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Assessment Settings

Adding an Assessment to Your Course

  1. Open your course
  2. Find the content block where you want to add the assessment
  3. Open the "add item" menu inside that block (look for a + or "Add..." link)
  4. Select Assessment
  5. Give the assessment a name and click Create

The assessment is now in your course. Click its name to open the assessment editor.

Adding Questions

Inside the assessment editor, click Add/Remove Questions to open the question browser.

  • Browse question banks — search or filter by topic, question type, difficulty
  • Preview questions — click any question to see how it will appear to students
  • Select questions — check the box to add a question to the assessment

Questions you add are pulled from the shared question pool. You can also create custom questions from the question editor. See Question Writing for details on writing your own questions.

Question Set Size

If you add more questions than you want to assign, set the Number of questions to use field to a smaller number. Each student will receive a randomly selected subset from the full pool — a different selection per attempt.

Key Assessment Settings

Availability Dates

  • Open Date — when students can first access the assessment
  • Due Date — the deadline for on-time submission
  • Leave the open date blank to make the assessment available immediately after publishing

Attempts

Set how many times a student may submit. Common configurations:

  • 1 — single attempt (typical for tests)
  • 2–3 — limited retakes (typical for quizzes)
  • 0 (or unlimited) — practice mode, no limit

Scoring Across Attempts

When multiple attempts are allowed, choose how the final score is determined:

  • Last score — most recent attempt counts
  • Highest score — best attempt counts
  • Average — average of all attempts

Time Limit

Enter a number of minutes. Leave blank for no limit. Once a student starts a timed assessment, the countdown begins and the assessment closes automatically when time expires.

Display Format

  • All at once — all questions on one page
  • One at a time — students advance through questions sequentially; they can or cannot go back depending on the setting

Feedback

Control what students see after submitting:

  • Show feedback immediately — students see which answers are correct and see written feedback after each submission
  • After due date — feedback revealed once the due date passes
  • Never — no feedback shown (use for high-stakes exams)

You can also control whether students see the correct answer and the full solution separately from the feedback toggle.

Late Policy

  • Late passes — if enabled for your course, students can use a late pass to extend their individual due date on this assessment (see Late Passes below).
  • Late penalty — apply an automatic point deduction for submissions after the due date.
  • No late submissions — block any submission after the due date.

Assessment Passwords

You can require a password before a student can start an assessment — useful for in-class tests and proctored exams.

Use the Assessment Passwords wizard at /tools/assessmentPasswordsTool. The wizard lets you:

  1. Pick the course and the assessment to password-protect
  2. Enter the password students must type to begin
  3. Apply the setting

Students see a password prompt when they click Begin on the assessment. You distribute the password in class (on the board, read aloud, etc.) so only students present can start.

Late Passes

If your course has late passes enabled, each student gets a bank of passes that can automatically extend a due date on an individual assessment without you having to intervene.

  • Enable or disable late passes in Course Settings → Late Policy.
  • Students apply a late pass to an assessment from their course view; the due date for that student is extended by the amount you configured.
  • To grant extra time, extra attempts, or a fully custom due date to a specific student (outside of the late-pass system), use the Add Exception flow on the roster — see Per-Student Exceptions.

Per-Student Exceptions

To give a specific student more time, extra attempts, or a different due date:

  1. Go to the Roster in your course
  2. Click the student's name
  3. Click Add Exception next to the assessment
  4. Set the override: extended due date, extra attempts, or time limit multiplier

Exceptions override the course-level settings for that student only and do not affect other students.

Essay and Manual Grading

For essay or free-response questions, the assessment shows as Not Graded in the gradebook until you score it.

To grade a submission:

  1. Open the gradebook and click the student's score cell for that assessment
  2. Click View Submission
  3. Read the student's response
  4. Enter a point value and optional comment
  5. Click Save — the student's grade updates immediately

Question Analysis

After students have submitted, click Stats or Question Analysis on the assessment to see:

  • Per-question correct-rate (what % of students got each question right)
  • Average score by attempt number
  • Time students spent per question

Use this to identify questions that may be poorly worded (unusually low correct rate) or too easy (correct rate near 100%).

Best Practices

  • Preview before publishing: Use Preview as Student to see exactly what students will see
  • Publish with a future open date: Create the assessment in advance and set the open date to control exactly when students can access it
  • Use question pools: Add more questions than you assign so each student gets a different subset — discourages copying
  • Grade essays promptly: Students wait on manual grades; try to grade within 1–2 days of the due date

See Also