Changing an Answer After an Assessment Has Been Administered

Let’s suppose that you have a fill-in-the-blank question in an assessment where you’ve indicated the correct answer is “criteria.” After some students have taken the assessment, you realize that “criterion” is also a valid answer. While it should be used cautiously, you can change the answers to a question (in this case add a correct answer). The process is anything but intuitive and requires these steps:

1. On the Build tab, select the Assessment tool and locate the specific question.
2. Select the question and the Edit…Question screen appears (you get to the same screen when you locate the quiz, display the questions, click the ActionLinks icon folloiwng the question and from the pop-up menu select Edit This Question).
3. When the Edit…Question screen appears, change the title of the question; make it a minor change if you wish, such as adding a period (.) to the end of the title.
4. Next add the new correct answer (if you change the correct answer from one choice to another, be prepared to tell students who lost points as well as alert those who earned points as a result of the change).
5. Click the Save button to save the revised question.
6. You’ll see a warning message indicating that you’re about to “overwrite the original question and could change Student grades.” Click OK if this is what you intend to do. In essence, you’re using a different question name and the revised question will replace the original question in the assessment.
7. Next, select the Teach tab and go to the Grade Book.
8. Select the ActionLink for the assessment that needs to be re-graded. It’s at the top of the column.
9. From the ActionLink pop-up menu, select the View Submissions option. You can get to the same place if you go to the Assessment Manager, select the ActionLink behind the assessment name and then select the View Submissions option). On this screen you’ll see a little red double-cross symbol after each score indicating the assessment has been changed since last graded.
10. Select the ActionLink in the top left corner of the screen (behind the assessment name) and select the Update All Outdated Attempts option. This option may take a few seconds to work and is not available except when you have outdated assessment scores.

By the way, the above works for other types of questions but is more complex (grading-wise) if you’re not just adding additional correct answers. For obvious reasons this option should be used sparingly if students have already completed the assessment. It can be confusing to students to find that what they “supposedly” answered correctly is actually incorrect.