To review or not to review: hiding quiz answers

You probably know that adding assessments, tests, or quizzes is a simple but effective method of building accountability and tracking into your e-learning or training program. To prove return on investment, I believe it is crucial in most organizations to be able to show that the training program not only got implemented properly but that you have documented results to show that there have been changes, positive or negative.

If you have not, download our free whitepaper on how to use the Kirkpatrick Method to conduct a full and fair evaluation of your training efforts. Establishing value is pretty much impossible unless and until you can show there’s been a full accounting and evaluation of your training program.  Training evaluations help businesses glean useful insights into how effective their training investments have been. Businesses can also see where skills and performance gaps exist and how to take remediation steps.

Quizzes, however, come in all kinds of sizes and shapes and are used for a variety of reasons like:

• Simple yes or no questions so that folks can say they did the training and comprehended something.
• The short answer is so that participants are able to demonstrate deeper knowledge.
• Compliance documentation, such as asking participants to agree or disagree with a compliance statement (typically regarding Standard Operating Procedures or SOPs).

Regardless of your reasons for adding quizzes or assessments, it is important to think through what happens after the quiz session is completed. So what should happen next?

• Do you want you, students or employees, to be awarded a certificate of completion?
• Do you want your trainees to participate in voluntary or involuntary surveys so you gain additional insights?
• Do you want your participants to review their quiz answers and or perhaps request another session or retry the previous attempt?

In some cases, content developers opt not to have users review the quiz answers and answer keys.

However, is there ever a time or scenario when it might be a good idea to prevent users from being able to review their quiz answers? Well, think about the SATs or any of the national or international standardized tests. Most of the companies who create these tests are very protective of their quiz question databases.

If the answer keys for these tests were to get out, they would lose their credibility because most of the test questions are repeated year after year. For these companies, it is absolutely imperative that students who take these tests simply see their results—see if they passed or failed—but definitely not be able to see the answer key.

If your training company is in the same category as these national test companies, you will be happy to know that eLeaP LMS features a simple but powerful feature that enables you to decide when a test can display quiz answers and when students cannot review the quiz and see the answer key. To see how this works, click here.

Now, I know some might not understand why it is a good idea to withhold such valuable review information from students. You might have a point, but this is exactly why the learning management system you select should have built-in flexibility so that you can make that call regarding when you can and should suppress the quiz review function and when it is okay to make it available to students for review.

If you are not sure which way to go, I encourage you to create different versions of training courses, use different settings for each course, and assign the relevant courses to the relevant individuals or groups.

You can also call us at 877-624-7226 for a free consultation. In conclusion, the question of whether to allow quiz review is best left to each content creator.

I believe quizzes are important in learning and training. However, the learning management systems that you select should really serve the content developer by giving them options to decide when they want to deploy particular features and interactions and when they want to exercise different options. Flexibility always wins.