How do I most effectively check for Learner understanding?

What do you need to consider?

Before you decide which method to use to check your learners' understanding, make sure you can answer the following questions:

Do you need detailed reporting on learner responses?
Do you require a summative assessment to determine whether learners have passed a course?
Do you have capacity or resources to manually grade responses, or do you require all marking to be automated?
Are you trying to evaluate learner understanding at an endpoint (e.g. the end of a course)?
Are you wanting to include low-stakes questions or activities that allow learners to check their understanding midway through a Lesson or Course?

Once you've identified the purpose, you can determine which of the following tasks are the best fit.

Challenges

Challenges are perfect for breaking up the content with an informal, interactive activity to check learners' understanding of a specific concept or idea. A Challenge sits inside a Lesson. You can see our Drag and drop challenge in action below.

When to use a Challenge: Include a Challenge screen when you want to break up content with an interactive and engaging exercise, or give learners the opportunity to check they understand something immediately after they have read or watched some content. A Challenge presents the learner with an opportunity for skills and knowledge practice, and is not a test.

Pop quiz

Similarly to a Challenge, a Pop quiz also sits within a Lesson (see screenshot below) and acts as a formative assessment. You can present a series of questions, although they are low stakes; a grade is not recorded. Learners can retry the questions as many times as they wish without it affecting their grade for the course. Each time a learner attempts a question, they’re provided feedback on whether the answer is correct.

When to use a Pop quiz: The Pop quiz is perfect for ending a topic, theme, or concept within your course to reinforce what your learners have just viewed.

Quiz

Although the Quiz module looks almost identical to the Pop quiz (both offer the same question types), the Quiz module is a summative assessment. A Quiz is a separate module, and is graded. Learners will not receive feedback on their answers, but will receive a final grade at the end of the Quiz. You can access detailed reporting for each learner's attempt at a Quiz.

When to use a Quiz: Include a Quiz module in your course when you need to formally assess your learner’s performance. This might occur at the end of a course to test for comprehension of all learning content covered in your course. You can position one final quiz at the end of your course or after each Lesson to test on particular content.

Assignment

An Assignment is a separate module, and allows for learners to answer open-ended questions. Learners can upload a file or type a written response. As these are open-ended tasks, they do need to be individually graded by a trainer once the learner has submitted their responses. If you want to test your learners on a topic where there could be an infinite number of correct answers, we recommend using the Assignment module. The Assignment module is also great for uploading completed observation tasks, video demonstrations or other documentation to show evidence of applied skills and knowledge.

When to use an Assignment: Use an Assignment when you need to ask your learner an open-ended question or want them to reflect on your subject matter. This might be at the end of a Course as a summative assessment, or following a Lesson.

Question Types Cheat Sheet: Quizzes and Pop quizzes

The table below shows you how each question type works for Pop quizzes and Quizzes, including a learner prompt you can use to help learners know what to do.

Icon	Question type	How it works	Learner prompt
	Multiple choice	Learner selects ONE answer from a list of options. There can be more than one correct answer, but the learner is only required to identify one.	Select the correct answer to the following question.
	True / False	Learner decides if a statement is true or false.	Indicate true or false.
	Short answer	Learner is required to type an answer. It needs to be the exact same word or number, so is best used when there is one simple defined answer.	Type your answer in the text box.
	Tick correct	Learner ticks all correct answers. The learner can see how many ticks are required, so is made aware of the number of correct answers.	Tick the correct answers.
	Multiple True / False	Learner decides if a series of statements are true or false. Learners must assess all statements correctly.	Indicate if the following statements are true or false.
	Drag multiple	Learner is required to select all correct answers (can be one or more correct answers), and drag them to the drop boxes.	Drag the correct answers to the drop boxes.
	Match corresponding	Learner matches pairs of text by selecting their counterpart from a dropdown menu.	Select the correct answers from the dropdown menus.
	Match sequence	Learner is required to place a series of answers into the correct sequence or order.	Drag and drop each item to place them in the correct sequence/order.
	Fill in the blank	Learner is required to complete a sentence or paragraph by selecting the correct answers from one or more dropdown menus. This is sometimes called a cloze task.	Select your answer/answers from the dropdown menus.
	Multiple image choice	Learner selects one image from a list of options. There can be more than one correct answer, but the learner will be required to only select one answer.	Select the correct image.
	Drag and drop	Learner drags the images to the correct label or description.	Drag each image to its corresponding label.

Challenges Cheat Sheet

We've also put together a table to show you how the different Challenges work:

Icon	Challenge type	How it works	Learner prompt
	Branching scenario	Your Learners are presented with various options to choose a pathway through a scenario.	Navigate through the scenario by selecting your choices.
	Dial challenge	Learner chooses the correct value by dragging a dial.	Drag the dial to select a value.
	Drag and drop	Learner drags an image to the matching label.	Drag and drop each image to the corresponding label.
	Form challenge	Learner answers different types of questions in a form, all in one screen	Answer each of the fields below.
	Label image	Learner drags the labels provided to the correct positions on an image	Drag the labels to the correct positions.
	Match category	Learner drags items to the correct category.	Drag and drop each item to the correct category.
	Match sequence	Learner is required to place a series of answers into the correct sequence or order.	Drag and drop each item to place them in the correct sequence/order.
	Select correct image	Learner selects a single correct image from a list of options.	Select the correct image.
	Spot the mistake	Learner clicks on parts of an image to identify problems, hazards, or opportunities, which will prompt descriptions of these items.	Select parts of the image to identify problems/hazards/ opportunities.