How to create a new test in ELF
Detailed help on ELF tests can be found in the user documentation. However, if you’re new to tests and don’t want to familiarize yourself with all of their options, you can follow this concise guide that covers the most common and important settings. You’ll learn how to create a final test that is set up to make cheating more difficult.
Test tasks can be organized in ELF by category. Learn how to create and manage categories in this tutorial.
If you don’t have a course in ELF yet, you can ask for one to be set up.
Create test tasks
We recommend creating test tasks in the task bank and then adding them to the tests. This way you can use one task in multiple tests, and you can also organize the tasks in the task bank more clearly.
1
In the left Administration block, select Task Bank.
Continue by clicking on Create new test task.
2
Select the type of task you want to create and confirm with the Add button.
In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to create a multiple-choice task and a short gap-fill task. However, the procedure for creating other types of task is similar, and is also described in detail in the user documentation.
2a
Multiple-choice tasks
Fill in the task title and the text of the task (assignment) into the appropriate fields (for your reference only: it’s not displayed to students).
Set the item one or multiple answers depending on whether students are asked to select only one correct answer or multiple answers. If you check the Shuffle Answers item, students will always see the possible answers in random order.
Enter each option in the form in the Answers section. For each possible answer, a grade is needed, i.e. how many percent of the possible points students will receive when choosing that answer. For a question with one correct answer, set the grade for the correct answer to 100%; for questions requiring multiple correct answers to be ticked, the sum of the grades for all the correct answers must add up to 100% (e.g. in the picture on the right, the first and third answers are correct).
Please note: For questions requiring multiple correct answers, don’t forget to set a negative grade for incorrect answers. Otherwise, students would receive full marks even if all the possible answers are ticked.
2b
Formed short answer
For a standard gap-fill question, fill in the task title and the assignment similarly to 2a. Place the expected answers in the appropriate fields in the answer section, and set a grade for each (multiple answers can be graded at 100%).
For effective automatic evaluation of the answers, fill in the different options that students can enter as answers (e.g. different grammatical variants). You can also use a substitute the character (*) to represent any other character or series of characters in the answer. For more information on using substitute characters, see the user documentation.
Add a new test to your course
The amount of settings available for tests can be intimidating. However, for normal end-of-semester and interim tests, most of the options can be left at their default settings.
If you need to set up a test for individual test dates, create a new test using this guide and then modify the settings according to this procedure.
3
In your course, turn on the edit mode and click add activity or study material in the desired section.
From the options that appear, select Test.
4
Fill in the name of the test.
5
In the timing section, select the checkboxes for the items Make Test Available and Close Test. Set when students will be able to start the test when they will finish.
Next, check the box next to Time Limit and set how much time students will have to complete the test.
6
In the grade section, set the required grade that students must receive to pass the test.
For the number of attempts allowed, set whether and how many times students will be allowed to retake the test.
TIP: If you want students to have multiple attempts, but not be able to start the next attempt immediately after the previous one, click on Advanced Settings in the Additional Attempt Restrictions section and set the necessary values for the delay between the first and second attempts, and the delay between subsequent attempts.
7
Confirm with the Save and View button at the end of the form.
Add tasks to the test
In the last step, you need to fill the test with the tasks you have created in the task bank. You can add specific tasks or let ELF select tasks randomly for the test - both options can also be flexibly combined. Randomly selecting tasks makes cheating more difficult, but may result in different versions of the test not being comparable in content and/or difficulty.
To create randomly generated but still balanced tests, we recommend:
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Dividing the questions in the task bank into categories;
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Creating sub-categories within categories, where appropriate (i.e. thematic categories containing sub-categories with questions of different types or difficulty levels);
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Letting the tests choose random tasks from these (sub)categories.
8
In the Administration section, select Edit Test.
To add a task to the test, click on Add.
9a
To add specific tasks to the test, click on Add and select an existing task from the task bank. Select the task you want to add to the test (you can select multiple tasks at once) and confirm by clicking on Add Selected Tasks to test.
9b
To add random tasks, click on Add and select a Random Task from the task bank. From the drop-down menu at the top, select the category from which the tasks are to be selected and the number of tasks to be added to the test. Confirm by clicking on Add Random Task button.
10
Enter the maximum grade (number of points) students can receive for the test in the item highest grade. If you want a certain question to contribute more to the final score, adjust the grade for that question to a higher value.
The highest grade for the whole test does not have to be equal to the sum of the grades for the individual tasks, ELF will automatically calculate how much each task should contribute to the final grade.
11
You can preview the created test yourself using the Preview option in the Administration block.
