How do quizzes work?

Perusall Quizzes are a unique content type you can add to your course library and assign within an assignment. Quizzes don’t allow conversations, so students only see their own work. Instructors can place quizzes before, after, or between other content like readings, videos, or podcasts within one assignment.

Key Features

Reusability: Quizzes can be assigned multiple times across different assignments.
Flexible scoring: Quizzes can be graded based on participation or correctness.
Gating: Use quiz checkpoints to insert specific quiz questions at designated points throughout an assignment. This pauses students at the checkpoint, requiring them to answer the questions before they can continue with the remaining material.

Adding a quiz to the course library

To add a quiz to your course, navigate to Library > Add Content > Quiz.

You can add a quiz using one of the following methods:

Build quiz: Create questions directly within the Perusall interface.
Import quiz from CSV file: Upload a formatted spreadsheet of questions to quickly populate your quiz.
Import quiz from QTI package: Upload a quiz file your LMS. Supported formats include QTI 1.2, QTI 2.1, and Brightspace Package (Desire2Learn).

If you try to import a quiz question that our system doesn't support then we will make it a new type of "text-only" question (a question with text but no response required).

Building a quiz

Building a quiz is a two-step process using the tabs within the quiz editor:

Step 1: Fill out basic information

Configure the administrative setup for your quiz:

Name: A title for your quiz (e.g., "Chapter 1 Quiz").
Instructions: Use the rich-text editor to provide directions, images, or media.
Grading & Feedback Toggles:
- Only award credit for questions answered correctly: Toggles between accuracy-based or participation-based grading.
- Provide students with immediate feedback: If enabled, students see correct answers immediately. If disabled, they can revise answers until scores are released.
- Hide from students in the Library: Keeps the quiz hidden unless accessed through a specific assignment.

Step 2: Fill out your questions

Create your assessment content here. After selecting a question format, enter your prompt and any optional answer explanations.

Click + Add question to create a new question.
Select the green duplicate question icon to copy it with answers.
Select the red trash icon to delete a question.
Add an explanation for the correct answer, visible after quiz results are released.

There are seven Question formats.

Students are presented with a stimulus without asking a question.
Students select one answer out of a list of provided choices. You can mark multiple possible choices as correct and students can get credit by selecting any of the correct choices.
Students can select one or more answers out of a list of provided choices. Students must select all correct choices (and none of the incorrect choices) for their response to be scored as correct.
Students enter a numeric response. You can require an exact answer or specify a numeric tolerance to allow for rounding errors.
Students submit a short answer response. You can provide a correct response to automatically score their responses, or leave the correct response blank to grade student responses manually.
Students write a free-response answer. You can provide a minimum word count to automatically count any answer as correct, or leave the minimum word count blank to grade student responses manually.
Students enter a mathematical expression using a graphical editor. Answers algebraically equivalent to the correct answer you will provide will be counted as correct.

After you click Save Changes, your quiz will appear in the Library as content that you can assign alone or as part of a multi-part assignment.

Once you release quiz assignment scores, students will see the correct answer to each quiz question, as well as the answer explanations.

When creating a multipart assignment with a quiz, under Options within the Standard assignment setup, you can choose to Gate assignment based on quiz progress. Learn more here.

Reusing a quiz

Students can complete a quiz once per assignment; however, the same quiz can be reassigned in future assignments. To do this, you'll need to either create a new assignment or duplicate the existing assignment. Follow these steps to reuse a quiz:

Navigate to your course Assignments, and create a new assignment. Under Content, select the quiz, and update the rest of the assignment settings. Your quiz is now re-assigned as a new assignment.
Navigate to your course Assignments, and locate an assignment with a Quiz. Click Duplicate to copy the entire assignment. Edit the assignment settings as desired, and Save to create your duplicate assignment.

Reviewing Quiz Responses

Instructors have two ways of reviewing student responses to quizzes:

Click on analytics to view a breakdown in quiz grade reporting.
- View the Quiz Report to see a summary of how all students answer each individual question.
- View the Quiz Responses to see each individual student's response to the quiz in the same place.
- View the Quiz Scores to see all students' names and results for quick comparison and review.
Click on Grade Assignment, and select Quiz Responses to see individual student responses, and you can see/manage each response Status.