Building an assessment

An assessment is a set of questions you build once and reuse. Use it for a quiz, an exam, a practice set, a placement diagnostic, a survey, or a piece of work someone uploads. You draft it privately, then publish it when it’s ready.

What this does

An assessment holds one or more sections, and each section holds items — questions, and optionally supporting media, text, or rubrics. Points on each gradable item roll up to a total. While it stays in draft only people who can edit it see it; publishing makes it available to attach to programs and deliver.

Before you start

You need permission to create assessments in your organization.
Decide the type before you start — it pre-configures timing, honesty, grading, and feedback. See Assessments overview.
Have your questions and correct answers ready, or generate a first draft with AI if that’s enabled for you.

Create the assessment

Go to Assessments and choose New Assessment. The wizard opens on Start a new assessment.
Step 1 — Type. Pick one of the seven type cards: Quiz, Exam, Practice, Diagnostic, Survey, Portfolio task, or Psychometric instrument. Each card carries chips for the defaults it applies. This choice is not permanent — you can switch it later from Settings → Assessment type.
Step 2 — Name. Enter a title and, optionally, a one-line description. The title is what people search for when attaching it to a program.
Choose Create draft. The assessment is created as a draft and opens on its Settings view.

Add a section

Items must live inside a section, so a section comes first — the insert panel stays disabled until one exists.

Open the Content view.
On an empty assessment, type into the Add section… row and press Enter, or choose the Add Section button that appears once you’ve typed something.
Once a section exists, sections become a tab strip across the top of the canvas, each tab showing its question count. To add another, choose New section at the end of the strip and type the name inline — Enter confirms, Esc cancels.
Each section carries a Settings disclosure above its items. Open it to set the Section Title, Instructions shown to the learner, a Time Limit (minutes) for that section, a Pool: # to Select count that draws a random subset of its questions per attempt, and an Allow back navigation toggle. Remove section lives here too. Unlike the assessment-level settings, these don’t save on change — choose Save Section when you’re done.

Add questions

Inside Content there are four ways to add an item:

The Insert block panel on the right of the Content view — click a question type to drop an empty one into the active section and edit it in place. It’s tabbed into Media, Content, and Questions, and opens on Questions. On narrower screens the same panel opens from the Insert button in the page header.
The hover gap between two items — hover the space between items for an Add block chip that offers the four most common types (True / False, Single Choice, Multiple Answer, Open Ended), inserted at exactly that position.
Pick from library — the full-width Add block button under a section, and the Pick from library link in the insert panel, both open the library so you can reuse an existing question. Library-picked items carry From library and Read-only badges; edit them from their library entry, which updates every assessment that uses them.
Generate with AI — the Generate with AI button at the top of the insert panel drafts several questions from a topic for you to review and accept. The matching Ask AI button in the page header only appears when AI is enabled for your account. See AI tools.

Set the points for each gradable item from its row, and tag it with the skills it evidences from the picker under each question. Both the canvas header and the insert panel show the running item count and total points.

Question types

Marked automatically	Marked by a person
True / False, Single Choice, Multiple Answer, Numeric, Short Answer, Fill in the Blank, Cloze, Drag & Drop, Classification, Matching, Ordering	Open Ended, Essay, File Upload, Audio Response, Hotspot, Matrix / Grid, Annotation

A Question Group wraps a shared stimulus (a passage, an image) around child questions and isn’t scored itself. Anything in the right-hand column lands in the grading queue after submission — see Grading & feedback.

Open skip-logic at the top of the Content view opens a side sheet. Use it to show, hide, or jump to questions based on earlier answers. Rules are per section.

Publish

Choose Publish in the page header. A readiness checklist opens.
The checklist blocks publishing until three things are true: the assessment has a title, it has at least one question, and it has a schedule or an opens-at date. If skills are attached, an extra non-blocking warning flags any skill with no mapped questions — you can publish anyway.
Confirm in the dialog. Once published, learners with access can start attempts and your editing becomes restricted.

You can Unpublish back to draft later if you need to make breaking changes; learners lose access and attempts in progress may be disrupted. That control lives in the insert panel on the Content view, not in the page header. Duplicate in the header gives you a fresh draft copy to rework without touching the live one.

Reference

Field	Notes
Type	Chosen in step 1; drives delivery defaults and which rail views appear
Section settings	Saved with Save Section, not on change
Title	Searchable; how it appears when attaching to a program
Description	Optional one-liner for whoever manages it later
Section instructions	Optional; shown to the learner at the top of the section
Section time limit	Optional per-section clock, separate from the assessment time limit
Pool: # to Select	Draws a random subset of the section’s questions per attempt
Allow back navigation	Whether learners can return to earlier questions in that section
Points	Per gradable item; rolls up to the assessment total
Status	Draft, In review, Published, or Archived

Troubleshooting

Clicking a question type does nothing. Items must live inside a section. Add a section first — the insert panel disables its tiles and shows a hint until one exists.

The Publish button opens but won’t confirm. Work through its checklist: title, at least one question, and a schedule or opens-at date. Unmapped skills are a warning, not a blocker.

Publish fails after I confirm it. The button isn’t hidden from people who can’t use it. Publishing is a separate permission from editing, held by organization admins by default. Ask an admin to publish, or to grant you the permission. See Roles & permissions.

Generate with AI opens nothing. The button in the insert panel is always shown, but the generator itself only loads when AI is enabled for your account. If clicking it does nothing, ask an admin to grant you AI access. See AI tools.

My section edits didn’t stick. The section Settings panel is the one place in the builder that doesn’t save on change. Choose Save Section before switching sections or leaving the view.

I can’t edit a question inside the assessment. Items added from the content library are shared. The row shows From library and Read-only; open its library entry to change it, and every assessment using it updates. Insert a fresh question instead if you only want to change this one.

Auto-marked questions aren’t scoring correctly. Reopen the question and confirm the correct option is set. For Multiple Answer, every correct option must be marked, not just one.

Open-ended questions show no score. They aren’t auto-marked. They stay unscored until someone reviews them in the grading queue. See The grading queue.

A draft assessment shows up when I attach one to a program. The program picker lists every assessment in the organization and shows each one’s status next to its name — drafts included. Attaching a draft is allowed, but learners can’t take it until it’s published.