Exams: Adding Randomly Selected Questions

INSERTING RANDOMLY SELECTED QUESTIONS IN EXAMS

Overview: This feature enables you to include in your exam questions which will be selected randomly from a group of questions you select.  

IMPORTANT WARNING!!!!

In cases of mandatory and/or regulated workplace training, you may be required to ensure all employees are trained and assessed to the same standard. If your employees have different exams (due to using the Random Question feature), you may be found negligent in ensuring consistent training and/or examinations by a regulatory body, auditor, or court of law, thus rendering your training non-sufficient. Before using the Random Questions feature in your exam(s), ENSURE it complies with your local regulations and/or industry standards! The providers of this software will not be liable for your organization's use of this feature.

CREATING QUESTIONS FOR USE IN THIS FEATURE

IMPORTANT: To create an acceptable workplace training exam, ask at least one question about each ‘Learning Point’.  Having the whole exam consist of randomly selected questions from the question bank (or an entire Category of questions) would likely miss addressing important learning points for the student.

So, if for example you would like Question #3 to be about Tire Pressure, you go into the Question Bank and make at least 2 questions on the Tire Pressure ‘learning point' you want to ensure the Student Knows.  Then, when you insert a Random Question, you find the questions on this Learning Point and select two or more of those for the computer to select from.  

THIS GREATLY INCREASES YOUR WORK LOAD when creating exams as you not only have to write several questions on each learning point, but each question must be properly categorized and/or set with proper Keywords.

Example, you want to ensure the Student knows that tires must be inflated to 60 psi as measured when tire is cold.  So you would create several questions like:

Which is the correct tire pressure?

a. 60 psi, measured when tire is warm from recent use.

b. 100 psi, measured when tire is cold / not recently used.

c. 60 psi, measured when tire is cold / not recently used.

d. 50 psi, measured when tire is either cold or hot.

How do you ensure the tire is properly inflated?

a. If tire is cold, measure pressure and inflate to 60 psi

b. If tire is warm, measure pressure and inflate to 60 psi

c. Taxi the aircraft for several minutes to warm up the tires, then inflate to 50 psi

d. Measure when tires are hot from recent landing, and deduct 10 psi off the pressure reading.

When an aircraft has just landed and taxied to the ramp, and you want to check the tire pressure:

a. Check the pressure immediately and ensure it is 60 psi

b. Wait at least 15 minutes for tire to return to ‘cold’ state, then ensure it is inflated to 60 psi.

c. Immediately measure tire pressure, then take off 10 lbs from the reading to determine the cold pressure.

d. Check pressure after aircraft parked for 15 minutes, then adjust pressure to 50 psi.

… and so on.

For EACH of these questions you ALSO need to set a Category (i.e.: “Tire Pressure”) and/or Keywords (i.e.: pressure, tire, 60 psi, inflate, cold) which clearly identify the Learning Point you want to ensure the student knows (in this case, they need to inflate to 60 psi when tire is cold).

Now that you have several questions about that key learning point, you can add a Random Question to your exam.

ADDING RANDOM QUESTIONS TO EXAMS:

In TRAINING DEVELOPER role, when editing an EXAM, when you click [+] to add a new question, you now have the option of question type “Random From Question Bank”.  This opens a Question Bank Browser window where you can either select a category of question (in this example, “Tire Pressure”) or search for keywords. You will be shown a list of all those questions that meet your criteria. You can then check the check boxes ON for those questions from which you want the system to select from to give one of them to the Student as Question #3.

Everything else is pretty straightforward and same as adding other question types into an exam.  

A FEW NOTES:

1. In Training Developer role, in the exam Edit mode, you will see the exam question as “Random Question” and, indented, will be ALL the questions you selected to choose from for that question.
2. In Training Developer role, in Editor PREVIEW, to see it exactly as the Student does, you will see that question shown as one of the Random Questions you selected - just like the Student will see.  
3. In REGISTRAR role, when you preview the module, the Exam is in Key Mode, so you will see ALL the pick-from questions as you do in the Edit mode in Training Developer.
4. If a Student fails the exam and has to Re-Take it, those Random Questions will once again be selected at random (NOT the same question again, unless it just happens to be randomly selected).
5. Graphical “HotSpot” image questions are NOT available as Random Questions.
6. Random Question feature is NOT available for REVIEW questions.
7. Any "Random From Question Bank" questions directly use the questions from the Question Bank. This means that the questions that belong to the Random Question, are linked to the appropriate questions in the Question Bank. Editing and/or deleting these questions will affect the questions in the exam!
8. All random from question bank questions have a unique ID associated with it.

The example above shows there are 3 random questions associated with question one. So, if you retake the exam after not being successful, you'll likely have a different question for number one if you got it wrong.

Feel free to reach out to support@aerostudies.com if you encounter any issues when setting up random questions in your exam.