Creating Quizzes

Overview

Quizzes are knowledge assessments that test users’ understanding of concepts covered in your lab. Unlike tasks that validate hands-on skills, quizzes evaluate conceptual knowledge through questions that require reasoning, recall, and decision-making. They help reinforce learning by prompting users to actively think about what they’ve learned rather than passively reading through content.

Quizzes support multiple question types; simple single-choice questions, multi-select and, text and number answers. This flexibility lets you assess understanding at different levels, from basic recall to application and analysis.

Creating a Quiz

Quizzes are created in the Activities tab of your lab. This is where you define your questions, configure quiz settings, and manage which pages use each quiz.

To create a new quiz, navigate to the Activities tab and click the Create new activity button and then choose Quiz.

This opens the quiz creation drawer where you can configure all aspects of your quiz. When you’re done configuring your quiz, click the Create & add button to save it.

Quiz Details

The quiz drawer has several sections for configuring your assessment:

Quiz Name: An internal identifier used to reference this quiz in your lab configuration. Users never see this name. Use descriptive names like load_balancer_concepts_quiz or security_fundamentals_quiz.

Quiz names can use lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens, and underscores. They must:

• Begin and end with a letter or number
• Not contain consecutive hyphens or underscores
• Be unique (no duplicates allowed)

Note

Example of allowed and disallowed names:

• ✅ quiz_1, load_balancer_basics, security-fundamentals
• ❌ -quiz, quiz2$, lb%concepts, quiz__advanced

Questions: The heart of your quiz. You’ll add multiple questions here, each with its own type, text, and answer configuration. Questions are displayed to users in the order you define them. You can also reorder questions by dragging them in the list.

Quiz Settings: Configure how users interact with the quiz:

Setting	Description
Show hints	When enabled, you can add hints to individual questions to guide users toward the correct answer without giving it away directly. Hints are served in order every time users attempt the question and fail.
User can show answers	Show answers to the user, allowing them to reveal correct answers after submission.

Adding Questions

Click Add question to pick a type and create a new question in your quiz. Each question needs a name (internal reference), question text, and answers.

Note

Questions belong to a single quiz and cannot be shared across multiple quizzes. If you need the same question in another quiz, you’ll need to create a copy of it.

For single select and multi select questions, answer options are randomized when the user starts the lab to prevent users from memorizing positions.

Question Types

Instruqt supports four question types to assess different kinds of knowledge:

• Multi select: Users select all correct answers from the options
• Single select: Users select one correct answer from multiple options
• Text input: Users type a free-form text response
• Number input: Users enter a number as their answer

Single select

Single select questions present users with multiple options where only one is correct. This type is perfect for testing factual knowledge or basic understanding.

Field	Description
Question name	Internal identifier for the question.
Question	The question text users will see.
Answers	List of possible options (add as many as needed).
Correct answer	Select which option is correct.

Adding answers: Click “Add an answer” to create each option. Mark one option as the correct answer using the radio button or dropdown selector.

Multi select

Multi select questions allow users to select multiple correct answers from the available options. Use this when several statements may be true or when testing comprehensive understanding.

Field	Description
Question name	Internal identifier for the question.
Question	The question text users will see.
Answers	List of possible options (add as many as needed).
Correct answers	Mark all options that are correct.

Adding answers: Click “Add an answer” to create each option. Mark multiple options as correct by checking their boxes. Users must select all correct options to pass.

Text input

Text input questions require users to type a text response that matches exactly (case sensitive). Use this for questions requiring specific answers like terminology, commands, or short factual responses. This question type is not suited for “explain in your own words” style questions since answers must match exactly.

Field	Description
Question name	Internal identifier for the question.
Question	The question text users will see.
Correct answer	The expected text answer (must match exactly, case sensitive).

Adding answers: Enter the correct answer text. The user’s answer must match exactly (case sensitive) to be considered correct.

Number input

Number input questions require users to enter a number. This type is useful for calculations, capacity planning, or any quantitative questions.

Field	Description
Question name	Internal identifier for the question.
Question	The question text users will see.
Correct answer	The expected numeric value.

Adding answers: Enter the correct numeric value.

Hints

Hints help guide users toward the correct answer without giving it away directly. When you enable the “Show hints” setting in Quiz Settings, you can add multiple hints to each question that are revealed progressively as users attempt and fail the question.

