This article covers the steps to create custom questions in Content Engine. Custom questions are available in enterprise accounts. Any member in an enterprise account can create custom questions and manage their own questions. However, only administrators can publish the custom questions to make them available to custom exams.
This article contains the following sections:
- What Is a Custom Question
- How to Create Custom Questions
- About the Custom Question Import Template
- How to Import Custom Questions
- How to Find Where a Custom Question Is Used
What Is a Custom Question
A custom question is a question that you create to assess the members in your own organization on the material in your custom learning paths. You create custom questions so you can add them to custom exams.
Custom questions are multiple-choice with two or more possible answers. You also create the answer choices when you create the questions.
Tip: Questions with fewer than four answer choices are easier to guess correctly, even if the member doesn't know the correct answer. For best results, questions with fewer than four answers are best as part of a quick check-in with your members rather than as highly technical skills assessments.
When you create a custom question, you can specify its related skills. The application interprets the text of your question to suggest relevant skills. When your members complete the question, the Skill Profile updates the skill score based on whether they got the question right or wrong.
You can create custom questions one at a time in the Questions area of Content Engine. You can also create questions and answers outside of Content Engine and import them as a CSV file.
How to Create Custom Questions
Use the following steps to create a custom question:
- From the dashboard, click the building icon from the top toolbar to open the management dashboard.
- Choose Content Engine from the left navigation and another menu appears. Click Questions from the menu.
The Questions screen appears showing the buckets of questions. - Click the Create button in the upper right-hand corner.
A form appears where you can create your question: - Complete the form. On this form you can:
- Enter the text of the Question. You cannot currently add images to questions. However, you can include a link to an image in the text of the question.
- Indicate the Difficulty of the question by choosing one of the radio buttons.
- Enter the text of the Answers. Enter one answer in each field and indicate which answer is correct by toggling the Correct? switch next to it. Use the trash can icon to remove unneeded answer fields.
- Enter an Explanation of the correct answer for the system to show the member after answering the question.
- Enter a Documentation url. The member will be able to following the link to the URL for more information about the question.
- Optionally, you can choose the skill or skills that are related to the question in the Skill Objective field.
The system may have suggested skills based on the text of the question. A member's performance on this question affects the member's skill score for the related skill.
Tip: You may want to leave this field blank for questions with fewer than four answers.
Note: You can request that Cloud Academy add a custom skill for your organization by clicking the Request a custom skill objective link. A Cloud Academy representative will contact you about your request. A custom skill requires at least 24 hours to add.
- When you have completed the form, click Save.
If you are an administrator, you can now publish the question. After saving, the Save button changes to a Publish button. When you publish the question, it becomes available for exams.
About the Custom Question Import Template
To import custom questions to Content Engine, you must create a CSV file with exactly the headings and columns indicated in the template. If you are creating the questions manually, the easiest way to meet the requirements is to use the spreadsheet we provide. You can find the spreadsheet here. A link to this spreadsheet also appears during the import process.
Note: You must download this spreadsheet or make a copy of it in your own Google account to use it. The spreadsheet contains more than the required import format: it also contains drop-down lists and auto-populating fields to make completing it easier. You must export the questions as a CSV after using the spreadsheet to create the questions.
