10 Rules for Writing E-Learning Knowledge Assessments

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Does your quizzes and tests score an EXCELLENT?!?!?

This weekend I was truly inspired to write this week's blog on writing knowledge assessments for e-learning. I took a quiz for a course I am taking for the preparation of the Project Management Exam. Generally, I do quite well in taking quizzes and tests, my but confidence was shaken by a poorly written knowledge assessment. Aside from misspelled words and weak sentence structures which made the question and answers difficult to decipher, the way the question and answer selections were written confused me as well. Unfortunately, I scored 50% and though I would be embarrassed by the low score, I knew the quiz was faulty.

My best advice to "test writers" is avoid having your learners from feeling cheated by a test that was designed for them to fail.

 

Here are 10 great rules when writing quizzes and tests for e-Learning

1. Write questions first to be sure all questions are aligned with course or lesson objectives. *ISD Tip: Don't present content in your course that you or your customer do not feel comfortable in testing the student on such as dates and figures.
2. Try to limit questions to one or two sentences that is clear, concise, and unambiguous. 
3. Keep questions fair. Don’t try to trick learners or give them an impossible choice. If you are testing learners on the content being taught from a book, use the terminology used from the book.
4. Use a consistent number of answer options: usually three or four. This helps learners know what to expect for each question and helps avoid crowding the text to fit in more answer options.
5. Make answer choices that are about the same length.
6. Define the abbreviation or acronym the first time it is used on the screen. Use the roll over feature to prevent a crowded screen.
7. Provide clear directions presented in text on the same screen with the question and answers. It may seem obvious to you how to answer a drag and drop question, but it may not be obvious to all the learners.
8. Provide a few spelling variations if you are asking the learner to type an answer in a fill-in-the-blank question. If words aren't simple to spell, you may want to consider using the multiple choice question type or provide a word bank instead.
9. Provide directions in text even when you’re using audio in case learners miss part of the audio directions.
10. When writing answer selections, write two obviously incorrect answers, one answer that could be correct and the one answer that is correct for the question asked. Remember to remind the learner to select the BEST possible answer.