PowerPoint is a multimedia courseware to create multimedia courses to enhance the classroom experience. Also, it is a great assessment tool to create quizzes. The VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) feature in PowerPoint gives educators an accessible way to easily create interactive multimedia quizzes. Here I will teach you how to create multiple-choice quizzes with VBA in PowerPoint with step-by-step illustrations.

Supposing you want to create a quiz with 10 multiple-choice questions and only one correct answer for each question. Take PowerPoint 2007 for example, here are the details.

Step 1 – New a blank presentation

Step 2 – Customize feedback to each question with macro

You may be confused with the first step because the first step in all of the related quiz tutorials online is creating questions and answers. In order to simplify the steps to create multiple-choice quizzes, in this tutorial, I bring forward the feedback customization.
1. Set security options
a. Before you can run VBA code, you need to set PowerPoint’s security options to permit macros to run.
b. Click the Office button -> PowerPoint options.
c. On the left of the PowerPoint Options dialog box, Click Trust Center, then click Trust Center Settings on right.

d. Click Macro Settings on the left of the dialog then choose Disable all macros with notification.

2. Start the VBA Editor
Please press Alt+F11 to start the VBA Editor.

3. Customize feedback to wrong answer and right answers
a. In the VBA editor, Choose Insert -> Module, and then insert a code module for feedback to wrong&right answers.
b. Customize feedback to wrong answers:
In the big blank space on the right, type the following 3 lines:

Sub Wrong()
MsgBox ("Sorry, that's not right. Please try again.")
End Sub

Customize feedback to right answers:
Sub Right()
MsgBox ("That's right! You are so smart!")
SlideShowWindows(1).View.Next
End Sub

This code for right answer is similar to the wrong answer, except for its “SlideShowWindows” line, which advances the quiz-taker to the next slide.

4. Return to PowerPoint from the VBA Editor
Please press Alt+F11 to return to PowerPoint. Leave the Visual Basic Editor open in the background. In PowerPoint, save the presentation, this will save the new macros as well.

Step 3 – Create questions and answers

1. Create question slides
Within PowerPoint, start a new slide using the Title Only slide layout. Type the first question in the title-text placeholder.

2. Add multiple-choice answers
a. From the Insert menu, click Autoshapes -> Action Buttons. Then choose the blank action button.
b. Resize and position the button on the slide.
c. Right click on the button, choose Add Text from the subsequent menu, and type the first answer. Now select the button, copy and paste the button for the remaining answers you’ll need on the slide.

3. Add macro to answers
a. Right click on the button, select Hyperlink. The Action Settings dialog box will appear.
b. Choose the Mouse Click tab, and from the “Action on click” area, check the “Run macro” radio button and select “Wrong” macro from the drop-down list. Click OK. Repeat the same setting to other remaining answers.

4. Duplicate the slide to as many as 10 slides
a. Duplicate the slide and substituent the questions and answers to other questions.
b. Repeat this step 3 to the right answers for each question, and select “Right” macro from the drop-down list.

Step 4 – Save the quiz presentation

Press F5 to preview the quiz presentation and save it to PPSX format. Now everything is ok, you create a quiz PowerPoint slideshow successfully.

Besides creating quiz with VBA via PowerPoint, you also can make more interactive Flash quizzes for your PowerPoint presentation with 3rd party Flah quiz maker that can generate stand-alone Flash quiz. QuizCreator is such a Flash quiz maker to help educators create multimedia Flash quizzes for teaching.

Multiple Choice quiz requires users to select the single correct choice among a set of possible choices. It is an easy way to implement quick assessment on learning performance. When making a multiple choice quiz you need to prepare the questions and answer options. To make the quiz a formative learning experience, you also need to customize feedbacks on each answer to give more additional information for the question.

This tutorial explains how to make a multiple choice quiz and grade automatically with Flash Quiz Maker. Please Make sure that QuizCreator is installed on your computer.

