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Creating Quizzes with Respondus 4.0

Respondus is a powerful application for creating and managing exams that can be printed to paper or published directly to Blackboard. To download Respondus 4.0, login to Blackboard; under the Teach Tab locate VCCS Faculty/Staff Instructional Software. Click on New Installation Password or Download/Install to find the Installation Information.

Creating a Quiz

1. Under the Current Personality, choose Blackboard 7.x – 9.x.

2. Click Create to create a new Respondus file. 3. A pop-up window appears to let you input the name of the file and description. You need to decide this file should be an exam or a survey.

3. Choose the question type on the left menu bar. In this tutorial we choose Multiple Choice and then fill in the Title of Question. Type questions in the Question Wording text box. Provide questions in the Answers text box. You need to provide the correct answer from the Select Correct Answer drop down list and identify the Point Value.

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4. You can add feedback using the General Feedback or select the check box next to Feedback to provide specific feedback for each answer.

5. Click Preview so the question will appear in a pop-up window exactly as it will appear in Blackboard.

6. Add this question at the end of the list or insert it into list. 7. This question will appear in the Question List.

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8. Click True and False button on the left menu bar to add a true and false question. Fill in the necessary information and click on Add to End of List button.

9. Click Essay/Short Answer button on the left menu bar to add an essay/short answer question. Fill in the necessary information and click on Add to End of List button. Note: The grading method for essay/short answer question is automatically set as Manual.

10. Click Matching button on the left menu bar to add a matching question. 11. Items in the right column can be placed in any order and the correct answer for the match should be indicated in the small column located at the far left.

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12. Click the Preview button to see how it appears in Blackboard. Note: All answer choices are equally weighted and scored proportional to the number correct. So if a student matches 8 of 10 items correctly, the score will be 80% for that question.

13. Fill in the necessary information and click on Add to End of List button to add this question to the end of the question list. 14. Click Ordering button on the left menu bar to add an ordering question. Enter choices in the correct order and enter the display order as numbers in the left column.

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15. Click the Preview button to see how it appears in Blackboard. And then click on Add to End of List button to add this question to the end of the question list.

16. Click Fill in the Blank button on the left menu bar to add a fill in the blank question. Since a computer automatically grades the answer, students must give an answer that exactly matches one of the answers provided by the instructor. You are permitted to enter multiple forms of the correct answer.

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17. Click the Preview button to see how it appears in Blackboard. And then click on Add to End of List button to add this question to the end of the question list.

18. Click Multiple Answers button on the left menu bar to add a multiple answers question. Enter the answer in the text box and in the left column, type the letter “X” for correct answers.

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19. Click the Preview button to see how it appears in Blackboard. And then click on Add to End of List button to add this question to the end of the question list.

Exam Settings in Respondus

From the Settings menu, you can select the settings to be used when the exam is published to Blackboard. The design of the Settings task in Respondus is nearly identical to that used by Blackboard.

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You can identify the settings of an exam in Respondus or you can set up or modify the settings after you published this exam to Blackboard: Go to Control Panel > Content Area where you insert your quizzes or exams, such as Assignments > click Modify next to the title of the Quiz or exam > click Modify the Test Options.

Importing Questions from a Text File

Respondus allows you to import multiple choice, true-false, essay, fill in the blank, matching, and multiple answer questions from a file. The questions must be organized in a Format that is acceptable to Respondus and the file must be stored in one of the following formats: plain text (.txt), rich-text (.rtf), MS Word (.doc) or tab/comma delimited (.csv) format.

1. Select the type of file that will be imported and use Browse button to select the file to be imported. Images embedded in MS Word files will be imported automatically. Note: Click on Help in the Import Question window to view the instructions about how to format a question that is acceptable to Respondus.

2. Specify whether the questions should be appended to the currently open file or whether to create an entirely new file. If you select the second option you will need to enter the name of the file to be created and indicate whether the file should be an Exam or Survey. Each question being imported will have a "title". If you don’t specify a title for each question in the text file itself, Respondus will automatically use the first 20 characters of the question wording as the question title.

3. Click the Preview button to preview the file being imported and to see if there are any warning messages. If warning messages are shown at the bottom of the screen, you need to determine whether to make changes to the text file or whether to continue with the import.

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4. Click Finish to complete the import. 5. Go to File > Open and a list of Respondus files appears. You can find the exam you just created on the list. Highlight the exam and information related to this exam shows up in the window on the right. Click Open to open the file in Respondus.

Publishing an Exam to the Blackboard Server

The Publish to Blackboard wizard is available from the Preview & Publish menu. It guides users through the steps of publishing an exam to the Blackboard server. You must already have a Blackboard account and password in order to use this task.

1. Go to File > Open > Select a File > Click Open. 2. In the Respondus top menu, select Preview & Publish and then click Publish to Blackboard to open the Publish Wizard. 3. In the Publish Wizard, choose Publish to single course and then choose Add new

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server to add settings information for a new server.

And select No to enter the server settings manually.

4. Go to the Login page for Blackboard and copy and paste the address into the Blackboard Server and Course window.

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5. Go to a course you have instructor right to, then copy and paste the address into the Blackboard Server and Course window.

