Adding questions and scoring to a course

Questions are components like any other, so they are dragged into a module in the same way as a heading or an image. What makes them different is that they carry points, and points are what a pass mark is measured against.

Adding a question

The builder needs a screen at least 1280 pixels wide. Narrower than that it refuses to open, showing Screen too small and a link back to the course list, so this is desktop work rather than something to do on a tablet.

1. Open the course builder with Edit course.
2. Find the question you want under Assessments in the component list on the left. The six scored kinds are Single choice, Multiple choice, Ordering, Open text, True / False and Drag to match, and a seventh component, Practice scenario, sits with them. A Search components box sits above the list.
3. Drag it into the module and drop it where you want it.
4. Click it to fill in the question and its answers.
5. Set Points against the answers that earn them.

Points sit on the answers rather than on the question, so a question can be worth more or less depending on which answer somebody picks.

Setting the pass mark

1. Open Course settings from the cog at the top of the builder.
2. Switch on Do you want to set passing a pass mark?
3. Enter the Pass mark.

The pass mark is a percentage of everything available, worked out as the points somebody earned against the total the course could award.

You cannot set one until the course has questions in it, and the setting says so.

Choosing when answers are submitted

Assessment submission mode decides whether somebody answers as they go or all at once at the end.

Mode	What the learner gets
Submit each question	They submit each question and see the answer before moving on
Submit at end	They answer everything first and submit the lot together

Choose deliberately, because it changes what a learner can learn from. Submitting each question tells them whether they were right while the question is still in front of them; submitting at the end does not.

Screenshot missingcourse-pass-mark

The Course settings drawer on the tab holding assessment settings, with "Do you want to set passing a pass mark?" switched on, a Pass mark of 80 entered, and the Assessment submission mode control visible showing both options.

Expected at src/assets/screenshots/guides/add-questions-and-scoring-to-a-course/course-pass-mark.png

What stops you publishing

A course with questions must have both a pass mark and a submission mode before it will publish, and a course with no questions must not carry a pass mark.

Assessments cannot be switched off on a course that is already published. Move it back to draft first.

How a result is decided

Learnient works down a short list. A course with no questions, or no points available, is completed rather than passed or failed. A course with questions but no pass mark is completed too.

Where there is a pass mark, reaching it is a pass and missing it is a fail.

Open text is the exception worth knowing. If somebody’s answer has not been marked yet and marking it could still change the outcome, the attempt is recorded as completed rather than failed, so nobody is failed by a question a person has not read yet.

For how many goes somebody gets, and how a SCORM course decides this instead, see How attempts and passing work.