In this article we have discussed how you can use the Quiz and Survey Master – Online Exam WordPress Plugin to easily create detailed online exams with a timer function and more advanced features including categorizing each question, limiting the number of attempts, scheduling exams, etc.
Online Examinations are gradually superseding the Traditional Pen-Paper based Exam that would cost huge in Physical Logistics, Capital, and Time. Thanks to the progression of technology, devices, and various free tools we can now conduct exams over the internet thus cutting costs, physical assets, and time.
Students can now appear for examination even if they are at home, or anywhere else for that matter. All that they need is a computer device with an internet connection.
Conducting Exams online has become the new normal as many schools, universities, and academic institutions are slowly realizing the benefits of it and are planning to build a robust system that can help achieve the desired goal quickly.
One best and convenient way of making this possible is that by using an Online Exam WordPress Plugin. The Exam WordPress plugin offers an all-in-one solution for conducting online exams, tests, assessments, and any time-based tests.
Which Online Exam WordPress Plugin to use?
You must choose a plugin that helps you create online exams with ease, has an easy-to-use interface, and most importantly costs less money.
There are many Online Exam WordPress Plugin listed for sale on third-party vendors on the internet, you cannot trust them as there is no way of fact-checking if the plugin they offer actually works and the data remains safe or the reviews they’ve shown are genuine or not.
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So, to be assured it is always better to download plugins from the Official WordPress Plugins repository as it is constantly being monitored and comes with guaranteed free support.
When you search for the term “survey plugin” in WordPress Plugins the first result you see is that of the Quiz and Survey Master Plugin followed by WPForms, and Formidable Forms, etc.
Quiz and Survey Master is a popular quiz, survey, and exam plugin. Basically, it can be used to create any type of question-answer form that is easy to create and share.
It has 15+ Question Types like Multiple Choice, Multiple Response, Slider, Fill in the Blanks, Short Answer, and more. It can also be used to create graded exams using points and scores. You can even add hints and provide the correct answer description to the examinee.
With Quiz and Survey Master Plugin has been tried and tested by 1 Million Plus+ users and it is helping them in making Exciting Quizzes, Detailed Exams, Engaging Surveys, Polls, etc.
Quiz and Survey Master Plugin is easy, you don’t need to be an expert in creating an exam with the plugin, it is super simple and free. It is much more than just an Exam Plugin. You will get to know more about this amazing plugin as we proceed further and create an online exam.
Using In the following steps, I have explained how you can download the plugin and start creating an exciting online exam.
Creating an Online Exam using a WordPress Exam Plugin – Quiz and Survey Master
We will now create an online Exam using the Online Exam WordPress Plugin – Quiz and Survey Master.
#1 Install Quiz and Survey Master Plugin
If you are logged-in into your WordPress admin panel you can download the plugin by navigating to Plugins > Add New > and then Search For “QSM“.
If you want manually upload and install the plugin to your site then you need to download the QSM plugin from the Official WordPress Listing. The Plugin is free to download and use.
Hit the Install Now button and then Activate. Once Activated, you will see the QSM Menu on the sidebar.
#2 Creating a New Exam
Open the QSM Menu and you will see the QSM Dashboard. The Dashboard consists of all the info. that you need to run the QSM Plugin.
To Create an Online Exam, hit the “Create New Quiz/Survey Button“. And, Enter the Name you want the Test to be named as. I’ll be naming the test as QSM Online Exam.
We need to choose the form template, as this is an online exam we will need a timer to keep track of the time taken to complete the exam. So, we will choose the Time Based Quiz Template.
As one of the best features of QSM is that the test answers can be graded as correct/incorrect or with points we will choose the option as “Both” in the Graded System.
Also, we can set the time limit to the test depending on the number of questions asked and the difficulty level we can set the desired time. As this is just a sample test with only a few questions I will set the time limit as “5 mins“.
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These were some of the initial form settings that will help you kick start building a detailed online exam. There are many more settings, options, and configurations which we will see later.
After configuring the form you can go ahead and save the settings. By hitting the “Create Quiz” Button.
#3 Adding Questions and Answers
You can add numerous questions to your online test. If you want you can display all the questions on a single page or disperse them into multiple pages.
Step 1: Starting with Page 1 you need to type your question in the blank field that says “Type your question here“. If the question you’re asking has a supporting question that is more descriptive you can add it by hitting the add description button.
For Example: If you are a teacher you can build a comprehension question where the students can answer the questions based on the asked passage.
Your question may be in the form of images, videos, audio, files, or plain text.
Step 2: Quiz and Survey Master has 15 Question Types and we adding more with every major release. Do check them all, by default Vertical Multiple Choice is selected.
