Taking Assessments — Student Version

The Assessment Tool in Vista allows students to take quizzes, surveys and self-tests. As a student, you may see your grade immediately after submission or at a time specified by your instructor. Assessments can be found on the homepage, in an organizer page, on the toolbar, or as a link inside a learning module.

Before taking a quiz, disable pop-up blockers on your browser since quizzes in Vista open in a new pop-up window. In addition to pop-up blockers, make sure that you have the latest version of the Sun Java Virtual Machine.

There are several steps that you need to go through when taking a quiz.

Step 1: Click the assessment icon within the course to open a quiz.

Step 2: After clicking the quiz icon, you will see the page as shown in the following figure. Read the initial instructions. The instructions will tell you how long you have to take the assessment, how many times you have to take it, how much it is worth, and how the question(s) will be presented to you. You can click Instructions and Troubleshooting for additional information. When you are ready to begin your assessment, click Begin Assessment.

Step 3: The assessment will appear. Read and answer each question. After you choose an answer, click Save Answer. If you change an answer, click Save Answer again. Under Question Status, Vista will show you which questions have been answered by replacing yellow circles with blue checkmarks.

Make sure you save your answer each time to progress to the next question(s). If the answer has not yet been saved, you will see the message “Answer not saved” for the question under Question Status even if you have answered the question. Click Save Answer. A blue checkmark will then replace the red exclamation point and indicate that your answer has been saved under Question Status.

Note: Answer each question. Periodically check the Time and Question Status areas on the right-hand side of the screen as you proceed through the assessment. Make sure you submit the assessment within the predefined time limit. In the following example, students have 10 minutes to take the assessment and approximately 57 seconds remaining before having to submit the assessment.

If your instructor has set up the assessment for you receive one question at a time and you are allowed to revisit previous questions, there are a couple things to be aware of:

1.   It is important not to use the Back button in your browser window. This may cause you to lose your answers and prematurely submit your assessment.

2.  If you want to return to a previous question, use the question status area on the right-hand side of the screen, as shown in the previous example. You can select the question you want to go back to, review or change your answer (make sure you click Save Answer), and then use the same status area to go back later questions.

Step 4: Make sure you have saved all your answers. When you are ready to turn in your assessment, click Finish to submit your assessment.

Step 5: Click OK to submit at the confirmation prompt.

Step 6: You will see the screen as shown in the following figure. Click either OK to exit the assessment or View Attempt to see your grade on the assessment. Your instructor must release this information to you. Therefore, if you are not able to view assessment feedback or your grade, ask your instructor when the grading information will be released to you.

Step 7. Click View Submission to check your score. You can also view the Status (i.e., Graded/Not Graded) and the time you spent taking the assessment.

Step 8: Click Attempt 1 under the Attempt column and view details about your assessment. The information on this page may or may not be available to students depending on the settings controlled by your instructor. After reviewing your assessment results and feedback, you can click Done to exist the assessment. After completing the assessment, you can browse to any area within the course through the internal navigation of Vista .