Nightmare of Assessment Maintenance

[ward_scott]

I was trying to remove a question from an assessment recently and could not do it. I knew that users has taken the assessment, and I expected that I may only be allowed to inactivate the question or something similar, but the result was mind blowing. After contacting support, it turns out that the following steps are required for removing a question from an exam that users have taken!

1. Unpublish every assessment related to the question, even the ones where the question is to still exist. (I had three assessments related to my question, with the question to be removed from only one.)
2. Go back to the assessment where you want the change the question. (Possibly any assessment will do, but this is not verified.)
3. Go to the question and make it unavailable.
4. Make a modification to the question and hit Save (something harmless but visible, like a second period..)
5. Go to the Question Library and pull up the question. (You should see the change made in Step #3)
6. Make this question unavailable if not already marked as so.
7. Make some change again and hit save. (It is okay to revert the question to it's original format. i.e. Remove the extra period.)
8. Make the question available.
9. Go back to the exam and navigate to the question.
10. Validate the change if any to the question.
11. At this point it should still be marked as unavailable. Use the 'X' (not the trash can button, but the X above it on the same bar as the Question ID) to remove the question from the exam.
12. Reactivate all exams.

Please, someone tell me that you have an easier way. I would even accept if others have had the same issue so we can work together to call this out as unacceptable as it is.

[Dhruv]

How about copying the assessment, dropping the question, publish it and then swap the assessment at the item level?

[ward_scott]

That should work, but still an awful workaround for a simple task. I had several to delete this morning and was able to do it directly by using the 'X' at the top-right section of the question menu. So now I am left wondering, was I working around some kind of bug in the system or did the support staff not know their product very well.

[jhughes]

Hi Ward,

Our validated LMS is not yet Live but the way we currently manage it during testing, is as follows:

We create a new Objective ID for each SOP or Policy document we plan to train on, and assign all the training questions for that document to the new Objective ie. create a question pool linked to the Objective ID.

We build the assessment by pulling all questions linked to that Objective and typically set them all to be asked 'Randomly'. Then we draw a selection from the pool eg 5 out of a possible 10, attach the assessment to the Item and push it out to the End User (Version 1)

When the document is revved up to v2, there is a new question added. This additional question is added to the pool and linked to the same Objective ID as before. To avoid the new question being asked on the earlier revision of the assessment, we take the item down momentarily and set that new question to 'Never' on the old revision of the assessment. Then we push it back out.

We build a new assessment for each version of the document and set the newly added question to be asked 'Always' on the new exam.

So can you not edit your assessment by setting the question you wish to remove, to 'Never' on that exam only? It can still be set to 'Randomly' or 'Always' on your other assessments, which draw from the same pool.

Perhaps I am missing something but that appears to work for us.

Kind Regards,

Juliett