Authors sometimes find that accurately assessing their subject matter requires the use of short-answer or essay questions. We strongly encourage preparing these types of questions for in-class testing, assignments, or discussion posts, rather than using them for quizzing in our digital learning platform.

However, instructors are welcome to include short-answer questions in digital assessments, with the foreknowledge that additional work may be required to manually grade the results. Our Active Learning platform provides specialized grading tools to save time and effort with manual grading.

Note: When writing short-answer questions, please prepare feedback that can be shared with adopters.

Creating auto-graded assessments offers many benefits to you, the original instructor, as well as to other instructors who adopt your textbook.

Student practice: A well-constructed auto-graded exam is an excellent option for student review. Unlike short-answers or essay questions, students can be given the option to take these quizzes several times, and they have the opportunity to see scores, feedback, and correct answers at the end.

Easier grading: Automatically graded quiz scores will go directly to the Active Learning instructor’s gradebook, with no additional work from the instructor. Cognella’s hosted system provides specialized grading tools that make grading quicker and more effective. Instructors can review frequently missed items by students to find subject areas in need of further practice.

• Keep in mind that adopting textbook instructors will be provided with access to Active Learning as well. Automated quizzing makes it easy for them to assess their students’ results and will make your materials more appealing to them.

Customization: Settings are easier to control with automatic grading. You can choose whether to display scores or correct/incorrect options, or whether to allow students to retry the exercises.

Activity development: Cognella’s Active Learning Team can use automated quiz questions to develop ungraded practice games and activities.