I could go on and on about the importance of quizzes, tests or other means of assessment (such as assignments), in any form of education.
Now, the LearnDash Quiz Module is good. However, it’s a few steps away from being GREAT.
The list of quizzing features provided by LearnDash includes multiple quiz question types, a quiz timer feature, an option to block student progress based on quiz results and more. But I’d say, there are a few key features which instructors are missing.
Here’s a list of 5 feature ideas to improve quizzing in your LearnDash Quizzing system:
#1 Category Based LearnDash Quizzes
Similar to course content creation tools, quiz question types are key to great instructional design.
LearnDash is on par with the top LMSs when it comes to quiz question types by providing a total of 8 types of questions:
- Single Choice
- Multiple Choice
- Free Choice
- Sorting Choice
- Matrix Sorting Choice (Matching)
- Fill-in-the-Blank
- Assessment (Survey)
- Essay / Open Answer
However it’s half-way close to LMS biggies like Moodle (which provides around 16), and Blackboard (which provides 13 quiz question types).
A feature several LearnDash users are looking forward to is a dynamic ‘Category Based Quizzes’.
Let’s take an example.
Say, your learner has completed an entire course on ‘Digital Marketing’. Your ideal final test or quiz would contain a perfect blend of questions related to the various topics covered in this course.
A ‘Category Based Quiz’ would allow you to dynamically pull in a specified number of random questions (belonging to a particular category) from your question bank.
In this case, suppose that the different categories were ‘Content Marketing’, ‘Social Media Marketing’, ‘Inbound Marting’ and the like.
This functionality will allow you to pull in 3 questions from the ‘Content marketing’ category, 2 questions from the ‘Social Media Marketing’ category, and 5 questions from ‘Inbound Marketing’ – depending on how you set it up.
#2 Advanced Quiz Retake
LearnDash provides a basic quiz retake option. You have the option to allow a student to retake a quiz, and set the limit on the number of retakes as well.
But hey! You and I both know this isn’t enough.
We’ve had several clients request us to modify this very functionality.
For example, on a project, we added a ‘Retake Only Wrong Answers’ functionality. There, when a student re-attempted the quiz, all the questions were not displayed. Instead only the questions which the student answered incorrectly were displayed. For intensive quizzes, this can be a real time saver for students and provide for better user experience.
Similarly, functionality such as a time delay before the ‘Quiz Retake’ option is displayed, or awarding students only the highest score from several quiz attempts, can provide instructors more control on student activity and progress.
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DIY Customization Hacks for your LearnDash Quizzes |
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#3 Detailed LearnDash Quiz Reporting
Most e-learning website owners understand the importance of detailed quiz reports. Not only do they help analyze student progress, but quiz reports can improve courses as well.
By default, LearnDash provides an option to download quiz reports across all quizzes and all users. If you’ve got many (that’s more than one) quizzes on your e-learning website (and I’m guessing you do), this report is not adequate.
What could help are per quiz reports or reports per user. The LearnDash Pro Panel extension could be used here. Detailed quiz reporting could be extended to provide reports per student for all quizzes and per question analysis. You can also customize reporting features if you have specific reporting requirements that are unique to your business.
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#4 Save & Resume Option
(Now agreed that this option might not be for those who like adding time sensitive quizzes. You might like reading: Adding a Question Timer for Quizzes in LearnDash)
For those of you who have elaborate quizzes which do not have to be attempted in one go, a great functionality you can consider adding is the option to save student progress, which can be resumed at a later point in time.
The ‘Save and Resume’ option in LearnDash quizzes or an option to ‘Attempt Later’ can be used when the questions are application-based, and the student does not have the option to cheat!
#5 Adaptive Quizzing
Adaptive quizzing involves updating quiz questions while the student is answering the quiz. So, based on the responses a student provides or their accuracy, the next question is chosen. For example, say the student answers the first three questions correctly, then using adaptive quizzing, you could increase the difficulty level of the next question which is displayed.
Now, this might seem like a far fetched thought, but a WordPress plugin Chained Quiz, and Moodle provide such a functionality.
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Further Reading on ‘LearnDash Quiz Customization’ |
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What Feature Would You Like to See?
The quizzing feature ideas for LearnDash that I’ve suggested as based on several client requests, and LearnDash quiz customization projects we’ve handled.
But your requirements might differ.
So, I’d like to hear your thoughts. What features would you like to see in the LearnDash Quiz Module? Do you think LearnDash needs to include any of the above features in its core?
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Need a Customized Quizzing Module for your LearnDash LMS??
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6 Responses
For me working in a university we would love the essay question built into learndash, and I know Justin is working on this. But we would love to start seeing drag and drop quizzing and dare a say crosswords and wordsearch. Something that’s fun and moves to a gamification system
Jon,
The essay or multiline answer is what most LearnDash users were looking for. As you mentioned, Justin did work on it, and essay answers are now a part of LearnDash Question Types. What’s missing is sufficient hooks in the code to help developers like us build seamless add-ons to add quiz question types and extend the quiz functionality as a whole.
There are 2 things which really lack in Learndash LMS
1. Negative Marking for quiz questions [For eg: 1 mark for correct answer and .25 for wrong answer] as in case of competitive exams in india
2. No Quiz review of completed tests for students.Whats the use of quiz plugin if it cannot save completed quiz history like correct questions and answers and display to students in a proper format instead of excel .If a student needs to review his completed tests questions and answers 1 or 2 days before exam ,he cannot because that is missing in learndash.Instead of instructors mailing the students the reports of results in excel format ,there should be provision in Learndash that student should be able to review their completed test history like other LMS
3. There should be provision of rendering of different quiz templates like CAT exam template,IBPS exam Template,Gate exam template for quiz module so that the students will have hands on experience in real time environment.
Learndash should build their own quiz plugin and not take Quiz Pro Plugin as base which is free of cost and mostly not going to be updated in future
Well all this things will not get implemented mostly as learndash has mostly foreign clients but i think as WisdmLabs is indian company ,you may think of creating addons so that it may help indian educational institutions
Pranav, you’ve made good points here. It’s true LearnDash does need to build it’s own quiz module, and it is actually on the plugin’s road map. But as you can imagine, due to the existing user base, it must be difficult to build a solution that will seamlessly port existing quizzes to a new module.
Conditional questions. If the user answers a to question 1, the next question is Question 4. If the user answer b to question one, the next question is 2, etc.
I’d love to see suggestions on which modules to study based on the quiz result