How to Create a Self-Grading Quiz in Microsoft Forms

Using Microsoft Forms to create a quiz gives you a convenient way to share that quiz with others over the Internet. If you want to simplify grading the quiz, create a self-grading or auto-grading quiz.

You know that quizzes aren’t just great for testing students at school. You can use a workplace quiz for trainees or employees, but also for fun occasions like a bridal shower or family night game. This makes the option to automatically grade quizzes in Microsoft Forms even more useful.

Self-assessment quiz and useful features

A self-assessment quiz allows the test-taker to see their correct and incorrect answers after submitting the quiz. You simply select “View Results” to view the score and answers.

Although not required, you can assign a point value to each question, which is useful when assigning a letter grade based on the score.

In addition, you can add feedback for specific answers to multiple choice questions. This is useful for frequently wrong answers to questions, as you can further explain why an answer is wrong.

As we create the following questions, we’ll go through the point and feedback features.

Set up the quiz in Microsoft Forms

You can set up a new quiz or edit an existing quiz to grade yourself, and you can use a blank quiz or one of the Microsoft Forms templates.

Visit Microsoft Forms and sign in with your Microsoft account. Select New Quiz at the top of the main page or use the More Templates link to choose a quiz template.

Give your quiz a name, a description and optionally a topic using the button at the top right.

Add questions to your quiz

When you’re ready to add the quiz questions, select Add new and the question type. You can use Choice, Text, Rating, Date, Ranking, Likert, and Net Promoter question types, although the first two types are the most commonly used for quizzes.

text questions

You probably want to start with basic questions like first and last name or email address. You can use the Text question type for this.

Select Text, enter the question and toggle the Required switch on if required.

For text questions, you can assign a value in the Points field. Although you probably won’t do this for questions like first name or last name, you can do this for other text questions in your quiz.

Additional settings for text questions include a subtitle, restrictions, math functions, and logical branching. Use the three dots at the bottom right of the question to view these settings. You can also turn on the Long Reply toggle to make room for longer replies.

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Text questions do not have a feedback option as the quiz taker types in their answer instead of choosing one from a list.

choice questions

For multiple-choice questions, select the “Choice” question type. Type the question and then each of the answers. You can use this for true, false or multiple answer questions. If you want to allow more than one answer to the question, turn on the multiple answer toggle.

Be sure to check the box next to the correct answer(s).

At the bottom left of the question, you can enter a value in the Points field.

To add feedback on a specific answer, hover over the answer and select the comment icon. Then enter the feedback in the field provided.

Additional choice question settings include shuffle options, a drop-down format, a math function, a subtitle, and logical branching. Use the three dots at the bottom right of the question to view these settings.

Make the quiz self-assessing

To have the quiz score itself, select the three dots at the top right of the More Form Settings page. Select “Settings”.

Turn on the switch at the top of the settings for Automatically show results.

Optionally, you can use the additional settings shown for a start and end date, displaying a progress bar and customizing the thank you message.

Preview your quiz

You can take the quiz at any time by selecting the “Preview” option in the top right.

This helps you view your questions and answers the way your quiz takers will see them. You can also see how feedback is displayed for multiple choice questions and how grading results are displayed upon submission.

Look at the answers

After your quiz is published or shared, you can view the answers on the Answers tab of the Microsoft Forms quiz page.

At the top you can see a summary with the number of answers and the average total score, and summaries of each question below.

Select “More Details” for a question to view each answer.

To view individual answers to all questions, select Review Answers and to publish the results, select Publish Results.

You can also open the responses in Microsoft Excel, print a summary of the responses, or create a summary link.

Now that you know how to create a self-assessment quiz, let’s see how to create a Microsoft Forms questionnaire.