Teacher

How do I set up passages for assessments and practice questions?

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Passage is listed in the question type dropdown, but it is not an interactive question template. You can use it to create and provide a Passage of text, and ask students to refer to it in order to answer other questions in the assessment. You can provide a single Passage for an entire activity and/or assign a Passage to specific questions.

Passages can be added to assessments and practice question activities.

  1. Add the Assessment or Practice Questions activity.
  2. Add a passage to the activity from the question type dropdown.
  3. Follow the directions, below.

Assign the passage to questions

Although, you can simply add a Passage to appear on its own in an Assessment or Practice question activity, the most common way to use passages is to assign them to appear in combination with one or more questions.

You can easily assign a passage to one or more questions:

  1. Create the passage and define how you want it to appear.
  2. In the questions you want the Passage assigned to, open the Include passage dropdown in Activity editor > Questions tab > Interaction card and select the passage you created.  
  3. Save.
Assigning passages to questions

Passage content

Enter the desired Passage in the field provided. Use the rich text editor to attach media (images, audio (mp3), video (flv)), insert equations, create tables, etc.

This section pictures and explains the default visual editor; enable the Text editor to create and edit the Passage with the advanced Text editor

Interaction

In the Interaction card you can :

  • Check the Maintain question order box which displays all questions assigned to this Passage in the order you put them in the activity.
  • Check the Include all passage questions when linking passage to ensure that when this passage is pulled from a question pool all questions attached to it are also used.
  • Check the Display questions to the right box for side-by-side display (more details, below).
  • Check the Display one passage question at a time box to show each question on their own with the Passage (more details, below).
  • Provide a Custom question definition.

Define how the passage appears

1. Side-by-side, single-question passages

If you check both the Display questions to the right and Display one passage question at a time boxes, you must assign the passage to more than one question.

 

With these settings:

  1. The Passage appears to the left of each of the assigned questions.
  2. Buzz displays each question individually.
  3. Numbered navigation buttons are provided underneath the question to allow students to move through all of the questions associated with the Passage.

2. Single-question passage appears above multiple questions

If you check the Display one passage question at a time box without the Display questions to the right, you must assign the passage to more than one question.

With these settings:

  1. The Passage appears above each of the assigned questions.
  2. Buzz displays each question individually.
  3. Numbered navigation buttons are provided underneath to allow students to move through all of the questions associated with the Passage.

3. Side-by-side passage appears next to the question

If you check the Display questions to the right box without the Display one passage question at a time box, you must assign the passage to one or more question(s).

With these settings, the Passage appears to the left of the question(s).

4. Passage appears where you place it

The Passage appears wherever you place it in the question list if the following conditions are met:  

In this example, the Passage has been placed as the first question and can be used for the full assessment or practice questions activity.

Passage display options

Metadata

Add the question to an existing Group with the associated ID, or create a new one. Groups allow you to vary settings for different questions.

Learn more: How do I vary attempt limits by question?

Objective mastery

Click Choose objective in the Objective mastery card to review and align the question with objective(s). Once you've clicked it, you can:

  1. Use the Filter field to search for specific objectives.
  2. Check the boxes next to objectives to align them with the question. This makes it possible to set up Formative and Remediation assessments.
Objectives

Variables

With the Variables section you can create a range or list of variables for use in the question.  

Variables

Calculator

Check the appropriate box(es) to provide students with one or more of the following calculators to use with this question (Basic, Standard, and/or Scientific). This can also be specified for the entire activity with the Assessment activity editor.

Protractor

Make a protractor available to students while they complete this question. This can also be specified for the entire activity with the Assessment activity editor.

Ruler

Make one or more rulers (6 inch, 12 inch, 15 centimeter, 30 centimeter) available to students while they complete this question. This can also be specified for the entire activity with the Assessment activity editor.

Companion Material

Click Add material in Companion Material to attach any supplemental documents students need to complete this question. You can do this by:

  1. Pointing to existing resources in the course.
  2. Uploading new files (PDFs only).
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