How to create an online quiz?

An online quiz is a short and informal skills and knowledge assessment method. It usually comprises a small number of questions/tasks (up to 10) and can be announced or unannounced. In the educational environment, a quiz may be graded or ungraded, depending on the teacher's preference.

The main goals of an online quiz are to:

• Keep learners focused on the topic.

• Evaluate their competencies and offer helpful feedback.

• Build confidence before more critical, high-stakes assessments.

Online quiz creation

It only takes a few moments to prepare your online quiz on Testportal. Remember that buttons on our platform will all say 'test', but that won't stop you from creating a great quiz.

Start in the My tests menu by clicking the green New test button in the screen's upper-right corner. It will take you to the Basic settings panel.

Just one click and you can start working on your new online quiz

Online quiz basic settings

The Basic settings view comprises two sections: Initial settings, where you can enter information about your assessment and Logo, where you can personalize the quiz to increase your brand awareness.

• Initial settings

Here, you enter your quiz name (for example, 'PHP coding quiz'). Next, you can create a custom category for your new assessment or select one from previously created. You can also leave it uncategorized.

The Description field is where you can add some text to let you quickly identify what the quiz is about and for whom it was created. It will prove helpful when you have multiple assessments on your Testportal account.

Finally, there is the Test language field. Currently, Testportal only supports English, but we're working hard to roll out new language versions soon.

• Logo

If your Testportal plan supports this feature, you can personalize your online quiz by adding your logo to give it your very own look.

By default, the assessment will display the Testportal logo. If your subscription allows it, you can change it by clicking the Select button and adding a file or select the Hide logo to display your assessment without branding.

Lastly, confirm your choices by clicking the green Save button at the bottom of the screen.

How to create a question in online quiz? Questions manager.

• Adding new quiz questions

To add the first question to your online quiz, you must navigate to the Questions manager tab in the Test configuration menu. Next, follow these steps:

1. Click the green Add question button.

2. Then, you will see a text box where you can start adding the content of Question 1.

3. Finally, select a question category. You can also add a new category if you need one.

With Testportal, adding questions to your online quiz is easy as 1-2-3

Testportal supports 6 question types: single-choice, multiple-choice, descriptive, true/false, short answer and survey. Read more to find out what question types can you create for your Testportal-based assessments.

To make your quiz questions more engaging and challenging, consider adding attachments. You can enrich questions with various images, audio and video files. Discover more about how to add a file to a question or answer on Testportal.

• Adding answers to questions

1. Add another answer field by clicking Add answer.

2. Then, configure the Score settings section. Save the question when it's ready by clicking the Save or Save and add next button.

3. Keep adding your questions and answers in the same way until your online quiz is complete.

Your single and multiple-choice questions require alternatives, or answers, for the respondents to choose from. Once we've entered them, indicate the correct answer(s) by ticking the checkbox to the left of the answer. When checking a short answer question quiz, you can mark respondents' answers as correct, even if they are not on the defined answer key list.

You can also delete a created answer. Do that by using the trash can icon to the right of the selected answer.

How to create a reliable online quiz?

If you want to make sure that your quiz results show the actual performance of your respondents, you should look after its reliability. There are many features on Testportal that help you stop cheating:

1. Time restrictions for the entire quiz and its questions.

2. Test-sharing methods, that boost security, such as individual access codes or the dedicated Microsoft Teams app.

3. Inviting all respondents to start the quiz in the same, short period of time.

4. Random order of questions and answers. Creating question subsets and using drawing mechanisms.

5. Blocking skipping questions and returning to the previous ones (backtracking).

6. Honest Respondent Technology - proven, lite proctoring solutions.

We describe those methods in detal in other articles of our Help Center. Read them all to master online quiz making.

Security and result reliability isn't usually a priority for remote quizzes. If, however, for some reason, you'd like to ensure that no cheating takes place during your assessment, Testportal is there for you.

Use our app in Microsoft Teams to enjoy secure test-sharing and to access your respondents live camera feed while they take your quizzes.

Test sets for online quizzes

Testportal offers a quick way to make your quiz more unique, ensure high result reliability and reduce the problem of cheating.

Question and answer randomization is a helpful feature. To set it up, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Test sets section, where you can configure the question order.

2. Select Random questions and answers order if you want to display all your questions and answers randomly.

You can also create a quiz of questions drawn from the entire pool or each category or manually configure test sets. Discover more in our article about how to create test sets.

