

9 CSS

Grade Style

Only applicable for 'multiplechoice' (with more then 1 correct answer) style questions
0: Give full score only when all correct responses are provided
1: Give partial score per correct response and deduct partial score for incorrect responses
2: Give partial score per correct response but do not deduct partial score for incorrect responses

Random Answers

A Boolean for if the answers' order is randomized. 0 means no randomization and a 1 means to randomize the answers.


Question Fields

Type

Description

What form should the answer(s) take?

Multiple Choice

A single answer chosen from a list of possible answers

Multiple Select (This is a form of multiple choice in the template)

Two or more correct answers chosen from a list of possible answers

Ordering

An ordered list of all answer values, sorted according to question criteria.

Short Answer

A freeform text response to the posed question.

Valid Values

Multiple Choice, Multiple Select, Ordering, Short Answer
True or False

A statement of an unknown truth value which the answer is chosen from true or false.

Valid Values

multiplechoice, truefalse

Question

Description

What do you want to ask?

Example Value

What qualities should an awesome question have? (Select all that apply.)

Hint [optional]

Description

Some questions may be tricky enough to warrant a Hint. What bit of information can you provide to nudge someone in the right direction without giving away the answer?

Example Value

Think about how we want these questions to be used.

Answer

Description

Provide 5

(A)-(J)

Description

Provide possible answers to the question. These are numbered 1lettered A-5 J for reference by the the (Correct Answer(s) field.

Example Value

It should test understanding of concepts rather than memorization.

Note
 Short Answer questions will not use the Answer fields. They will only provide a value for Correct Answer(s).
Correct Answer(s)

 field. Not all sections must be filled out, and if a letter is unused delete it from the list of letter for that question.

Correct

Description

Provide the correct answer(s) to the question. 

Example Value

1,2,3,5 

Note
 Short Answer questions will provide an example freeform response. Other question types will list the answer number(s) that satisfy the question, correctly ordered where required.

Explanation

Description

Why is the right answer set right, and why is the wrong answer set wrong? Explain the reasoning to the user
For multiple select questions create a multiple choice question and then select multiple answers for correct using the syntax of (Correct): A,B

 

Points

Description

The weight of the question, defaults to 1.

Example Value

Any real number

CF/WF

Description

Correct Feedback and Wrong Feed back respectively. These are shown the the quiz taker upon answering a question right or wrong. An explanation of the answer is a useful thing to add to this section.

Example Value

An awesome question should have all of the qualities necessary to properly test a candidate's knowledge. It should NOT focus too narrowly on terminology or opinions specific to training source material.

Example Question

The following illustrates an example question created with the template and defined utilizing the fields and examples described above. Underlined text denotes a user input field constrained to a defined list of drop-down values; all remaining fields are freeform text.

 

  CourseTagsQuestionQIDSubmitterSiteNameURLDisciplineCategorySubjectDifficultyApplicabilityType  0Mark Chadbournewww.practice.comAwesome Questions in Five Easy Stepswww.practice.com/awesomeProfessionalCommunicationQuestioningBeginnerGeneralMultiple SelectQuestionWhat qualities should an awesome question have? (Select all that apply.)HintThink about how we want these questions to be used.Answer 1It should test understanding of concepts rather than memorizationAnswer 2It should not be easily answered by a Google searchAnswer 3It should be tagged with appropriate data to categorize itAnswer 4It should be based on the opinion of the person writing the questionAnswer 5It should provide any necessary context to answer it properlyCorrect Answer(s)1,2,3,5ExplanationAn awesome question should have all of the qualities necessary to properly test a candidate's knowledge. It should NOT focus too narrowly on terminology or opinions specific to training source material. 
(Type): multiplechoice
(Category): 3    
(Grade style): 0 
(Random answers): 1
(Question): What is this question on?
(A): Grasshoppers
(B): Confluence
(C): Java
(D): Modern Art
(E): Grecco Roman Culture
(Correct): B
(Points): 1
(CF): 
(WF): This is an example question on a Confluence page.

Follow Best Practices

A good question should be aligned with each of the following best practices.

Tip
titleBest Practices
  • Be sure to completely fill out each field of the template for each question
  • Test understanding/concepts over memorization (e.g. the difference between knowing how to multiply rather than simply knowing the times tables)
  • Inject practical situations framing key concepts wherever possible; it should not be possible to answer a question with the first page of Google search results
  • Provide proper context; if a question is best posed with an accompanying code snippet or other artifact, include one