FAQs

Question categories are hierarchical section groupings of questions. Think of categories like topics or sections of a test. As an example, if a student was to take tests on Excel, the question categories would be something like this:

• Conditional Formatting
• Pivot Tables
• Formulas
• Print Optimization
• Charts
• Data visualization

You set up your categories of questions as an outline for your assessment and then once set up, you then add questions to each category. 

Categories help you organize the questions in your assessment into groups of questions. And it’s ok to only have a few questions per category!

Questions measure what a student or learner knows and also reveals different levels of knowledge and learning. 

Good test questions assess what you intend to test on, allow students to demonstrate what they know or have learned and can also discriminate levels of knowledge and learning between students.

skillXchange has four question types: single choice, multiple choice, text match and true / false. 

• In a single choice question, there is only one single correct answer and the rest of the options are distractors. Students or learners must completely understand the content before they select the only correct answer from the list of options. 
• In a multiple choice question, there are multiple answer options. Multiple choice questions are written to assess various levels of learning outcomes. This question type is less susceptible to guessing, making them a more reliable means of assessment. The reliability is enhanced when the number of MC items focused on a single learning objective is increased. 
• In a text match question, a student or learner matches a premise with a given response. They are an effective question style to measure a learner’s ability to identify the relationship or association between similar items.
  
• In a true/false question, students are asked to judge whether a factual statement is either true or false. True/false questions are best suited to assessing surface level knowledge, but can be crafted to assess higher order thinking.

skillXchange has some powerful settings for assessment controls. You can limit the number of attempts, set a minimum passing score and even lockout a student for a period of time before allowing attempt retries. Lockouts are often used if you want to redirect the student to take additional courses or learning modules before trying the test again. 

• Attempt: 3
• Attempt Lock Duration: 15 mins
• Number of Attempt Cycles: 3
• Attempt Cycle Timeout: 20,160 mins (60mins*24hrs*14days) = two weeks

In this scenario, a student or learner is allowed three attempts to take and pass an assessment. 

After the first attempt with a fail result, the student or learner is locked out for 15 mins before being permitted to start their second attempt. Based on the setting of 3 attempt cycles, they have 3 opportunities to take the assessment to pass. If they continue to fail the assessment after 3 attempts, each with a 15 minute pause in the lockout duration, they are locked out for two weeks based on the cycle timeout setting of 20,160 minutes.

skillXchange has template options for both in-app and email communications. You can brand communications and set specific messaging for onboarding students, sending reminders and completion notifications.

Yes! You can make course recommendations direct to students based on their skill test score. This is a powerful marketing tool to increase student engagement in your courses and drive enrollments. Many online course content creators choose to create a pre-enrollment skill assessment to help students determine which course is right for them. 

You can enroll students a number of ways in skillXchange. A direct link to individual assessments can be sent via email or embedded as part of your course material. Some course creators choose to enroll their students direct from the in-app user management tool. There is also a community feature where you can invite students to your community page and share assessments directly into communities and sub-communities. skillXchange offers flexible options for student enrollment. 

skillXchange includes the feature for communities. Communities are an environment for admins to group users and sub-groups of users for assignment of assessments and for community engagement. 

Engagement within communities includes options for setting an RSS feed for new updates, individual posting of news updates to the community group and sharing of resources, i.e., documents, videos, weblinks, etc.