The spreadsheet template contains the following tabs:
- Instructions
- Questions - 4 answers
- Questions - 2 answers
The Questions tab is where you find the tools to help you complete the information in the required format. The Questions tab includes these columns:
| Column Name | How to Complete | Format | Note |
| description | Enter the text of the question. | Plain text or HTML | Images are not supported, but you can includes links, including links to images. |
| answer_1 | Enter the text of the first answer option. | Plain text or HTML | |
| answer_1_is_correct | Indicate whether answer 1 is correct. | Valid values:
Tip: If you are using the spreadsheet tool, you can choose a value from the drop-down. |
At least one of the four answers must have a Y in this field, and at least one of the four answers must have an N in this field. |
| answer_2 | Enter the text of the second answer option. | Plain text or HTML | |
| answer_2_is_correct: |
Indicate whether answer_2 is correct. |
Valid values:
Tip: If you are using the spreadsheet tool, you can choose a value from the drop-down. |
At least one of the four answers must have a Y in this field, and at least one of the four answers must have an N in this field. |
| answer_3 |
Enter the text of the third answer option. | Plain text or HTML |
Only on Questions - 4 answers tab |
| answer_3_is_correct |
Indicate whether answer_3 is correct. |
Valid values:
Tip: If you are using the spreadsheet tool, you can choose a value from the drop-down. |
Only on Questions - 4 answers tab At least one of the four answers must have a Y in this field, and at least one of the four answers must have an N in this field. |
| answer_4 |
Enter the text of the fourth answer option. | Plain text or HTML | Only on Questions - 4 answers tab |
| answer_4_is_correct |
Indicate whether answer_4 is correct | Valid values:
Tip: If you are using the spreadsheet tool, you can choose a value from the drop-down. |
Only on Questions - 4 answers tab At least one of the four answers must have a Y in this field, and at least one of the four answers must have an N in this field. |
| difficulty |
Indicate the difficulty level of the question. |
Valid values:
Tip: If you are using the spreadsheet tool, you can choose a value from the drop-down. |
|
| explanation |
Enter an explanation of the correct answer for the system to show the member after answering the question. | Plain text or HTML | Images are not supported, but you can includes links, including links to images. |
| documentation_url |
Enter a URL the member can follow after answering to learn more about the subject of the question. |
A fully formed URL, starting with http:// or https:// | |
| duration |
Enter the number of seconds the member has to answer the question. | number | We suggest you set this field to 240. |
| skill1 |
(Optional) Enter the name of a skill that this question related to. |
If you are using the spreadsheet tool, you can choose the skill from the drop-down. The spreadsheet automatically updates the skill1_id field with the ID for the skill you choose. If you are not using the spreadsheet tool, you can leave this column blank and populate the skill1_id column instead. |
The member's performance on this question affects their skill score for this skill. You can find a list of skills on the Instruction tab of the template spreadsheet. |
| skill2 |
(Optional) Enter the name of a skill that this question related to. |
If you are using the spreadsheet tool, you can choose the skill from the drop-down. The spreadsheet automatically updates the skill2_id field with the ID for the skill you choose. If you are not using the spreadsheet tool, you can leave this column blank and populate the skill2_id column instead. |
The member's performance on this question affects their skill score for this skill. You can find a list of skills on the Instruction tab of the template spreadsheet. |
| skill1_id |
(Optional) If you are using the spreadsheet tool, this field automatically updates with the ID of the skill you chose in the skill1 field. If you are not using the spreadsheet tool, enter the skill ID. |
You can find the list of valid values on the Instructions tab of the template spreadsheet. |
|
| skill2_id |
(Optional) If you are using the spreadsheet tool, this field automatically updates with the ID of the skill you chose in the skill2 field. If you are not using the spreadsheet tool, enter the skill ID. |
You can find the list of valid values on the Instructions tab of the template spreadsheet. |
You can import only 50 rows at a time, so if you have more questions that that, create a separate import file. You must save the template as a CSV before you can import it. Tip: CSV files do not allow multiple tabs. Make sure you save the Questions - 4 answers or Questions - 2 answers tab as a CSV.
How to Import Custom Questions
Tip: The system does not have a way to deduplicate questions. If your CSV contains questions that are the same as other questions in the spreadsheet or questions already in your account, importing them will result in duplicates.
Once your CSV is ready, use the following steps to import a group of custom questions:
- From the dashboard, click the building icon from the top toolbar to open the management dashboard.
- Choose Content Engine from the left navigation and another menu appears. Click Questions from the menu.
The Questions screen appears showing the buckets of questions. - Open the Drafts bucket.
The Drafts bucket screen appears. - Click the Import button.
The Import questions window appears.
Tip: You can click the this template link to open the spreadsheet template. - Click Upload a CSV file.
- Select the CSV file of questions that you prepared according to the template.
- Click Import.
How to Find Where a Custom Question Is Used
When you have a question open in Content Engine, you can use the List parents options on the Actions menu to see where the question has been used.
A window appears showing the content items that contain the question.
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