Learning Suite - Exam Creation, Options, Exceptions, Page Info, Feedback, and Copying


This article covers the creation, presenting and reporting of exams in Learning Suite.  

Table of Contents

Exam Creation Steps and Options

  1. Log into learningsuite.byu.edu and access the correct course.

  2. Click on the "Exam" tab at top of page.

  3. Click on the "Create New Exam" button.

 

Exam Info

The options on this page include, but are not limited to: Title, Description, Delivery Method, Open/Due Dates, and Points Possible.

 

Choose Options

These settings are for the Presentation, Submissions, Access and Exceptions:

 

Reporting

These are the options for selecting what information about the exam is available to students, and when it is available to them. 

The instructor may choose what the students see:

 

Questions

For information on the different types of questions and how to set them up, see the information in this other article: KB0025648

 

Summary

Provides a summary of the Exam information. There are also links that the instructor can follow to return and edit anything within the Exam. The exam can also be published from the Exam List page. 

Scoring

After the Exam has been published, the Instructor will be able to see the attempts for each student and grade them individually.  To score an exam, visit the Exam tab, and under the Exam List, in the Scoring column, the "Score" button will appear.  This will direct you to a page where you can to move between different students, as well as each attempt for those students. The score can be changed and comments left on the right hand side of the page.

Instructors can also open the Grader to score exams--BYU Grades > Scores > click on exam name in the column header > View Grader

Note: If the exam grades are not pushing to the Scores page, check to see if there are any open response questions on the exam. The instructor will need to manually grade any open response questions before the grades will push to the Scores page.

 

Results

After the exam has been published and students have taken the exam, Professors will be able to view/edit an attempt or reset the attempt for an individual student.

 

Reset Exam Attempt

This will most commonly be used to clear an "in-progress" attempt for exams and quizzes that use dynamic question blocks and have multiple/unlimited attempts. In these cases, students will often have multiple copies of the quiz open in different tabs, which causes Learning Suite to lock them out of their active attempt and the professor, TA, or an admin must delete the "in-progress" attempt in order for the student to be able access the quiz/exam again.

To reset a student's attempt, proxy as the professor then go to Exams > Click on the Exam in question > go to Results tab > and click on the  icon to delete. 

Note: This will delete the student's attempt completely and cannot be undone! ALSO note that this must be done for a student to retake an exam that is set up to not allow re-submissions.

 

Re-Scoring



This will resend all scores for a particular exam over to Gradebook. This is potentially a fix for exam scores not pushing to Gradebook.

 

This will resend one student's individual exam score to Gradebook. Also a potential fix for exam scores not pushing to Gradebook.

 

Setup

Generally, this will only need to be accessed once. It is to select whether the instructor would like to use BYU Learning Suite Exams or not. 

 

Sorting View

In student view, exams are sorted by: 1. Open Date and 2. Due Date. They cannot be reordered manually. Please note that this order is not reflected in the Assignments tab, as the ordering feature is not linked between the two.

 

Access to Past Exams

When a TA wants access to a past exams we are to make them a co-instructor so they can have access and then when they are done we are to change them back to a TA in the class. We need to keep in touch with them to make sure that they are definitely reverted back to a TA in the course. [TAs lose access to a course once the semester ends; TAs never have permission to copy exams.]

 

Converting from .doc/.docx to Learning Suite Questions

  1. Open https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt 

  2. Make sure the word documents are in terms of either 100% simple text and/or latex. You can turn your word doc into latex via a GUI website called MathPix (save your word doc as a pdf first if you go that route). 

  3. ChatGPT-4 can turn your text into the code for a Moodle 1.0 XML file. GPT may not finish the script, so you will likely need to say "pick up where you left off" several times.

  4. In the exam-editing section (not the question bank!), import the questions via the xml file.
    1. You'll then need to go in and assign the correct answer and point values.

 

Feedback

The instructor has the option of selecting some or all of the following options for students to see:

 

Instructors can even set it so that some of these are visible only after a certain date. The professor sets these options in the Exams Tab > Reporting page.
 