Add Multiple Choice question to quiz

1. Click Questions button in QuizCreator.
2. Select Multiple Choice. Then the question dialog pop up.
3. Enter your question in the Enter the Question field. You could insert equation, image and hyperlink to the question. If you want to format the question text, please click the corresponding button which is similar to office.
4. Enter the answer choices for the question in the Enter the Choice field. If you want to add more than 4 choices, please click “+” to add more than 6 choices. You also could click “-” to delete the useless choice.



5. Click the box in the Correct column next to the correct choice for this question.
6. Click save button to save the question.

Set question results feedback

It is important to offer feedback to the learners. You could customize the personalized question feedback based on the right or wrong choice. There are two feedback types for question, you could specify the feedback type according to your requirement.

1. At the question dialog, click Properties.
2. In the Feedback area, please click the drop-down menu to select the feedback type (By Question or By Answer).
3. By Question, allows you to provide feedback on each of question after user anwering the question. While, By Answer, allows you to provide overall feedback after user selecting an answer choice.



4. When you select the By Answer feedback, you should enter the specified feedback info for each anwer choice to the Feedback field next to the choice column.

Set automatically quiz marking and track result for free

QuizCreator allows you track quiz results for free via E-mail or QuizCreator Online.

If you want to get the quiz results through E-mail, please go to Publish -> Publish on My Computer, and tick “Send results to the specified e-mail address”.

If you want to track the quiz results free online, please publish the quiz for QMS.

Now, everything is ok, you could following the steps above to create more multipe questions and make an interactive multiple choice quiz with ease.

Multiple choice is a form of assessment in which test-takers are supposed to select the “best” answer/answers among a set of options. It plays an important role in educational testing and could be the most widely used question type on examinations nowadays.

There are many advantages to multiple choice quiz. If item writers are well trained and items are quality assured, it can be a very effective assessment technique. As multiple choice quiz is a good assessment tool, there are many strategies for writing multiple-choice test items online to test makers; “How to take a multiple choice test successfully” is also a hot discussion all the time to test-takers. Here, I will discuss the utilization of quiz makers to assist educators to make multiple choice quiz efficiently.

Why multiple choice quiz maker? In traditional paper-based test, making a different test on the same topic for each of your classes is impossible unless you retype everything again, LOL. At the same time, randomize the order of the questions and options is time-wasting and trivial, especially when the quiz includes many questions. There are many limitations with manual paper-based test. However, with multiple choice quiz maker you can do all these tasks very easily. It is wise to have such multiple choice quiz makers at your fingertips.

Which quiz maker fits you best? No definite answers. It depends on test’s form and specified features you required. When we refer to the quiz maker to create multiple choice test, there are two forms. One is online test, the other is printable paper test. It will be a good quiz maker for multiple choice if it supports both forms. Talking of specified features, shuffling questions and answers yet selecting question at random would be ideal to save time and low the cheating risk. Next, I will explain why these factors should be considered when you select the quiz maker to make multiple choice test.

Test created can be used for online testing

Online testing is necessary for implementing eLearning, especially in this Web 2.0 era. It will lower much training expenditures in long term. You don’t have to cost so much time to mark examination papers, online testing makes marking automatic. So the ability to allow users to create a quiz for online testing is vital for choosing a quiz tool.

Test created can be generated to print for paper test

Online testing isn’t always effectual if there is no Internet available. Besides, online testing doesn’t do a good job for subjective item test. Many certification tests also adopt this test form(paper-based test). So, paper-based test feature should also be consider in test tool selection.

Randomize and shuffle questions and answers allowed

Reducing the chance of cheating and time is the obvious advantages for randomizing and shuffling questions and answers. For making paper test, you could make a different test on the same topic for each of your classes. It will be big time-saving. For online testing, shuffling choices out of question bank makes test different each time when one test-taker attempts the quiz. So this makes it a little harder for students to copy from each other, and this also makes the print impossible, a good way to reduce the chance of cheating.

