Build and publish an Assessment

An Assessment is the evaluative instrument learners take. You create it in the Assessments tab, assemble your item-bank items into its structure, place it in an activity Learning Unit, and publish it — the step that makes it available to learners.

Before you start

• You have at least one activity Unit in the Structure tab (see Build a Learning Unit tree).
• If the Assessment will ask questions, you have items in the bank (see Author Assessment items).
• You need manage access for the Offering.

Create the Assessment

1. Open the Offering and select the Assessments tab.

2. In the Create assessment card, enter a Title.

3. Choose a Type — the pedagogical purpose:

   • Diagnostic — placement or pre-assessment, taken to inform what comes next.
   • Formative — low-stakes practice and checks for understanding.
   • Summative — higher-stakes, graded evaluation.

4. Set Max score and Max attempts as needed. Leave Max attempts empty for unlimited attempts.

5. In the Parent unit field, choose the activity Learning Unit where this Assessment should appear. (The field lists your activity Units; you can also set this later.)

6. Choose a Delivery profile:

   • Offline-complete — grades instantly on the learner’s device and never blocks. The default.
   • Server-anchored — a secure test: graded on the server, and it requires a connection.

7. Select Create assessment. It appears in the list below as a Draft, with badges for its type, state, and version.

Assemble the test structure

Expand the Assessment in the list to edit it. The Test structure editor is where you assemble the questions:

1. Select Add part to create the first part of the test.

2. Inside a part, add a section, then use Add items to pull in items from this Offering’s published item bank.

3. Reorder and nest nodes with the move, indent, and outdent controls, or by dragging.

4. Select any part, section, or item to open its settings on the right — for example the Navigation mode (linear or non-linear), Submission mode, time limits, or how many items to draw from a section.

Note

A free-form hand-in is just an Assessment over an upload or extended-response item — there is no separate “assignment” type. Build it the same way: add the item, set the Assessment to score manually, and grade the hand-in later in the gradebook.

Publish it to your learners

A Draft Assessment is never visible to learners. Publishing changes that.

1. Confirm the Parent unit points at the activity Unit where learners should find the Assessment, and select Save changes.

2. Select Publish.

Once published, the Assessment is deliverable: every learner on the Offering’s roster who works through that activity Unit can take it. There is no per-learner targeting — placement plus publishing is how an Assessment reaches your learners.

Caution

Publishing freezes the test structure and scoring: a banner confirms this. After publishing you can still change the title, the placement, and the attempt limit, but not the questions or scoring. To change those, build a new version. When an Assessment is finished, Retire it — it stops accepting new attempts but keeps its history.

What you end up with

A published Assessment sitting in an activity Unit, available to your learners. As they respond, their scores flow into the gradebook.