Testportal's question randomization helps you reduce cheating and ensure the reliability of your quiz results

Online quiz access

Quiz access is the way you invite respondents to take your online assessment. Testportal offers you the following quiz access methods:

• Public link.

• Private access code.

• Group password.

• Link (training/quiz).

• Sharing as a tab in Microsoft Teams.

The most popular solutions for an online quiz are:

group password - requires you to have a Testportal subdomain. There is one password to access the quiz, which the respondents enter on the subdomain page.

link (training/quiz) - this type of access doesn't require the respondents to provide personal data on the quiz start page. They can take the quiz any number of times, and their results are not available to the test owner.

Honest Respondent Technology

The Test access section is also the space where you can configure our Honest Respondent Technology. This proven feature prevents cheating and lets you know how often your respondents leave the test browser.

You can select Enable warnings only, in which case respondents will see a warning on each attempt to leave their tests. If you choose the Enable warnings and test block feature, dishonest respondents will see the warning, and their quiz will terminate.

There's also the Max. allowed number of times a respondent can leave test page option, after which the online quiz terminates automatically.

Confirm your settings by clicking the Save button.

Honest Respondent Technology is simple, user-friendly and very efficient in preventing online cheating

Find out more about inviting your respondents by reading our article covering access to test.

Test start page

Here, you can add Instructions for respondents to your online quiz and configure the Test start form. Choose from the default fields or configure your own if needed. Click Save to confirm your settings.

All of your online quiz respondents start their assessments on the test start page

Additionally, you can include personal data processing information, etc. and/or add consent forms to the Test start page. To do that, subscribe to our MAX, MAX Customized or EDU University plan, which all feature these options.

To learn more about how you can benefit from the above-mentioned plans, contact our Customer Success via the contact form. We will be happy to provide you with detailed information.

Grading and quiz summary

• Test end message and redirection

Set the message that your respondents will see after completing their online quiz. Testportal also allows you to set a redirect to an external website.

• Grading criteria

Define the grading scale for your remote assessment in the Grading criteria section. You can use the scale in points or percentages of points. If you want Testportal to automatically grade all quizzes, you can define grade ranges here, as well.

• Information for respondents

What your quiz takers see in their end-of-assessment information is entirely up to you. Enter your message, and all the quiz takers will see it after finishing all the questions.

Time settings

• Test duration

To make your online quizzes more challenging and prevent cheating, you can set the time limit for the entire quiz and each question.

For example, if your quiz comprises 10 questions, you can give respondents 5 or 10 minutes (depending on how demanding your questions are) to finish their assessment. To do that, simply enter the chosen value in the Time to complete the test option.

Use time limits to increase the reliability of your online quiz results

The Manual test activation field is where you can enter the desired test activation period. Your quiz will be active for the selected period of time. For example, enter seven days if you want your assessment to be available for exactly one week from the moment of activation with the Activate test button. Confirm your settings by clicking the Save button.

Remember to double-check all the settings. Go through the Test Configuration again to ensure that all entered values are correct.

Discover more in our article dedicated to the time parameters on Testportal.

How to activate online quiz on Testportal?

There are two ways to activate an online quiz:

• By clicking the Activate test button, if you chose Manual test activation in the Time settings.

All settings double-checked? It's time to activate your online quiz!

• Using the Schedule test option, if you selected Activation in a set time period in the Time settings. This way, your quiz will activate automatically at the selected time.

If you schedule an online test, it will automatically activate on the date you entered in the Time settings

Online quiz sharing

It's time to invite the respondents to take your assessment. The method used here depends on your choice of quiz access mode.

Individual access codes are sent to respondents' email addresses automatically. It happens just before the start of your quiz.

If you decide to select the access link, remember to copy and send it to your respondents. You can use emails, chats, or other communication methods.

With the group password selected, you must provide your respondents with the sub-domain page address and test password, which they will use to start their quiz. 

When your online quiz is ready for deployment, you should take it yourself first before sending it to your respondents. This way, you can spot any errors and correct them.

When the quiz has ended, you will see all the results in the Test progress & results view. If you spot errors in the configuration of your quiz, simply duplicate it. You can do that by going to the My Tests screen, then clicking the three-dot symbol, and finally selecting the Duplicate option.

Duplicate your online quizzes effortlessly with Testportal

The Duplicate feature generates a new copy which is fully editable - you can add and modify all questions, answers and settings.