Using the Quiz Tool in Blackboard Vista

Student Handout

How do I get to the Quiz?

There are many places where you may find a quiz or assessment. The instructor or course designer may place a link to a quiz on any page, but often, you will find a link to get quizzes and tests in the Course Tools panel on the left. That link is called "Assessments":

Click on a quiz or test in the list in the main window. If an assessment is available, you will be able to click on it. Some details of availability will be shown.The next screen will show some more details and include a link to start the assessment:

Note that there is a link to help with troubleshooting. That link also gives some basic instructions for the mechanics of the Assessment Tool. If the the instructor has instructions specific to the quiz, they will be listed below the title, above the "Description" link. When you are ready to take the quiz (or assessment), click on "Begin Assessment."

The quiz questions are on the left. The status is on the right. As you answer the questions, be sure to click on "Save Answer" for each of them, or when finished, click on "Save All". As answers are saved, the status on the right will show a blue check mark for the quesion number in the place of the yellow circle. If the assessment has a time limit, the timer will run showing the time allowed and remaining. PLEASE NOTE that some computer systems do not run this timer properly and the time may be off significantly. If the limit is short, please use your own clock or watch to make sure to keep within that limit. When you are finished with the assessment, click on the "Finish" button, either at the top or bottom of the window. If you just close the window, the assessment will not be properly saved.

If the instructor allows multiple attempts, you can take the assessment more than once, within the time frame allowed. If you have taken it once and no more attempts are allowed, then you will see:

Was My Quiz Recorded? - How Can I Find Out?

Instructors use the Assessment tool to give tests, quizzes or sometimes as a place to turn in assignments. There are steps that need to be completed in order for the quiz or homework to be properly recorded and graded. Some quizzes are set to be automatically graded. Some include short answer or essay sections that need to be reviewed and graded individually by the instructor. In any case, the "quiz" needs to be properly saved, finished and submitted for grading. Sometimes the student fails to follow all these steps and sometimes the browser capabilities of a student's computer system fails to process the quiz properly. Because of these factors, it is important that students check a number of points in order to insure proper quiz and homework credit.

Please follow these points:

1. Do your work ahead of the deadline.
   Leaving your homework until the last hour shortens the time available to solve problems you may encounter. This is especially true when homework is due at midnight, since your instructor or computer support people usually do not answer questions at that hour. This is especially important for the first homework assignment or quiz of the semester.
2. Be sure your browser allows pop-up windows.
   Blackboard Vista uses pop-up windows to present quizzes and other course components. It also uses Javascript, cookies and other programming tools to function. Please make sure your browser allows these. For more details, click on "Check Browser" in the upper right area of the MyBlackboard or Blackboard Vista login page.
3. Follow ALL the steps.
   There are detailed instructions given at the start of each quiz. Please read them thoroughly before taking your first quiz and then refer back when you have questions or problems. Each question answered must be saved, as described above, then when you are finished, you must click on the Finish button. Then click OK to submit for grading if that option is presented. When you get into the quiz, the for page gives some instructions and includes a button that takes you to a page of further instructions and help with troubleshooting:
4. Check to see that the quiz was entered.
   This depends a lot on how your instructor designed the quiz and the course. You can view your grades from the "My Grades" and "Student Profile" links if provided. If a quiz does not show up there, then the quiz was either not received or the instructor has not graded it yet. To get full details or to review your answers and instructor comments, you will need to go back to the Assessments page where all course quizzes are listed. You should see a link by the quiz name (called an ActionLinks icon):
   
   which brings up the information about the quiz (assessment):
   
   

   In this example, the quiz has been completed, but some aspect of it requires the instructor to manually enter a grade (e.g. for a Paragraph question). Some questions are automatically graded, and if a quiz is completely automatically graded, it will be finished and released to the student, if the instructor has set the assessment to be released.

The most important thing is to communicate with your instructor. The instructor designs and maintains the course and is the only one (along with designated assistants) who can check on your work or fix any problems in the course structure.