About Unavailable Tests and Surveys
You manage availability on the Test Options or Survey Options page.
Unavailable and deleted tests and surveys differ in the following ways:
- Unavailable tests and surveys deployed in a content area do not appear to students. When Edit Mode is ON, instructors and course builders can see unavailable tests.
- You can limit test and survey availability to a specific time period with the Display After and Display Until dates and times. If the link to a test or survey is available, but neither date is set, it is immediately and always available.
- If you delete a test or survey from a content area in your course, it is removed from that location. You can deploy it again as needed. You can deploy each test and survey in one location only.
- If you delete a test or survey from the tests or surveys tool pages, it is permanently deleted from your course. This is irreversible. You can access the tests and surveys tools in the Course Tools section of the Control Panel.
When you deploy a test or survey to a content area, you set the availability and feedback options. To make changes to the options, access its contextual menu and click Edit the Test Options or Edit the Survey Options.
The following table provides descriptions of the test and survey availability options. Click the images to enlarge them in your browser. Use your browser’s back function to return to the topic.
|Make the Link Available||You can set this to available, and then use the Display After and Display Until fields to limit the amount of time the link appears.|
|Add a New Announcement for this Test/Survey||You can create an announcement for a test or survey. The announcement includes the date and states, “An assessment has been made available in [Course area that includes the link to the assessment].”If an announcement was previously posted using this feature, the date and time of the most recent announcement appears.|
|Multiple Attempts||You can allow students to take a test or survey multiple times. The status of multiple attempts appears to students at the top of the test or survey. Select Allow Unlimited Attempts to allow students to take it as many times as they want. Select Number of Attempts and provide the amount of attempts.With multiple attempts for a test, you can also select which attempt’s score to use in the Grade Center from the Score attempts using drop-down list.|
|Force Completion||If you select Force Completion, students must complete the test or survey when they launch it.Students may only access the test or survey ONE TIME. The Save function is available for students to save the questions as they work through them, but they may not exit and reenter the test or survey. In the instructions, Force Completion is noted and explained to students. If you do not enable Force Completion, students may save their progress, navigate away, and return to complete the test or survey.If students accidentally close their browsers, leave the test or survey page, or lose power or their internet connections, they cannot continue. They must contact you to allow them to start over with a new attempt.
You may want to reserve the Force Completion option for when students are on campus taking a proctored test and connected to an Ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi. If issues occur, an instructor can be available to reset the test.
Alternatively, use the Set Timer options to reduce receiving emails from panicked students who accidentally left a test or survey with Force Completion enabled.
|Set Timer||Set a time limit for finishing a test or survey. Type the amount of time in the hours and minutes boxes. During a timed test, the time elapsed is displayed to students. As students approach the time limit, a one-minute warning appears.When an attempt is complete, student completion time is available in the Test Informationsection.
If a student saves and exits the test, the timer continues. For example, if he begins the test on Tuesday, saves and exits it, then completes it on Thursday, his completion time will be 48 hours.
If you set the timer, turn on Auto-Submit to automatically save and submit a test or survey when time expires. Without enabling auto-submit, students have the option to continue after time expires. Tests and surveys are flagged as submitted after the timer expired. You have the option to adjust the grade based on the time.
You may find it advantageous to use the Set Timer options and not the Force Completion option. For example, if a student loses his internet connection for 10 minutes on a timed test, at least he can access the test again and continue. If you enabled the Forced Completion option, he cannot access the test again and must contact you to reset the test.
|Display After||Optionally, select the date and time when the test or survey will become available to students. You can control availability through the Make the Link Available option without setting specific dates.|
|Display Until||Optionally, select the date and time the test or survey will be made unavailable to students.|
|Password||You can require and type a password for students to use to access a test or survey. Passwords have a limit of 15 characters and are case sensitive.|
|Restrict Location||You can require students to take the test or survey in a specific location. Students outside of this location are not able to take the test or survey.
This is based on a range of IP addresses created by your institution. If your institution has not created this range, this option does not appear.
To learn more, see Restrict Tests by Location.
|Test Availability Exceptions||For existing availability settings, you can make exceptions for individual students or groups. Use exceptions to provide an accommodation to a student who is disabled, or for technology and language differences.
For a test with one attempt, you can allow more attempts for a student who is blind and using screen reader technology for the first time.
If the settings exist for a test or survey, you can create the following exceptions:
|Due Date||If you use grading periods in the Grade Center, set a due date to easily include that test or survey in a grading period and on the calendar in the My Blackboard menu.
Due Date and Late Submissions
To prevent late submissions, you can select the check box for Do not allow students to start the Test/Survey if the due date has passed. Students receive a message after the due date, notifying them that the test or survey can no longer be completed.
