What is the New Quiz Creation Experience?
The goal is to simplify common tasks for first-time or infrequent users, while giving easy access to the advanced features that experienced power-users love. Bringing consistency to how activities in Brightspace are created will help achieve this goal. D2L recently re-imagined the creation experience for Assignments, and now we're getting a similar experience in Quizzing.
All existing quizzes are compatible with the new quiz creation experience.
Important Note: When adding images to quizzes, you must use the "Insert Image" icon to upload your images and add alt text (image description - do not check decorative). Pasting images directly can result in loss of the image at a later time.
Is the New Quiz Creation Experience required?
Yes. As of Summer 2023, the New Quiz Creation Experience is required.
What's Changing?
• Consistent layout
The redesigned create and edit screen in Quizzing has the same layout as Assignments, making it familiar and easy to learn.
The primary panel on the left contains common, frequently used fields that are always displayed. These fields are most relevant to learners and are core to quiz creation.
The right-hand panel organizes additional, more advanced options such as start and end dates, release conditions, and special access. These options follow the same logical groupings as found in Assignments.
While the right-hand groupings are collapsed, summary text provides details about which settings are active so you can see which settings are applied at a glance which is perfect for when you are looking to reuse and copy existing quizzes.
• Build your quiz in one place
The add/edit question workflow has been brought into the primary panel giving users the ability to easily modify quiz questions without navigating to a separate interface. Users will still be able to perform the same bulk management of quiz questions from this screen such as Move To and More Actions workflows. The quiz preview functionality is also more prominent so you can be confident in what learners will see.
• Auto publish and sync to grade book
Newly created quizzes, by default, will auto-publish attempt results to learners and the grade book (if the quiz is connected to the grade book). Terminology around these two settings has been updated to better describe what is happening, and set them to on by default, creating a more streamlined connection with the grade book.
• Simpler submission views
Users can now confidently prepare what the learner sees once a quiz is submitted with a redesigned Submission Views workflow, now called Quiz Results Display. Simply choose from a list of common configurations or customize the display to meet your exact needs.
• Updated page break workflow
Users can now easily and intuitively apply question paging rules to their quiz. Common paging configurations like displaying all questions together or one question per page are quick and easy to set. Further paging configurations are available by choosing to add page breaks after each section of your quiz, creating a more customized experience. Quizzes created using the classic experience will see an additional option to use legacy paging, which retains any previous page break settings.
Sunsetting of workflows
There will be a few things leaving the new quiz creation screen that will make the page altogether less confusing and less redundant. Let's review:
• Visibility option for description, header, and footer
The On/Off visibility toggles for the Description, Header, and Footer fields have been removed. Previously, this toggle had to be explicitly set for learners to see these fields. This setting was often overlooked, leaving valuable information unseen by learners. Going forward, if there are values entered in the field, it will be visible automatically. Existing quizzes that contain information in these fields with the visibility toggled OFF will see a notice when editing their quiz in the new experience to review the impacted fields.
• Edit values button
The Edit Values button that appears above the question list will be removed as the question builder workflow has been uplifted. Setting Bonus, Mandatory, and Point values in bulk on questions can be accomplished via the uplifted More Actions workflow. Setting Difficulty on quiz questions continues to be phased out of newer quiz and quiz question creation workflows and will not carry forward in the new creation experience.
• Student view preview
The Grades tool will still feature control over how a student’s grade is displayed, but this small preview during quiz creation will not carry forward.
Coming soon
As part of the new quiz creation experience, not all workflows and functionality will be available with this first release, rather, they will come later as part of the continuous release process. We heard your feedback and plan to keep this list as small as possible, understanding that communicating and handling these sorts of updates can be time consuming. The two capabilities listed below will return to the new quiz creation experience before the classic workflow fully retires, but no immediate timeline is available.
• Display in calendar
The display in calendar functionality for availability dates will be temporarily absent from the new quiz creation experience. When creating new quizzes, only due dates will be shown in the calendar. Availability (Start/End) Dates will not appear in the calendar by default but if desired, can be added to the calendar by using the Manage Dates tool.
