Online quizzes: best practices

D2L quiz tools enables instructors to create a wide selection of points–based question types ranging from multiple choice questions, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, matching, and written responses. Here you will find a list of best practices, tips and tricks, and extra information to help you create a powerful Quiz.

The “Prevent going back to previous pages” Feature in D2L

The shift to students taking online timed quizzes and assessments in D2L has been challenging for students and academic staff. For some it has resulted in increased test-related stress and performance. It has also led to concerns about academic integrity amongst academic staff and students during timed assessments in their online courses.

The “Prevent going back to previous pages” feature in D2L for online timed quizzes and tests is an option that restricts students’ ability to review a test or quiz in its entirety or revise an answer on a question once it has passed. This feature is often enabled to help promote academic integrity in a timed assessment, however students are reporting that they are struggling with this restriction when it is enabled.

When students are only able to move forward in a linear fashion in an assessment it limits their ability to work on sections of a timed assessment of their choice, view previous answers, and change responses as needed. This restriction is one that many students are facing for the first time and does not allow them to apply common test-taking strategies that can help improve performance such as: reviewing the entire assessment first, answer questions where there is high-confidence first, then move to questions where there is more uncertainty, review the entire test to be sure all directions were appropriately followed, and all questions were answered before submitting.

Given the challenges presented with the “Prevent going back to previous pages” feature we recommended this feature not be utilized, and only used when absolutely necessary. It is not clear if preventing moving backwards promotes academic integrity, is contributing to increased test-taking stress for students and potentially compromising performance.

Question variation

Create a quiz that has a variety of quiz question types and mixture of lower and higher-level questions that elicit application, integration, and evaluation.

Overview of question types

Quiz Question Types	Quiz Question
Multiple choice question	Which element would you select to show…?
Short answer question	Which approach would you use to…?
Fill-in-the-blank question	Can you list three…?
Written response question	Suppose you could___what would you do?
Matching question	What facts can you compile using the following…?
True/False	Online learning offers students flexibility.

View a complete list of D2L quiz question types here.

Using the D2L question library

Create and store quiz questions into the D2L Question Library and retrieve them when you are ready to import the questions into a D2L quiz. View the links below for more details.

Benefits of D2L question library
Import questions into question library

Setting up a Quiz

Create a quiz using the instructions from Setting Up a Simple Quiz or view how to create a new quiz using the New Quiz Creation Experience video below. Don’t forget to preview your quiz as a learner so you can see what the students see!

Useful resources

Associating Grades and Feedback

Student Accessibility

Academic Integrity

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