The issue of creating randomized quizzes in D2L has always baffled me, until I sat down with our helpful CHSS Instructional Designer Tiffani Reardon, who walked me through the process. I knew it couldn’t be that difficult, and I was right: the process is relatively easy, but like many things in D2L, it’s not intuitive. There’s a video at the end of the post that walks you through the steps, but a broad overview of them is as follows:
- Create a question library. You can’t generate a random quiz without a question library. Think of the question library as the master test bank from which all future quizzes/tests will be created. For the last random quiz I created, I used questions solely from the instructor’s test manual that corresponded with the textbook. However, I also recommend you create your own questions based on lecture and other class materials. Before you start creating the question library, it’s a good idea to think about how you’ll organize your questions: will you organize them by book chapters? By book chapters vs lecture notes? By topic/subject? The organizational structure really makes a difference here.
- Create a quiz with random sections. This is crucial, and the only way to construct randomized quizzes. You basically tell D2L to pull in X number of questions from Y sections of the question library, and voila! You have a randomized quiz, unique for each student.
I say this in the video, but it bears repeating: the hardest part is generating your question library. I used Respondus to import 18 chapters worth of test bank questions, which was tedious but much less time consuming than manually entering 18 chapters worth of test bank questions. One thing to keep in mind is that the Respondus program (not the lockdown browswer) only works on a PC, so if you’re on Team Mac like me, you’ll need to find another computer to work on while you import questions from the Word doc files to D2L.
Do you use randomized quizzes in your classes? I’d love to hear from you about it!
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