You also can choose from different Answer Types like Text Answers and Rich Answers. You need to mark a question as required if you want the question to be answered and not skipped by the respondents.
Step 3: After adding the question you can now add the answers. Depending on the Question Type you choose the answers list will also vary. Besides every answer, there are blank fields to allot points and also mark the correct answer. This helps later in calculating the points earned and review the number of correct answers when the respondent submits the exam and sees the result.
So, to keep it simple we are just going with the Vertical Multiple Choice Question Type. You can however check out all the Question Types and experience their working.
With the Correct Answer info, you explain to the respondent why the correct answer is the correct answer.
Step 4: Categorize each question as it becomes better to identify the type of question being asked and can be later randomized when published with regards to the category it belongs to.
You can even let the respondents share comments on the asked question or help them crack the question with a provided hint.
This way you can create multiple questions of various different question types and add them into multiple pages so that it doesn’t burn out the respondents.
After making the required changes don’t forget to hit the Save Changes button.
#4 Creating a Pre-Exam Form
To collect the respondent’s name and other information we can configure a form that the respondents need to fill before or after the exam.
The for can collect the respondent’s name, id, class, etc., or any other information that is needed.
For accepting Names, In the Field Type choose Small Open Answer, Give it a Label, and select Name in the Used For dropdown. Also, if the information needs to be strictly filled then make sure you tick the required checkbox.
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For ID, Class, etc. everything remains the same except No need to select the Used For field, keep it as it is as seen in the above image. Hit the Save Contact Fields button to save the changes.
#5 Configure the Message to be Displayed
Here you can display a custom message that will be displayed as soon as the respondent clicks on the exam link or before the exam commences.
Here we don’t need to configure much. If required you can go ahead and add an image, or any other media that informs the user about the exam and its rules.
Other than that you can keep the options as they are.
#6 Configuring the Exam
Here you can configure the actual exam working. Some of the options like the Quiz Type, Time Limit, etc. have already been configured at the initial stage itself.
Now, you can configure and set things like a:
- Progress bar
- Questions per page
- Force Exam submit after timer expiry
- Limit the number of user attempts
- Limit the total number of entries
- Limit number of Questions to display
- Set Exam Live Date and Time
- Make Questions appear randomly
- Make Questions appear randomly only from the chosen category
- Show question numbers
- Save Responses permanently in a database, and much more.
Know more about all the QSM Options by visiting the options tab documentation.
#7 Configuring the Emails
You can send emails to respondents after they’ve finished submitting the exam, reminding them of the answers they gave to the questions, the points they won, the number of correct answers, or simply letting them know that they’ve submitted/appeared for the exam.
You can add additional condition for emails to be sent. And send customized emails to every respondent depending upon the points earned or score received.
For this, you can make use of the various template variables that make this task a lot easy and quick.
#8 Configuring Results Page
Here we can configure what needs to be shown to the respondent once they complete the exam. Just like the Emails Tab here to we have the Template Variables that are specific to the Results Tab.
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You can configure the results page that will be unique to every respondent giving the exam. Using additional conditions and the score earned. Learn more about configuring the Results Page Here.
#9 Publishing the Quiz
To publish the Exam and make it live you can hit the Publish Quiz Button that is at the top.
To embed the Exam on a Web Page or use it as a hyperlink you can navigate to QSM > Quizzes/Surveys.
Find the Exam you just configured and hit the shortcode icon, a window pops-up showing the Embed Shortcode and Link Shortcode. You can copy the codes and paste them on your webpage for later use.
#10 Customizing Exam with the Advanced Addons
What makes the Quiz and Survey Master the best online exam plugin is that it has various Free and Pro Addons that are extremely useful in real use.
QSM has Free Addons like the Certificate Addon which can be used to provide customized downloadable Certificates to the Top Scores or Exam Givers in general.
Leaderboards Addon can be used to show a leaderboard at the results page that shows the Top 5 Quiz/Exam Takers.
It also has various Pro Addons like:
- Reporting and Analysis – allows you to display the collected data using 4 different charts
- Active Campaign Integration – Integrates QSM with ActiveCampaign mailing service
- Advanced Timer – Starts visual timer automatically and comes with two different timer styles
- Paypal and Stripe Payment Integration – Integrates PayPal and Stripe services with QSM for Paid Exams/Quizzes
- Drip Integration – allows you to add quiz and survey-takers to your subscribers in Drip
Find the list of all the Advanced Addons here.
Conclusion
I hope this article helps you in creating the best online exam. Explore yourself and you will get a better understanding of the Plugin’s working
QSM is a powerhouse and is constantly being upgraded for a better user experience. There are many benefits of using QSM things as Frequent Updates, Superior Performance, Ease of Use and Instant Customer Support make QSM the Best of all.
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