6. Press Extract so that information will be automatically extracted and appear in the form. You need to enter your own information in the last fields manually. Enter your Blackboard user name and password. When you are finished, click OK.

7. Once you click OK, you will be back to the Publish Wizard and information about the server appears. You can click Edit Setting to modify information about the server or click Next to continue.

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8. In the following window, you need to choose the course to publish and determine if this will be a new exam or an exam to replace an existing one. You can also choose to Apply Random Blocks to Exam, Apply Setting to Exam, and Link Exam to Content Area and Make Available. If you choose Link Exam to Content Area and Make Available, the next step in the Publish Wizard is to choose the Content Area to which the exam will be linked. If you did not choose this option, the test should show up in your course under Control Panel > Assessment > Test Manager.

9. Click Next and then click on the area or folder to which to link, and press Next to continue.

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10. A status window shows up. It will tell you if the exam updates to your course successfully. Click Finish to complete the Publish Wizard.

11. Go to your course. The exam should show up under the folder to which you just linked. In this tutorial, the exam should be visible in the Assignments section under the Control Panel. Click on the Assignment Button in the left menu bar to see if the exam shows up there.

12. If it did not show up under the Assignments button in you left menu bar, you need to make the exam available. To make the exam available to students, click Modify > Modify the Test Option > Make the link available.

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13. In the window Test Options, you can also change the settings of this exam, such as modify the description of this exam, set up timer to complete the exam, choose the feedback mode, select test presentation mode. Then click Submit.

Print a test from Respondus:

Respondus allows you to format and print exams/surveys directly from the software. It is also

possible to save an exam to MS Word format for further enhancement and printing. To begin,

go to the Preview and Publish menu in Respondus and select the Print Options tab.

The screen now displays the printing options available in Respondus. There are three

formatting templates from which to select: Exam, Exam with Answer Key, Answer Key Only.

Once a template is selected, you can further modify it by clicking the Settings button to its right.

If the exam being printed has matching questions, be sure to select the checkbox labeled

"Matching, randomize answers" if you want the second set of answers to be randomized. Also,

if you have sequential questions that refer to the same image or graphic, you will likely want to

select the “Suppress Repeated Images” button so that the image is not repeated with each

question.

Click the [Edit Headers] button to enter the information you want to appear at the top of each

page. Different information can be entered for the second and subsequent pages too. The

header information might look something as follows:

The next section allows up to 10 variations of the exam to be generated. You have the ability to

“randomize all” questions in the exam or to have the questions randomized according to

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question type (i.e., all the multiple choice questions are randomized within a group, all the

essay questions are randomized within a second group, and so forth). If Calculated questions

are contained in the file, each Exam Variation will have a unique set of variables for the

Calculated questions. If you don’t want multiple exam variations, simply retain the “Original

Order” option from the pull-down list. (Note: As long as the questions in the exam file remain

unchanged, a particular “Exam Variation” will have the same question order each time it is

printed or saved to MS Word format. However, if you add or insert new questions, the Exam

Variation will differ the next time you print/save an exam or answer key.)

It is also possible to specify a range of questions to be included in the exam. If both fields are

left blank, all questions will be included.

At the bottom of the screen there are three options: Print Preview, Save to File, and Send to

Printer. The Print Preview button allows you to preview the contents of the file in a pop-up

window. We recommend that you use this option before printing the exam/survey or saving

the contents to a file--it is a quick way to identify mistakes. The Save to File option allows the

creation of a MS Word file (.doc), a “rich text file” (.rtf), or a standard text file (.txt). The MS

Word and .rtf formats will retain enhanced formatting such as bold, italics, and underlining,

whereas the .txt format will strip such information. Once a file is saved, it can be opened with a

word processor for further formatting and modification. Finally, the Send to Printer option

permits you to print directly from Respondus. This task works similar to the printing function in

other Windows programs.

Retrieving an Exam or Question Pool from Blackboard

Respondus allows the retrieval of exams, surveys, and question pools from a Blackboard course.

To begin, go to the Retrieval and Reports menu in Respondus and select Retrieve Questions. The

first couple of steps to retrieving an exam or pool are identical to those used for publishing one

to Blackboard (see the earlier discussion for a detailed explanation). First, select the Blackboard

course. Second, select the appropriate button for retrieving an exam, survey or pool.” Third,

select the specific file you want to retrieve from the pull-down list. Finally, enter a name for the

new Respondus file you are creating.

Once all selections have been made, click the [Retrieve] button. The retrieval process will take

between 15 seconds and several minutes, depending on several factors: the speed of your

connection, the load on the server, the size of the multimedia elements that are being

retrieved, and so forth. You will know that the retrieval is successful by the statement

“Successfully completed” that appears in the status box.

When a file is being retrieved, Respondus will detect if multimedia objects are associated with it

and will automatically download these objects if they are stored with your Blackboard course.

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(Respondus does NOT attempt to download multimedia elements if they are stored on a

different server.) If multimedia objects are retrieved with a file, Respondus will automatically

update the HTML links in questions that point to these objects. This makes the multimedia

elements work properly when the file is published again to Blackboard.