{"id":1366,"date":"2021-01-12T10:20:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T18:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/education\/blog\/2021\/01\/12\/five-essential-tips-on-auto-grading-for-microsoft-forms-quizzes\/"},"modified":"2024-06-03T12:55:17","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T19:55:17","slug":"five-essential-tips-on-auto-grading-for-microsoft-forms-quizzes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/education\/blog\/2021\/01\/five-essential-tips-on-auto-grading-for-microsoft-forms-quizzes\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Essential Tips on Auto-grading for Microsoft Forms Quizzes"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have been delighted to hear that educators around the globe are using Microsoft Forms to create surveys and quizzes<\/a> for their students\u2019 learning. Whether it is your first time adding branching to create personalized formative assessments<\/a> or you have been adding quizzes as Teams assignments<\/a> for a long time, we want to share some best practices on how to use the auto-grading feature in your Forms quizzes.<\/p>\n

What is auto-grading?<\/h2>\n

We designed the auto-grading feature both to save educators\u2019 time and to provide students with immediate feedback. Auto-grading kicks in for any multiple-choice, text, or ranking<\/strong> question if you have marked or entered the correct answer to a question.<\/p>\n

\"Forms<\/em><\/p>\n

Teacher\u2019s View After Student Submits Quiz<\/em><\/p>\n

By default, your quiz settings<\/a> will \u201cShow results automatically,\u201d which means that after students submit the quiz, they can click a button to view their results. On this \u201cView Results\u201d page, they can see which questions they answered correctly or incorrectly, given you marked the correct answer when creating the quiz.<\/p>\n

\"Forms<\/p>\n

Student View of \u201cView Results\u201d Page<\/em><\/p>\n

Tip #1: Provide automatic feedback on answer choices<\/h2>\n

You can automatically give students specific feedback based on the answers they picked in response to multiple choice questions. You can do so by hovering to the right side of a multiple-choice answer, clicking the speech bubble icon, and typing your comment.<\/p>\n

\"Forms<\/p>\n

If you use the \u201cShow results automatically\u201d setting, your students can view the comment for the answers they chose on the \u201cView Results\u201d page after they submit the quiz. If you decide not to use \u201cShow results automatically,\u201d students will see the comments only after you \u201cPost Scores\u201d for the quiz. They can do so by visiting the original link of the quiz. This \u201cauto-feedback\u201d feature is a great way for you to offer positive comments on a correct answer or constructive explanations on why an answer was incorrect.<\/p>\n

Tip #2: Inform your students that their initial score under \u201cView Results\u201d might not be final<\/h2>\n

Because auto-grading currently only supports multiple-choice, text, and ranking questions, other types of questions you include in your quiz will require manual grading later. Thus, if you use \u201cShow results automatically,\u201d students will seemingly get zero points for non-auto-graded questions, as those questions have not been graded yet.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the overall score they see at the top of their results page will be artificially low. Only after you finish manually grading and post scores will the score on the results page be final.<\/p>\n

An important tip is to inform your students that the score they immediately see on the \u201cView Results\u201d page are not final until you have officially posted scores. Then, students can visit the quiz at the original link to find their final scores.<\/p>\n

Tip #3: Take an extra step to ensure auto-grading works for your text and ranking questions<\/h2>\n

If you plan to use auto-grading for questions that require a text response, a best practice is to add all possible correct answers. The auto-grading is not case sensitive, but it looks for an exact match in terms of spelling and punctuation. Thus, you might want to add all acceptable answers, including ones with misspellings, to save time manually grading later.<\/p>\n

\"Forms<\/p>\n

If you plan to use auto-grading for ranking questions, a best practice is either to mark the question as \u201crequired\u201d or to make a note in the description of the question for your students to click on the ranking choices. The auto-grading kicks in only if the student engages with the question; otherwise, it assumes that the student left the question unanswered. Even if the ranking order looks correct at first sight, to ensure they have answered the question, your students still need to click on the answer choices, so that the order numbers appear.<\/p>\n

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Tip #4: Use \u201cShow Results Automatically\u201d only if you want to provide instant feedback to your students<\/p>\n

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Show Results Automatically Option in Quiz Settings<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cShow Results Automatically\u201d is a powerful feature, as students can see both automatically graded questions and automatic feedback to their answer choices, which we will discuss in the next tip. With this feature, you could be more efficient in your teaching, but you will want to keep the following in mind:<\/p>\n