VIU Campus

Self Assessments

Our vendor, D2L has announced that this tool is at the end of its life and will be phased out over the next year. In January 2027 you will no longer be able to create new Self Assessments within the Self Assessment tool. In May, 2027 the tool will no longer be available in Course Administration. In December 2027 all Self Assessment data will be permanently deleted.  Please contact CIEL with any questions at learnsupport@viu.ca.  

Alternative self assessment options

There are many options for creating self-assessments for students. After the Self Assessment tool in VIULearn is removed in May 2027, you can use these supported tools to create self-assessments. There are two options CIEL recommends to replace existing Self Assessments and build new formative assessment activities going forward. 

VIULearn Quiz tool 

You can create formative evaluations with the VIULearn Quiz tool. Zero-point quizzes with unlimited attempts can serve as an excellent self-assessment tool. You can add feedback to the overall question or to specific answer responses. You can make results and feedback visible as soon as students submit. If your quiz is set to allow unlimited attempts, students can practice as many times as they need to. 

If you have a large bank of questions, you can use Question Pools to randomize which questions students see. This allows students to see a different variation of the quiz with each attempt. 

H5P activities 

H5P is an interactive activity platform that we have available within VIUBlogs. These activities can be created on a VIUBlogs site and then embedded inside VIULearn. H5P activities give you lots of options for instant feedback and a wide variety of ways to test students' understanding. These activities do not collect data on student performance on the activity. This makes H5P an excellent option if you want self-assessment activities that don't surveil your students. 

You can learn more about the wide varity of H5P activities from H5p.org. For help setting up H5P on a VIUBlogs site or setting up your first activity, please contact CIEL at learnsupport@viu.ca. 

Create alternate self assessment activities

  1. Select Assessment and Quizzes from the course navigation bar. 
  2. Click the blue New Quiz button.
  3. Give your quiz a title.
  4. Add a description to the quiz. This is a good place to let students know this quiz is not for marks and is for them to test their own understanding of the material. 
  5. Click either the Add Existing button or Create New button to bring questions into the quiz. 
  6. Set question points to zero: 
    1. Select all questions 
    2. Click More Actions and choose Set Points
    3. Enter 0 in the points box and click Save
  7. Underneath the Timing & Display heading on the right side of the screen set the following: 
    • Set pagination and shuffle behaviours 
    • check the box for hide question point values
    • uncheck the box for Disable Email, Instant Messages, and Alerts within Brightspace
  8. Underneath the Attempts & Completion heading: 
    • Set attempts allowed to Unlimited by click Manage Attempts 
  9. Underneath the Evaluation & Feedback heading:
    • Check the box for Auto-publish attempt results immediately upon completion
    • Under the when published display to learners sub-heading:  
      • Uncheck Attempt Grade 
      • Set the drop-down to All questions, with correct answers  or All questions, without correct answers. Both of these options will display the question and any feedback you added when creating the question for students when they submit. If you want students to have to find the correct answer through trial and error, we suggest showing all questions but not showing correct answers. To get the most out of this option, make sure you set feedback on both correct and incorrect responses as otherwise students will not know if they chose the right answer. 
  10. Once you have finished setting up your quiz, click Save and Close.

VIU has access to H5P through VIUBlogs. Once you create an H5P activity you can copy its embed code and use that to share it inside a VIULearn course. Used in this way, H5P does not collect any data from student activities, making this a great option for Self Assessments. If you have never used VIUBlogs, you will need to create a site and enable the H5P plugin before following the steps below. 

  1. Log into your VIUBlogs site and select H5P Content from the left side menu of your dashboard 
  2. Click Add New
  3. Find and open the Question Set content type 
  4. Give your assessment a title 
  5. In the Questions section, select the type of question you want to create from the drop down 
    1. Multiple Choice - use this to recreate multiple choice or multi-select questions 
      1. Give the question a title 
        • Students can see question titles in the results summary if you choose to show it at the end of the activity.  
      2. Fill in the question text and options, check the “correct” box for one or more options
      3. Add feedback to answer options in the Tips and feedback section 
      4. You can also add overall feedback to the question 
    2. Fill in the blanks  - use this option to recreate short answer or fill in the blank questions 
      1. Give the question a title 
      2. Customize the description text if needed.
      3. Enter the text of your fill in the blank, or the prompt for your short answer in the box provided. Put asterix on either side of the word you want students to fill in. 
      4. You can have one blank or several. If the order of multiple responses is not important, make sure you put all possible answers for each blank. 
        • For example:  
          1. *Victoria* is the capital city of British Columbia. 
          2. VIU has campuses in *Cowichan/Nanaimo/tiwšɛmawtxʷ*, *Cowichan/Nanaimo/tiwšɛmawtxʷ*, *Cowichan/Nanaimo/tiwšɛmawtxʷ* 
    3. True/False Question
      1. Give your question a title 
      2. Enter your question text 
      3. Select the correct answer 
  6. Click Add Question to add additional questions to the set. 
  7. When you are done adding questions, scroll to the top of the page and click the Create button to save your question set 
  8. You will be taken to a page where you can view and try out your question set. To make changes click the Edit button. 
  9. When you’re ready to use the activity in your course, click the <>embed  link located along the bottom of the activity and copy the embed code. 

