What are Practice questions and how do I add them to my course?

What are Practice questions?

Practice questions are gradable, question-based activities that use questions you create, or you can link to questions that already exist in an assessment or another practice question set. This activity is similar to assessments, but unlike assessments, students can submit, review, and retake each question at a time. There is also no essay question type making this activity truly auto-graded.

How do I add practice questions to my course?

To add Practice questions, enter a course through the Editor tool.

Click +Add Activity.

Select Practice questions.

Within the Practice questions activity there are 3 tabs:

Activity
Settings
Questions

Activity Tab

Within the Activity tab:

Give the Assessment a title.
Add a thumbnail.
Add content you would like to be visible to the students.
Add instructions.
If needed, add an attachment.
If needed, select a type of calculator to have available for students.
If needed, add companion material.

Settings Tab

Within the Settings tab:

1. Activity settings:

Set a due date/time, choose number of attempts, how many questions students will see per page, if students can save and come back, if it is required for students to answer all questions, if you want to randomize question order, and if you want to randomize response order.

2. Gradebook settings:

Choose whether the assessment is gradable, assign an outcome and points possible if gradable, and check the box if the assessment counts as extra credit.

3. Visibility and access:

Set visibility options and access rules.

4. Objective mastery:

Align course-specified standards to the assessment (if the course has a set of standards/objectives imported). This allows teachers to track student performance against the standards in the gradebook. Click here to learn more about importing standards/objectives.

5. Badges:

Badges can be used to automatically assign a specific badge to students who complete the activity. Badges must be configured in the course settings in order to be selected. Click here to learn more about badges.

6. Metadata:

Description for course author, or an idea of how this activity fits into the goal of the course or the "big picture." CRA and IAKT activity tags can also be used for reporting purposes.

7. Question-group settings:

Define options for practice-question groups. Click Default to use those settings, or click on Add question group to customize the settings. Make sure to scroll down through all the available options and click Done when completed

8. Advanced gradebook options:

Within the advanced gradebook options you have the option to adjust passing score, minimum points possible, visibility dates and more.

9. Advanced activity options:

Within the advanced visibility options you have the option to adjust when activity is considered complete, if students must complete this assignment before moving on to the next, where the assignment will appear in the course and more.

Questions

Within the Questions tab, begin adding questions for the Practice questions by clicking the + button.

NOTE: Click the link if you want to use questions that already exist within another assessment in your course.

When adding a question you can choose one of the following question types:

Once you have chosen a question type and have set up the question, you also have the option to:

1. Create Feedback:

Where a teacher can provide feedback rules. The four types in the dropdown are custom, always, when answer is correct, and when answer is incorrect. Type in the feedback necessary for each rule (if applicable).

2. Select the Interaction:

Includes options like the question label, checkboxes for maintain response order, show choices as a dropdown menu, display workspace, and a custom question definition if needed.

3. Set up the Score:

Choose whether the question counts for partial or extra credit.

4. Chose an Objective:

Align the question with course specified standards.

5. Add Variables:

Create questions that use different values for each student, presenting them with varied questions and answers. There are two kinds of assessment variables in Echo: Ranges and Lists.

6. Add a Calculator:

Check the appropriate box(es) to provide students with one or more of the calculator options.

7. Add Companion material:

Attach any supplemental documents students need to complete this question. Teachers can do this by pointing to existing resources in the course or by uploading new files (PDFs only).

Additional changes can be made using the orange section of tools on the lefthand side.

Preview (play icon): preview the questions

Reorder: move the questions around

Edit (< > icon): edit all questions at once

Continue to click the + button to add questions to the Practice questions. Follow the steps above to do so.

Click Save when the assessment is complete.

Echo is constantly being improved based on the feedback from users and we strive to keep our documentation up to date. If this document doesn’t match what you are seeing in Echo, please let us know.

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