In addition, reusability is another consideration when you pick out a multiple choice quiz maker. Therefore, when you want to select the right quiz maker from numerous quiz tools, you could take these above aspects into consideration. Of course, the most important element is  meeting your needs. This tutorial  will show you how to use QuizCreator to make multimedia multiple choice quizzes.

QuizCreator supplies an easy way to create interactive Flash quiz for users, Adobe Flash also lets users make interactive Flash quizzes too. This tutorial will guide you how to create interactive drop-down multiple-choice quiz. It is just a sample of the workflow you’ll use while authoring in Adobe Flash CS4. You can view the Flash quiz created by Adobe Flash below.

Step 1 – Create a new document
a. Choose File > New.
b. In the New Document dialog box, selcet Flash File (ActionScript 2.0) and then Click OK.

Step 2 – Document settings
Right-click on the stage, selcet Document Properties, then the Document Properties dialog box appears. It displays the current Stage size setting as 550 × 400 pixels, and the Background color swatch is set to white. You can change the size and color of the Stage as you want.

Step 3 – Import image to the stage
Choose File > Import > Import to Stage, and then select the image you want. You also could click Ctrl+R to import image.

Step 4 – Add the multiple choice question to the Stage
a. Select the Text tool (T).
b. In the Property inspector (Window > Properties), select Static Text type to specify the type of text field, and then input the question ” What was Michael’s first song to air on MTV? “. You also could set the font size, family and color of the text.

Step 5 – Add ComboBox component
a. Select Window > Components.

b. Double-click ComboBox in the Components panel.
c. Select the component on the Stage, and name the instance name as box in the properties panel.

Step 6 – Add answer options
a. Select Window > Component Inspector. On the Component Inspector, click data, then the Value dialog box appears.

b. Click + to add answer options, and then replace the defaultValue as answer options, here the options are: thriller, billie jean, bad and the way you make me feel. After that, click OK.

c. On the Component Inspector, click labels, then the Value dialog box appears. Please following the same steps above to add the values by adding the + button.

Step 7 – Add submit button
a. Select Window > Common Libraries > Buttons, then the Libraries buttons dialog pop up.
b. Choose a button and drag it to stage.

c. Double-click the button, and then rename the button as Submit. You also could set the size of the button at the Propertites panel.

Step 8 – Insert a keyframe and delete the elements on the frame

Step 9 – At keyframe 2, insert a dynamic text box
a. Select the Text tool (T).
b. In the Property inspector (Window > Properties), select Dynamic Text type.
c. Draw a rectangular text box, this is the feedback area when quiz-takers choose the right or wrong answer.
d. Select the rectangular text box, and input jg to the Variable box at the Properties panel.

Step 10 – At At keyframe 2, add Back button
Just following the same steps at step 8 to add button rename the button as Back.

Step 11 – Open the Action panel and add scripts
a. Add scripts to Back button.Click the Back button, input the following scripts:
on (release) {
gotoAndStop(1);
jg = “”; }

b. Add scripts to Submit button.Click the Submit button, input the following scripts:
on (press) {
if (box.getValue() == “billie jean”) {
jg = “Sorry, wrong answer! Please select again!”;
}
if (box.getValue() == “bad”) {
jg = ” Sorry, wrong answer! Please select again!”;
}
if (box.getValue() == “the way you make me feel”) {
jg = ” Sorry, wrong answer! Please select again!”;
}
if (box.getValue() == “thriller”) {
jg = “Congratulations! Triller is Michael’s first song to air on MTV”;
}
gotoAndStop(2);
}
c. Add scripts on frame 1. Click frame 1, input the following scritps:
stop();

Step 12 – After these steps, the question is created. You could follow these steps to create more multiple choice questions

If these steps are too complicate to you, you can choose Wondershare QuizCreator to help you, it is a good Flash quiz maker that helps everyone create multiple Flash quiz without programming skills.