Embed H5P in VIULearn 

  1. In VIULearn, go to the content module where you want to add the activity 
  2. Click Create New  and select Page 
  3. Give the page a title 
  4. In the Page Content box, click on the Insert Stuff button 
  5. Select Enter Embed Code 
  6. Page the H5P embed code in the box 
  7. Click Next  and then Insert 
  8. Complete any other edits you need to and then click Save and Close 

VIULearn Self Assessment tool

The Self Assessment tool is solely for formative evaluation. Student attempts are not stored and you cannot link a self assessment to a grade.  The purpose of a self assessment is to let students test their knowledge and receive immediate feedback. To get the most out of the Self Assessment tool, use the feedback fields in your questions. VIULearn allows you to add overall feedback for all question types. You can also set up option-level feedback for multiple choice, multi-select and true or false questions. 

Use self assessments when you and your students do not need a record of their participation in the activity. If you want to see that students have done a self assessment, use an ungraded quiz instead. Ungraded quizzes can provide feedback to students on submission of their attempt. The quiz tool also keeps a record of each attempt that you can view and share with students. To use an ungraded quiz as self assessment, you will need to add question feedback and set up a  submission view . 

Regardless of which tool you use for student self assessment, you will need to build in feedback. You can use the feedback fields to: 

  • state correct and incorrect answers
  • tell students where they will find the correct answer in the course content
  • give feedback on what an ideal answer would be for the question

Creating sections and questions

We recommend you creater your question in the Question Library. This allows you to share questions between self assessments and quizzes. It also protects against accidentally deleting questions. You can use sections in the Question Library to separate questions by topic, intended assessment type or any other criteria. 

  1. From the course navigation bar, select Faculty Tools. From the drop-down menu, select Course Admin. 
  2. Underneath the Assessment heading, select Self Assessments. 
  3. Click the blue New Self Assessment button.
  4. Give your Self Assessment a name and edit the following settings if you wish:
    • Category: You can organize your Self Assessment within the Self Assessments tool by assigning your Self Assessments to categories you have created. Click the add category text to create and attach a new Category. 
    • Hints: Choose whether hints you have inserted in your questions will be displayed to students when they go to attempt the Self Assessment.
    • Shuffle questions at the self assessment level: Choose to randomize the order that questions and sections will appear in at the self assessment level.
    • Page Header/Footer: Create a customized message that your students will see while they take the Self Assessment. The Page Header will be displayed at the top of the page while students are completing the Self Assessment. The Page Footer will be displayed at the bottom of the page while students are completing the Self Assessment. 
  5. Once you have finished editing, click the gray Save button.
  6. At this point, you will be able to add questions to your Self Assessment by clicking the Add/Edit Questions button. 
  7. Once you have finished editing and adding questions to your Self Assessment, click the blue Save and Close button.

Manage self assessments

  1. From the course navigation bar, select Faculty Tools. From the drop-down menu, select Course Admin.
  2. Click Self Assessments. 
  3. Click on the name of the Self Assessment.
  4. Make your changes. Click the Add/Edit Questions button to add or make any changes to the questions in your Self Assessment. 
  5. Select Save.

  1. From the course navigation bar, select Faculty Tools. From the drop-down menu, select Course Admin.
  2. Click Self Assessments. 
  3. Click the arrow to the right of the Self Assessment.
  4. Select Preview.
  5. Once you have finished previewing your Self Assessment, click the Exit Preview button to be taken back to the previous screen.

  1. From the course navigation bar, select Faculty Tools. From the drop-down menu, select Course Admin.
  2. Click Self Assessments. 
  3. Click the More Actions button. Select Delete from the drop-down menu.
  4. Select the check box beside the Self Assessment you want to delete.
  5. Click the Delete Selected button. 
  6. Click the blue Yes button to confirm.

Make a self assessment available in your course

Learners cannot access self assessments from the navigation bar. In order to give your learners access to a self assessment you must provide a link. We recommend you add self assessments to Content so students can find them again if they need to, but you can also link to a self assessment in an Announcement or within another activity

  1. Select Content from the course navigation bar.
  2. Find and click on the module or sub-module you want to add the Self Assessment to. 
  3. Click the blue Add Existing button. Select More and then Self Assessments.
  4. Click on the Self Assessment you wish to add.

  1. On the course homeage click on Announcements 
  2. Click New Announcement 
  3. Enter a headline and any content 
  4. To link your survey, click the Insert Quicklink (chain icon) button
  5. Select Self Assessment from the list of tools
  6. Cick on the self assessment you want to link 
  7. When you are finished editing the announcement content and settings, click Publish