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Safely Create Tests with Text and Images

Many people use MS Word to create their tests and surveys for Blackboard. However content from Word can have unpredictable effects on Blackboard - including inaccurate scoring or answer collation. This is because Word embeds some HTML in what you cut and paste and incomplete HTML can break the way the quiz works. The only really safe way to cut and paste content into Blackboard is through web-safe applications that strip out the html.

Copy your Text with Notepad

Notepad is a text tool available on most Windows machines.

Instructions for saving your Word text to Notepad:

  1. Find Notepad and open it. Usually it's at Start, All Programs, Accessories, Notepad. A blank notepad page appears.
  2. Highlight the entire Word document, press Cntrl-C to copy the content.
  3. Go to Notepad and press Cntrl-V to paste the content.
  4. Note that all your text but no pictures are shown. Proceed to the next section to create the image files from your document, or skip down if you have no images.

Copy your Images with a Screen Capture tool

Our favorites include Jing (free) or Snagit ($38 educational pricing), both from Techsmith. Download one of these tools and learn to use it.

Jing instructions for doing a screen capture:

  1. Jing Sun Symbol
    Install Jing. The normal installation puts a little sun symbol at the top of your screen.
  2. Make sure that the Word document (or other source) that you are capturing from is visible on your screen, not underneathc something else.
  3. Select the left-most arm with the x-mark to do a screen capture.
  4. Click the top left corner then drag your mouse to highlight the area immediately around the picture you want to use. Release the mouse button.
  5. Select the left-most button in the Jing tool bar - the Capture Image button. Your image is displayed with some simple edit tools to the left of the inset screen so you can highlight or mark up the image if you wish before saving.
  6. When you're ready to save the image, select the disk icon in the bottom tool bar and save the image in a clearly named file on your desktop or other known place. You may wish to create a folder for all the images for this quiz and save all the images there.
  7. Repeat this for all the images in your document.

Put it all together in Blackboard

Add the test (Control Panel, Test Manager, Add Test) and create the test you will be using. Once it is created press the modify button next to the next test.

  1. Select Creation Settings Button
    Select Creation Settings and then verify that the appropriate Add images, files and external links choices are checked
  2. Press Submit to return to the Test Canvas
  3. Add the correct question type (e.g. Multiple Choice) and press Go
  4. Press the expand / shrink edit options button
    An edit screen is displayed. Press the arrow buttons in the tool box if you don't have all the options you need
  5. Go to Notepad and Copy (Cntrl-C) the question text for this question. Paste (Cntrl-V) it into the edit box and set font or whatever other edit parameters you want
  6. Go to File and select the Browse... button to select the image you want to include in this question
  7. Go to Action and select Display image within the page
  8. Select the appropriate Options such as Answer Numbering etc
  9. Copy (Cntrl-C) each question from Notepad and paste (Cntrl-V) into Blackboard in the answer boxes
  10. Repeat 9 until all answers are entered
  11. Press Submit
  12. Repeat 3 through 11 until all questions and answers have been added.
  13. Press OK