When you allow late submissions, they are clearly marked on the following pages:
In the Show Results and Feedback to Students section, you can set which results and feedback are available to students after they complete a test or survey. You can set one or two rules using the drop-down lists. You cannot choose some rules in combination. After you select a rule in the first drop-down list, some may not appear in the second drop-down list.
If conflicts in rules occur, the most permissive settings for that user or group of users is granted. For example, students will receive the greatest number of attempts and longest availability time.
The following image shows the two default options applied to tests: After Submission and Score per Question. If you make no changes in this section, students see their overall test scores and the scores earned for each individual question after they submit their tests. Select more options to determine what else they see, such as the correct answers or your feedback.
Students can always see their overall test scores. You cannot change that option from this page. If you do not want them to see their scores yet, access the Grade Center column’s contextual menu and hide the column from students. However, when you hide a test column from students, they see nothing about the test in My Grades. When they access the test in the content area, they receive a message stating when they submitted the test. No scores appear.
The following table provides descriptions of the test and survey feedback options. Click the images to enlarge them in your browser. Use your browser’s back function to return to the topic.
|When||You must make a selection. Set when appropriate test results and feedback are shown to students:
|Score per Question||Show the score earned for each test question. This is a default option for tests only. Clear the check box if you do not want to show scores for individual questions.|
|Answers||You can allow students to see information about their answers:
Example 1: Show more feedback
When students access their tests, they see their overall scores, each question’s score, and all answer options. They see their submitted answers marked as correct or incorrect, and any feedback provided.
Example 2: Show less feedback to discourage cheating
If students are taking a test at different times, you can make a limited amount of feedback available until all students submit the test.
For the first rule, select After Submission in the first drop-down list and clear the check box forScore per Question. Make no other selections. After submitting their tests, students can only see their overall test scores.
For the second rule, select After Due Date, and select options to show more results and feedback. You can create an announcement to notify students that additional feedback is available to view.
|Feedback||Show instructor-generated feedback for each question. This option appears only for tests.|
|Show Incorrect Questions||Show the questions a student answered incorrectly or partially incorrectly. This option appears only for tests. You might consider only showing incorrect questions when allowing multiple attempts so that students can focus their studying on those areas.|
In the Show Test Results and Feedback to Students section, you can select One-time View. After students submit their tests, the results and feedback options you selected are in effect for students to view ONCE. However, students can always view the overall test scores they earned. Immediately after a student navigates away from the test, any other options you chose are restricted. You can apply a second rule to allow students to view newly selected options at a later time. The second rule is not combined with the one-time view rule, but is applied separately.
The ability to select different options for each rule allows you to show some test results and feedback initially, and then more later.
Rule #1: Select One-time View and Show Incorrect Questions. Select no other options so that while other students are still allowed to take the test, no one can share the correct answers.
Rule #2: Select all of the following options:
- After Due Date
- Score per Question
- All Answers
After the due date, students see their scores along with all answer options. They also see their submitted answers marked as correct or incorrect and any instructor feedback.
By default, a deployed test is included in Grade Center calculations. However, you may allow students to take tests for review or practice without impacting Grade Center calculations.
You can turn the test into a self-assessment by hiding students’ scores in the Grade Center. This allows students to take tests to reinforce learning without feeling pressure about a score affecting their total grades. Select the appropriate options in the Show Test Results and Feedback to Students section so they are able to see how they did. If you select all options, students will see the answers they selected and which ones are correct.
|Include this Test in Grade Center Score Calculations||You can include this test in Grade Center calculations. If the test is not included, the score does not affect any Grade Center calculations.|
|Hide Results for this Test Completely from Instructor and the Grade Center||You can hide this test score from you and exclude it from Grade Center calculations. The display in the Grade Center will read Complete/Incomplete and N/A or zero appears on the Grade Details page. You cannot see students’ answers to questions. Students are able to view their own scores.Selecting this option makes Include this Column in Other Grade Center Calculations and Show Statistics (average and median) for this Column to Students in My Grades unavailable when editing column information in the Grade Center.|
The following table describes the options for presenting questions in tests and surveys.
|All at Once||Present the entire assessment on one screen. Students scroll through all the questions and can move up and down from question to question. When selected, you may not choose Prohibit Backtracking.|
|One at a Time||Displays one question at a time. The screen includes navigation tools to move between questions. The Submit function only appears on the last page of the assessment. You may also select Prohibit Backtracking and Randomize Questions.|
|Prohibit Backtracking||Prevents students from going back to questions they have already answered. If you do not allow backtracking, questions are presented one at a time and the <<, <, and >> functions do not appear to users during the test or survey.|
|Randomize Questions||Display questions in a random order each time the assessment is taken. If you include references to the question numbers as they appear on the Test Canvas, do not use this option because the random order changes the question numbering.|