Hints are served in order – the first hint appears after the first failed attempt, the second hint after the second failed attempt, and so on. Consider making each hint progressively more specific to guide the user toward the correct answer.

Adding Hints:

To add hints to a question, the “Show hints” setting must be enabled in Quiz Settings. When editing a question in the quiz drawer, click the Add a hint button to create a new hint. You can add as many hints as needed for each question.

Managing Hints:

• Reordering: Click and drag the handle on the left side of each hint to reorder them. Since hints are served sequentially, ensure they progress from general guidance to more specific help
• Deleting: Click the delete button on the right side of a hint to remove it

Best Practices:

• Start with conceptual hints that guide thinking rather than giving away the answer
• Make each subsequent hint more specific and direct
• Keep hints concise and focused on a single aspect of the problem
• Consider adding 2-3 hints per question for optimal guidance

Question Ordering

Questions appear in the order you define them in the quiz drawer. You can reorder questions by dragging them using the drag handle on the left side of each question card.

Each question card can be collapsed or expanded. When collapsed, you can quickly see all your questions and rearrange them. Click the chevron icon to expand a question and edit its details.

Note

To delete a question, click the delete button on the question card.

Editing Quizzes

To edit an existing quiz, click on the quiz card in the Activities tab. This opens the quiz drawer where you can modify the quiz name, add or remove questions, reorder questions, and update quiz settings.

When you’re done making changes, click the Add changes button to save your modifications. If you want to discard your changes, click the Discard button.

Embedding Quizzes in Pages

Once you’ve created a quiz, you need to embed it in your instruction pages where users will encounter it.

Using the Markdown Editor

In the Instructions tab, edit the page where you want the quiz to appear. The markdown editor provides a button to insert quiz components.

Click the quiz icon button (or use the insert menu) to see available quizzes. You can either:

• Select an existing quiz to embed it at the cursor position
• Create the missing quiz, which opens the quiz drawer pre-filled with the specified id

The editor inserts a quiz component like this:

<instruqt-quiz id="load_balancer_knowledge"></instruqt-quiz>

The id must match the internal name of a quiz defined in your Activities.

Managing Quiz Components

Once inserted, quiz components show inline controls:

• Edit: Opens the quiz drawer to modify questions and settings
• Delete: Removes the quiz from the page (it won’t delete the quiz from the Activities)

Non-Existent Quizzes

If you reference a quiz that doesn’t exist, the editor shows a warning indicator with options to:

• Remove the reference from the markdown
• Create the missing quiz, which opens the quiz drawer pre-filled with the specified id

This helps you catch typos or missing quizzes before publishing your lab.

Managing Quiz Usage

The Activities tab shows which pages each quiz is used on, helping you understand how quizzes are distributed throughout your lab.

Quizzes without usage appear with an indicator, making it easy to identify unused assessments that might need to be added to pages or removed entirely.

Click on the “Used in 1 place”, which displays the page embedding this quiz.

This is particularly useful when:

• Updating quiz content: See which pages will be affected by your changes
• Removing quizzes: Verify no pages reference it before deletion
• Organizing content: Understand how assessments flow through your lab structure

Note

Each quiz can only be used once in your entire lab. If you need the same assessment on multiple pages, you’ll need to create separate quiz instances.

Deleting a Quiz

You can delete a quiz from the Activities tab by clicking the delete button on the quiz card. When you delete a quiz, a confirmation dialog appears to prevent accidental deletion.

However, you cannot delete a quiz that’s currently being used in your lab. If the quiz is embedded in one or more pages, the delete button will be disabled and show a tooltip message.

To delete a quiz that is in use:

1. Navigate to the quiz in the Activities tab
2. Click on the usage indicator (e.g., “Used in 1 place”) to see which pages reference it
3. Remove the quiz component from the page shown in the usage drawer
4. Return to the Activities tab and delete the quiz

This protection prevents breaking your lab by accidentally removing quizzes that users would encounter.

Summary

Quizzes transform passive content consumption into active knowledge assessment. By testing conceptual understanding at multiple levels, they help users internalize what they’ve learned and identify gaps in their knowledge.

Key points to remember:

• Create quizzes in the Activities tab with clear names and well-designed questions
• Use multiple question types to assess different kinds of understanding
• Embed quizzes in pages using the markdown editor’s quiz button
• Configure hints, answers, and attempts based on your learning objectives

For detailed information about creating tasks, see the Tasks documentation. For an overview of how activities work together, see the Activities overview.