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Topic Feedback| Adding Questions to Assignments / Question Browser |
WebAssign provides an estimate of the amount of time it will take your students to answer a question based on the median amount of time students have previously spent on the question, rounded up to the nearest minute. Time estimates are shown on the Assignment Editor and in the Question Browser.
So, the time spent between downloading an assignment and submitting an answer to a question would count as the time spent on that question. The time spent between submitting the previous question and submitting an answer for the next question, would count as time spent working on the next question. When a student submits the answers to several questions at once, the time spent on the submission is divided equally between all question parts in the submission and the time estimate for each question is the sum of a question's parts.
If the student saves their answers before making a submission then time spent working on the saved answer is also calculated into the total assignment time.
For example, if a student uses 3 submissions for a question the sum of the time spent on each submission is added together to calculate the amount of time a student spent on a question. This time is then averaged in with the times for other students to calculate the question time estimate.
The estimated amount of time it takes to answer questions is then used to estimate the amount of time students will spend on an assignment and the estimated range of time students will spend answering the selected number of questions in a question pool.
The following table describes the time icons.
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Icon |
Description |
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The estimate provided is based on more than 20 student submissions. |
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The estimate provided is based on fewer than 20 student submissions. |
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No students have provided answers since the question was last updated; an estimate is not available. |
The time estimate for a question is the median amount of time it has previously taken students to answer the question.
Question time estimates can be used to determine if a question is appropriate for the desired difficulty level of an assignment or question pool. A balanced assignment will mix long and short questions, but a question pool should contain questions that have similar time estimates. A question with a time that is longer than the time for other questions in a question pool might be too challenging for the overall desired difficulty level of the pool; a question with a time that is significantly shorter than the time for other questions in a question pool might be too easy for the overall desired difficulty level of the question pool.
The time estimate for a question pool is a range that is calculated using the sum of the lowest and highest time estimates for the number of questions you choose to use from the pool. For example, if you choose to use 2 out of 5 questions in a pool, then the lowest time is the total of the 2 shortest question times and the highest time is the total of the 2 longest question times. A good question pool will have a small range because all questions in the pool should have similar time estimates in order to ensure fairness to all students.
The time estimate for an assignment is calculated by adding the estimates for all of the questions in the assignment with the average of any question pool ranges in the assignment. When calculating the time for an assignment that contains a question pool, the average of the question pool's range is used. Any questions without time estimates are not counted toward the assignment time estimate and should be manually accounted for.