Important: Pearson Connexus enables Administrators and Teachers to customize courses in many ways. While this is one of the more powerful features of this next-generation platform, there is the potential that making customizations in some courses could compromise the functionality, alignment, or efficacy of your virtual program. For more information, please contact Pearson Connexus Support. Phone: 844-597-3224 Email: pcxsupport@pearson.com Creating and modifying assessment questions is an advanced feature of Pearson. Refer to articles contained in the Editor Section of Pearson Support if you have questions on how to access or use these features.
Passages in Assessments and Practice Questions
Passage is listed in the question type dropdown, but it is not an interactive question template. You can use it to create and provide a passage of text, and ask students to refer to it in order to answer other questions in the assessment. You can provide a single passage for an entire activity and/or attach a passage to specific questions.
Passages can be added to assessments and practice question activities.
- Add the Assessment or Practice Questions activity.
- Add a passage to the activity from the question type dropdown menu.
- Follow the directions, below.
Assign the passage to questions
Although, you can simply add a Passage to appear on its own in an Assessment or Practice question activity, the most common way to use passages is to assign them to appear in combination with one or more questions.
You can easily assign a passage to one or more questions:
- Create the passage and define how you want it to appear.
- In the questions you want the Passage assigned to, open the Include passage dropdown in Activity editor > Questions tab > Interaction card and select the passage you created.
- Save.
Passage content
Enter the desired passage in the field provided. Use the rich text editor to attach media (images, audio (mp3), video (flv)), insert equations, create tables, etc.
This section pictures and explains the default visual editor; enable the Text editor to create and edit the passage with the advanced Text editor
Interaction
In the Interaction card you can :
- Check the Maintain question order box which displays all questions assigned to this Passage in the order you put them in the activity.
- Check the Include all passage questions when linking passage to ensure that when this passage is pulled from a question pool all questions attached to it are also used.
- Check the Display questions to the right box for side-by-side display (more details, below).
- Check the Display one passage question at a time box to show each question on their own with the Passage (more details, below).
- Provide a Custom question definition.
Define how the passage appears
1. Side-by-side, single-question passages
If you check both the Display questions to the right and Display one passage question at a time boxes, you must assign the passage to more than one question.
With these settings:
- The Passage appears to the left of each of the assigned questions.
- Pearson Connexus displays each question individually.
- Numbered navigation buttons are provided underneath the question to allow students to move through all of the questions associated with the Passage.
2. Single-question passage appears above multiple questions
If you check the Display one passage question at a time box without the Display questions to the right, you must assign the passage to more than one question.
With these settings:
- The Passage appears above each of the assigned questions.
- Pearson Connexus displays each question individually.
- Numbered navigation buttons are provided underneath to allow students to move through all of the questions associated with the Passage.
3. Side-by-side passage appears next to the question
If you check the Display questions to the right box without the Display one passage question at a time box, you must assign the passage to one or more question(s).
With these settings, the Passage appears to the left of the question(s).
4. Passage appears where you place it
The Passage appears wherever you place it in the question list if the following conditions are met:
- Leave the Display questions to the right and Display one passage question at a time boxes unchecked.
- Don't assign the passage to any question(s).
- Don't check the Randomize question order box in the Assessment Settings or Practice Questions Settings tabs.
In this example, the Passage has been placed as the first question and can be used for the full assessment or practice questions activity.
Metadata
The Metadata card lets you attach information to questions:
- Assign a difficulty level to each question can help track your overall assessment difficulty.
- Add a question to an existing group.
- When putting questions in an assessment activity, groups are used to assign questions to assessment question pools.
- When putting questions in a practice questions activity, Groups are used to assign questions specific attempt limits.
- The question ID is a unique identifier for this question.
Objective mastery
From the Objective mastery card, you can align the question with objective(s).
This makes it possible to set up Formative and Remediation assessments.
Score
Use the Score card to indicate:
- If you want to allow for Partial credit.
- And, if so, if you want to automatically Round the score.
- If you want the question to count as Extra credit.
Variables
With the Variables section, you can create a range or list of variables for use in the question.
Calculator
Check the appropriate box(es) to provide students with one or more of the following calculators to use with this question (Basic, Standard, and/or Scientific). This can also be specified for the entire activity with the Assessment activity editor.
Protractor
Make a protractor available to students while they complete this question. This can also be specified for the entire activity with the Assessment activity editor.
Ruler
Make one or more rulers (6 inch, 12 inch, 15 centimeter, 30 centimeter) available to students while they complete this question. This can also be specified for the entire activity with the Assessment activity editor.
Companion Material
Click Add material in Companion Material to attach any supplemental documents students need to complete this question. You can do this by:
- Pointing to existing resources in the course.
- Uploading new files (PDFs only).
Students can access Companion material by clicking the Files icon in the toolbar.
