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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.



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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 file provides a template for training material-based question creation.

QuestionTemplate.xlsx

 

See https://bitbucket.org/solutechnology/onb-question-repository/raw/HEAD/Supporting%20Content/question_template.txt for the latest quiz creation template and visit Training Process: Initial Setup to retrieve the file directly from Git.

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 to be added. The categories below and their number are correct, even though the template may not include them in the listed categories, simply putting the number in will work for the unlisted categories. This list will be kept up to date as categories are 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

10 JavaScript

11 Angular JS

12 Design Patterns

13 Git

14 Java Design Pattern

15 Business Analysis

16 Version Control

17 Presentations

18 Software Testing

19 Foundations of Programming: Software Quality Assurance

20 PowerPoint 2013 Essential Training

21 SQL Essential Training

22 Web Design Fundamentals

23 Programming Foundations: Fundamentals

24 Java SE 8 Bootcamp

25 RESTful API Testing with Postman

26 Experience Design Patterns in Java

27 Java Web Services

28 Windows Tips & Tricks

29 The Internet & World Wide Web

30 Excel

31 Confluence

32 Debugging Java in a Browser

33 Prototyping

34 Usability Testing

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.

Submitter

This is the name of the person creating and submitting the questions.

Course Site

This is the site the course was taken on. The options for this are Lynda, Code School and Udemy.

Course Name

This is the exact name of the course as it is written on the site.

Course URL

The URL of the course.

Discipline

This is what discipline the training is classified under, Professional or Technical.

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)-(E)

Description

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

Example Value

It should test understanding of concepts rather than memorization.

Note

) field. 

Correct

Answer(s)

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 to the quiz taker upon answering a question right or wrong. An explanation of the answer is a useful thing to add to this section.  Keep the CF and WF the same if you are giving feedback.

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.

Hint

Description

This is an optional field that can be used if you wish to provide a hint to the user about the question.

Example Value

This can be used to help people know the answer.

Subject

Description

This is similar to category but can be used to specify more specific detail on the category.

Example Value

Question subject

Difficulty

Description

This is a range of difficulty of the question, Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.

Valid Values

Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced

Applicability

Description

This is if the question is about the course or can be applied to the category in general.

Valid Values

General, Course

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.

 

(STARTIGNORE)
Quiz Details
(Submitter): Jason Crocker
(Course Site): TBD
(Course Name): Question Creation and You
(Course URL): www.tbd.com
(Discipline): professional
(ENDIGNORE)


(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.

(STARTIGNORE)
(Hint): What is the site you are currently on called?
(Subject): Question Creation
(Difficulty): Beginner
(Applicability): General
(ENDIGNORE)

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
  • Your quiz questions should be easy to read and follow, with zero grammatical or punctuation errors.