Before You Begin

❗ Is this your first time creating an Advanced Assessment? If so, you'll want to check out our Beginners Guide to Advanced Assessments if you haven't already. Advanced Assessments are our most powerful and intricate assessment tool, and it will be helpful to know the basics before you begin to create one! Once you've taken a look at that guide, come on back here and get started!

Beginners Guide to Advanced Assessments

Advanced Assessments are our most powerful assessment type, with over 60 available questions and the ability to have multiple questions presented at once. Items and questions are the building blocks of Advanced Assessments, while features are the "extras" you can add (like audio players and calculators). Once you have created your Advanced Assessment shell, it's time to begin creating items!

Example Advanced Assessment Item:

The basic idea:

Items are the containers that hold your questions.
Items can have multiple questions and/or features in them.

➡️ For more detailed information regarding the difference between items, questions, and features, click here.

Create and Title the Item

Step 1: Select the blue Create button.

Step 2: Give the item a title. This will be the name that shows in your list of My Items.

💡 Tip from the Otus Team: it is helpful to establish a naming convention for your items, so you can easily identify them. For example, Subject_Unit_Question# is a common naming convention.

Adding Questions and Features

Many times, an item only contains one question. In the case that you want multiple questions related to the same topic, you can add any number of questions and features to the same item.

💡 Tip from the Otus Team: Are you linking standards to your items? If so, please note that you are not able to attach different standards to individual questions. The standard(s) you attach to the item will apply to ALL questions in the item. If you have questions that don't relate to the same standard(s), you will want to put them in different items.

Adding Questions

Step 1: After you've titled your item, select the + button to add a question.

Step 2: Choose from one of the categories of questions available on the left. Then choose the specific question type you'd like to add.

➡️ You can find detailed information on creating each question type here.

Step 3: Create your question (example shown is Multiple Choice) and determine the scoring methods. Information on how to set up the scoring for your question can be found in the article written specifically for that question type. A list of those articles can be found here.

Step 3.5: We recommend saving your work as often as possible, especially if you are working on a detailed item. Now would be a good time to select Save! The first time you hit save, you will be taken back to your My Items list; that's ok! Just click on the item again to keep working.

Step 4: Link standards to the question by select Link Standards (optional). Please note that you are not able to attach different standards to individual questions. The standard(s) you attach to the item will apply to ALL questions in the item. If you have questions that don't relate to the same standard(s), you will want to put them in different items.

Step 5: Add additional questions or features (see below) as needed.
Step 6: Preview your item. Selecting Preview will allow you to see the item as the students will see it. It also allows you to answer the question to verify the scoring has been set up correctly.

Step 7: Save your item.

❗ IMPORTANT NOTE

Please make sure that all of your questions have correct answers set (except for open-ended questions). This is especially important if you have more than one question in an item. If you fail to identify a correct answer for one of your questions, it will cause scoring issues for all questions in that item. It is extremely important that you confirm that any question to be auto-scored has a correct answer!

Adding Features

What are features?

Features are used to enhance your assessments; they can appear in Items alongside questions, or they can appear on their own. Features are created using the Question Editor, in the same way that Questions are created.

Step 1: Select the gray + symbol.

Step 2: Select the Features tab from the top-left corner.

Step 3: Select the feature you would like to add. The most popular features are the calculator, passage, and video player.

Step 4: Save your item.

➡️ You can find detailed information on the features available by clicking here.

Linking Standards

While in your item, select Link Standards. Choose the standard(s) you'd like to add.

❗ Keep in mind the standard(s) you attach to the item will apply to ALL questions in the item. If you have questions that don't relate to the same standard(s), you will want to put them in different items.

➡️ For more information on standards in Advanced Assessments, click here.

Item Layouts

Items can have a single column or two-column layout. These can be found in the Settings option when building your item.

You can also use "tabs", which allows for pagination of the content within the item (see Example 3 below)
Vertical dividers are also an option.

Take a look at the examples of various layouts below:

Example 1

Columns: 30 | 70 Tabs: No Divider: Yes

Questions Used: Multiple Choice, Cloze with Drag and Drop
Features Used: None

Example 2

Columns: 60 | 40 Tabs: No Divider: No

Questions Used: Label Image with Drag and Drop, Multiple Choice, Essay with Plain Text
Features Used: None

Example 3

Columns: 50 | 50 Tabs: Yes Divider: No

Questions Used: Choice Matrix (Tab 1) and Matching (Tab 2)
Features Used: Passage

➡️ For more information on item layouts, click here.

Item Scoring

Each question in an item has its own scoring method, meaning, you can determine the scoring for each individual question in the item while you are building the question. For questions on how to set up the scoring for each question, check out the article written for that specific question. You can find a list of those articles here.

In addition to individual question scoring, you can also determine how the item is scored as a whole. For more information, check out this resource.

Auto-Score Settings:

This section only applies to advanced assessments that utilize Standards Based Grading Scales (Non-Points). With this feature, you have the ability to set the default score a student receives for auto-graded questions. Adjusting auto-scoring settings will take place on the Assigning page.

This feature is assessment wide, not per individual question. This means that the level selected for Correct Answer and Incorrect Answer will be applied to all questions within the assessment.
A question is considered "correct" if ALL portions of the individual question are correct. Mid-level scale labels will not apply to partial correct answers. Questions are considered fully Correct or Incorrect.

➡️ Example: If partial credit is being applied and a student gets 3 out of 5 parts correct, they will be given the status of "Incorrect Answer".

❗ If you edit this setting after the assessment has been assigned, you will receive a message explaining that this only applies to future scores, not scores already collected.