Many colleagues that I have spoken with say that they are still not ready to introduce online quizzes in their courses. They mention a number of reasons including student honesty, technology limitations, student readiness, and even the time it takes to create an online quiz. Even though in the beginning these factors were major hindrances to using quizzes confidently, the issues are lessening and the power of the quiz tool makes it a very attractive addition to the course content offered in a Blackboard course.

Even though it is true that there will be problems now and again with students using the quiz tool, one should rest assured that more often than not, the problems reported can either be circumvented with prior student training on how to use the tool properly, clear directions on what is expected and how to proceed, or possibly dismissed as a “hiccup” in the system.

Creating quizzes is now easier than ever, especially when using a 3rd party product such as ExamViewer or Respondus. Both of these tools allow you to create quizzes “off-line” and then export the quiz where it can then be imported in to a Blackboard course without the instructor having to worry about the formatting options needed to create questions for quizzes directly within Blackboard products.

In terms of cheating, I provided several ways to alleviate having to worry about students cheating on online quizzes in a previous blog post entited “Quizzes in an Online Environment – What to be Mindful of”. In this post, I give several different methods for how to design quizzes to cut back on cheating. Be sure to also check some of the user submitted comments on that post as they provided some additional, excellent suggestions to curb cheating.

Comfort Level
All this being said, if you have not yet used a quiz in your online component to your course, now is the best time to start. If you do, start small and if you are not yet comfortable, create and offer your students a quiz that does not count for a grade. Perhaps you could create an online survey or follow-up questions to a lecture to serve as a review for an exam. Start with anything you want where you can get comfortable with using the environment and students who may not have taken a quiz in this nature can do so without the added pressure of being assessed (graded).

Another thing to consider, even when starting small is to be sure your students are ready and set up for success. Dr. C Kate Britt has a number of student success factors noted in her blog post, “Set your students up for Success”, including how to prepare their browsers to access the quiz tool.

For me, the comfort level in using online quizzes in Blackboard came with experience. The more I used the tool, the more I alleviated fears that even I had about offering online quizzes for a grade, and the more I felt that students could be trusted in taking online quizzes without cheating. I now use the quiz tool regularly in both online and traditional courses for quizzes, exams, surveys, and even to provide informational practice questions.