Assessment engine frequently asked questions

Answers to the most common questions about Firmwater LMS, organized by category.

Assessments questions:

  1. What question types are supported?
  2. Can I embed multimedia in my questions?
  3. What happens if someone loses their internet connection in the middle of an assessment?
  4. Can people suspend tests and resume them at a later time?
  5. Can I restrict users from changing their answers to previous questions?
  6. What kind of feedback can be presented to the user?
  7. Can the questions and/or responses be displayed in a random order?
  8. Are question banks supported?
  9. Can I organize my questions by section? What about support for question pools?
  10. Are timed tests supported?
  11. Does the engine support adaptive testing?
  12. What is QTI? What level of conformance does the assessment engine support?

  1. What question types are supported?

    Firmwater LMS's integrated assessment engine supports all the standard question types:

    • multiple choice (single and multi-select)
    • fill-in-the-blank
    • ranking
    • free-form
    • likert scale

  2. Can I embed multimedia in my questions?

    Yes, you can embed multimedia (images, video, audio) in any question, response, or piece of feedback.

  3. What happens if someone loses their internet connection in the middle of an assessment?

    The assessment engine tracks status as the user pages from screen to screen. If someone loses their internet connection in the middle of an assessment, they are able to resume right where they left off.

  4. Can people suspend tests and resume them at a later time?

    Yes, the default setting of the assessment engine is to allow users to be able to suspend assessments. When they resume them at a later time, they continue from the screen they left off.

  5. Can I restrict users from changing their answers to previous questions?

    Yes, the assessment engine supports both sequential and random access navigation modes. Sequential mode only allows the user to move in a forward direction. Random access mode allows the user to move both forward and backward and also presents a menu to allow jumping to any screen.

  6. What kind of feedback can be presented to the user?

    Feedback can be generated at a number of levels in an assessment. You can define custom rules to specify what feedback is generated at the question level, section level, or assessment level.

    Feedback can be presented either immediately after answering a question, at the end of the assessment, or not at all. You can choose how much scoring information to display to the user once they have completed an assessment.

  7. Can the questions and/or responses be displayed in a random order?

    Yes, the assessment engine can randomize the order of the questions and/or responses so that each instance of a test is different (to discourage cheating).

  8. Are question banks supported?

    Yes, the assessment engine supports loading question banks. Assessments can then be constructed that draw questions from the question banks.

  9. Can I organize my questions by section? What about support for question pools?

    Yes, the assessment engine supports specifying any number of levels of sections. Sections allow the specification of custom selection rules to facilitate flexible question pool support.

  10. Are timed tests supported?

    The assessment engine supports specifying a permitted duration for an assessment and it tracks the duration a user spends at a number of different levels (questions, sections, assessment). However, we currently do not support displaying the elapsed time to the user and enforcing the permitted amount of time. This is a feature we plan on adding soon.

  11. Does the engine support adaptive testing?

    Adaptive testing involves selecting subsequent questions in an assessment in real-time based on how the user has answered previous questions. The assessment engine does not currently support this functionality.

  12. What is QTI? What level of conformance does the assessment engine support?

    IMS Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) specification from the IMS Global Learning Consortium describes a basic structure for the representation of question and test data and their corresponding results reports. It enables the exchange of this data between learning management systems, content authors, and content libraries and collections.

    The assessment engine natively supports QTI Version 1.2.1.

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