• Learning outcomes (released in 20.22.9)
The ability to view and align quiz questions using the Learning Outcomes tool is available in the new quiz creation experience as part of the 20.22.9 update. Quiz question alignments created using the classic experience are compatible with the new experience and users can expect to see the alignments carry forward when trying out the new experience.
• Quiz Timing Improvements
D2L is updating the quiz creation and quiz taking experiences to simplify existing workflows and add useful new quiz timing options. These quiz timing improvements are released in three stages.
- Quiz Timing Improvements & Auto-submission – available July 2023 for all clients.
The changes include auto-submission, a simpler quiz setup, and the removal of obsolete quiz timing options (such as the grace period). - Quiz Taking Improvements – Available July 2023 for all clients.
Expanding on the Phase 1, we added improvements to the Quiz taking experience including show/hide quiz timer and improvements to the Quiz results view. - Synchronous Quizzes – Available September 2023 for all clients.
In the final phase, we will expand from asynchronous quizzes to supporting both asynchronous and synchronous quizzes. The new addition of synchronous quizzes enables instructors to set up a quiz where the quiz timer starts on the start date for all learners rather than when the learner launches the quiz (asynchronous). The quiz timer then ends for all learners at the same time.
Frequently asked questions
What happens to quizzes that currently have a grace period?
The quiz uses the time limit set on the quiz. Learners no longer need grace time to ensure the quiz is submitted. For more information, see Quiz Timing Improvements - Phase 1 of 3.
What changes does the learner experience with an automatically submitted quiz?
At the end of the time limit a learner will see a dialog letting them know their quiz is being submitted followed by the quiz submission view page. For more information, see Quiz Timing Improvements - Phase 2 of 3.
If the existing quiz has Prevent student from making further changes enabled, is the quiz now automatically submitted on their behalf?
The automatic submission only applies to new learner attempts after the Quiz Timing Automatic Submission features are deployed. For more information, see Quiz Timing Improvements - Phase 1 of 3.
What happens with Special Access?
Special Access has updates with new timing options and removed obsolete fields.
How does this impact data sets and APIs?
Both data sets and APIs are updated with new fields. You can currently use data sets to analyze the current usage of fields and options being removed with these Quiz Timing changes. You continue to have access to past data, and data set fields are not being immediately removed. There will be separate communication to provide information about analytics in the near future.
What do the time options for existing quizzes look like after the Quiz Timing Improvements release is deployed?
| Quiz Timing Change | Behavior before Update | Behavior after Update |
|---|---|---|
| Grace Period (available in the Quiz Time Settings) | Learners have the Quiz Time Limit + Grace Period. | The Grace Period is being deprecated. Learners have the Quiz time limit only to take the quiz. |
| Time Limit Exceeded – Allow learner to continue working, but score 0 | Learners that continue after the time limit expires receive 0. | Changes to the auto-submit mean that the quiz is automatically submitted at the end of the time limit. |
| Time Limit Exceeded – Prevent learner from continuing | At the end of the Time Limit, the quiz attempt remains unsubmitted (the learner is prevented from further quiz entry). | Changes to the auto-submit mean that the quiz is automatically submitted at the end of the time limit. |
| Learner timer warnings during the Quiz | The learner did not have time warnings. | The new Timer Warnings mean that the learners now have time warnings. |
| Show/Hide clock during the Quiz | Learner could not hide the quiz timer. | The new Show/Hide clock feature means that learners can hide the quiz timer. |
| Quiz information link availability during the quiz | Learners had to exit the quiz to view the Quiz information provided on the Quiz start page. | A new link is available to access Quiz information on the Quiz start page during the quiz. |
For information about each of the three phases in the Quiz Timing Improvements, see:
- Quiz Timing Improvements - Phase 1 of 3
- Quiz Timing Improvements - Phase 2 of 3
- Quiz Timing Improvements - Phase 3 of 3
Additional Training & Resources
- Enroll in the Instructor - D2L Self-directed Training course in D2L: https://apps.d2l.msu.edu/selfenroll/course/50766
- Become a member of the Brightspace Community where you can:
- Find product information, release notes, documentation, videos and webinars.
- Share product ideas with D2L, and your knowledge & resources with others.
- Connect with other users and D2L staff through membership and discussion forums.