 
For students to see these options, they need to
  1. Go to the exams tab. The student's overall score is listed on the right (if it is available)

  2. Click on the View button for the exam. You can now see the individual scores for each attempt

  3. Click on the View button to see feedback, comments, and the correct answers (if they are available) for a specific attempt


In Learning Suite Exams

Automatica feedback can be added to all question types. There are three possible feedback entry options (not all three formats will appear for each question type):
  • Correct/Incorrect - This allows you to enter two different feedback entries. The correct entry appears to students if they enter the correct answer and the incorrect entry appears to students if they enter an incorrect answer. 

  • Same for all - this allows you to enter one feedback entry that appears to students, regardless of the answer that they select. 

  • Different for each - This allows you to enter separate feedback entries for each possible response. Students view the feedback entry according to how they responded to the question. 

To add feedback to an open response question, check Add Feedback under the Options section at the bottom of the question edit dialogue.
 
Note: If a student can't see their essay on an open response question after they submit it, check the feedback options. The "Feedback with student responses..." option has to be checked  for students to see their own open response essay after submission.
 

Note: There IS a maximum time limit on exams. It is 1,193,046 hours and 28 minutes. This is for reference only.

 
For information on how an Instructor can take an exam as a student see KB0025736.
 
 

Copying Exams

Supervisors, Primary instructors, Co-instructors, and TA's can copy exams. (TA's can only copy exams from the same course). Exams can be copied between communities and courses.

 

Allowing Course Information to be Copied

Before you can copy an exam, the course you're copying the exam from must allow copy. Go into the Course > Exams > Setup and check the box Allow my exams to be copied. Unless you are the primary instructor of both courses, then you don't need to check the box.

Note: Only the Primary Instructor can allow their exams to be copied. TA's, for example, will not see the "Allow my exams to be copied" option. 

Note: If the exam/assignment is currently Hidden (Schedule tab of the Assignment Edit page) from students, it is also hidden from professors in other courses.

 

Copying an Exam

  1. From the Home Tab, select Setup and then Copy from the side menu.

  2. After selecting the course you want to copy from, there will be a check box called Exams. Selecting this box will copy any exams the course has (only applicable to instructors).

 

Note: TA's will need to copy from the Exams tab. They will not be able to use the above method.


 

Copying Exams Between Instructors

You can copy between instructors, as long as the instructor you're copying from allows other instructors to copy their exams. This option is found in the originating course under Exams > Setup > Allow other instructors to copy my exams.

 

Copying Exams from Development Course

You can copy exams created from a Development course into another semester's course by selecting Copy Existing Exams in the course you want to copy to. You will then set the semester to be whatever semester the Development course is listed under (Check the Setup tab of the Development course), and the appropriate teaching area/instructor (Instructor name (Dev)). You can then select the exams you would like to copy.

 

Create Duplicate Exam

You can make a copy of an already existing exam. This can be useful when a professor has already published an exam, but would like to make changes to it and perhaps use that updated version later. This is done from within the Exam List. To create a copy of your exam:

  1. Select the Options drop-down menu of the exam you wish to copy, then select Copy.

  2. You will receive a message stating "Copy Completed Successfully." You will then see a new exam by the same title appear at the top of the exam list, but it is now unpublished with different due dates.

 

Exporting Exams

There is no way to export exams at this time. They can be printed off if the exam is set as a Printed exam, but that's as much as is currently possible.

 

Note: Changes to copied exams should not effect the previous exams. However, we have seen this issue before. If you experience this problem please call Operations and Support at 801-422-4000.


Bulk Importing Questions into the Question Bank

You can bulk import questions into their LS Question Bank following these steps: https://softwaresupport.byu.edu/learning-suite/instructor/exams/exam-questions.

The LS Engineers have implemented a 60-second-timeout feature for security purposes, meaning Learning Suite will sometimes quit actions that take longer than 60 seconds to perform. If you are having trouble bulk-importing questions into a question-bank, try importing smaller groups of questions or exams at a time (200-400 questions or 20-40 exams depending on how complex they are). If you still receive error messages, please call IT Support at 801-422-4000.