This article will discuss the various ways you can prevent user access to a quiz, along with how quizzes affect course progression. You can also award certificates, use time limits, set a passing score, limit quiz retakes and more.
NOTE: Quiz access and progression settings are set on a quiz-by-quiz basis. They cannot be set globally.
Quiz Access Settings #
Aside from course progression, there are two main ways you can restrict access to a LearnDash quiz.
- Navigate to LearnDash LMS > Quizzes
- Click on the quiz you’d like to edit
- Click on the Settings tab
- Locate the Quiz Access Settings section
NOTE: If Shared Course Steps is enabled, the Associated Course and Associated Lesson settings will not appear. Go to the Course Builder to associate a Quiz with a Course.
Associated Course #
You can associate a quiz with a specific course from this setting. The quiz will reflect on that course’s Builder.
- Next to Associated Course, click inside the drop-down
- Search for and select the name of the course
- Click on the course to associate your current quiz with the course
Any changes in the association that you make on the course builder on the specific course for this quiz will also reflect the changes here.
Associated Lesson #
In addition to associating the quiz with a course with the above options, you can also associate the quiz with a lesson or topic. The quiz will reflect on the course’s Builder.
- Next to Associated Lesson, click inside the drop-down
- Search for and select the name of the lesson or topic.
- Click on the lesson or topic to associate your current quiz with the course.
Any changes in the association that you make on the course builder on the specific course, lesson, or topic for this quiz will also reflect the changes here.
Quiz Release Schedule #
You can drip-feed your quizzes to your users using this option. You have three choices:
- Immediately – The quiz is made available upon course enrollment.
- Enrollment-based: The quiz will be available X days after the user enrolls in the course.
NOTE: If you set “1 Day”, it means 24 hours, not the next day at midnight. Similarly, 2 days is 48 hours, and so on. - Specific date – The quiz will be available on a specified date.
Blended Learning #
The External Quiz option is applicable when you offer Blended Learning. It is when you teach an online-based curriculum but have a requirement (from either the government or for regulatory reasons) for an in-person exam or classroom-based learning.
Enabling this option gives you the following:
- Ability to mark a quiz as Virtual or In-Person
- Ability to bypass the attendance requirement of a quiz, either Virtual or In-Person
- Ability to mark a student as “attended” in their user profile by an admin or a group leader
How To Use This Feature? #
- In the quiz settings page, toggle the External Quiz switch to ON.
- Under Type, select Virtual if the quiz takes place in a virtual setting, e.g., Zoom, or In-Person if the quiz takes place in-person.
- Under Require Attendance, select Yes if attendance is required or No if it is not required.
- When set to Yes, the student cannot continue to the next course step. This applies only when Course Progression is set to Linear, and the quiz is attached to a lesson with the Require Attendance setting set to Yes on the lesson settings page. The admin or group leader must mark the lesson as complete from the User Profile page in the backend.
- When set to No, attendance is not required to continue in the course. The Skip Event button is available for the student to click to proceed to the next step of the course. This is equivalent to the Mark Complete button.
Quiz Prerequisites #
You can select one or more quizzes as prerequisites for a quiz. The quiz(zes) you choose must be completed prior to starting this quiz.
- Next to Quiz Prerequisites, click inside the box
- Search for and select the name of a quiz
- Click on that quiz to add it as a prerequisite
If a user tries to access a quiz before completing the prerequisites, they will see a message on the quiz page listing the name(s) of the quiz(s) that must be completed first.
Registered Users Only #
You can also choose to only allow registered users to access the quiz. Simply check the box to enable this setting. Common uses for this setting include:
- If you’re administering a quiz via shortcode on a non-course page
- If you have a quiz on an “Open” course (see course access modes), but you only want authenticated users to be able to take the quiz
Quiz Progression & Restriction Settings #
These settings discuss various options for quiz passing percentages, awarding certificates, time limits and retakes.
Passing Score #
The passing score represents the score, as a percentage, that the user must attain before the quiz is considered complete. This will prevent the user from moving forward in the course until they have passed the quiz.
This must be a number between 0 and 100.
TIP: Set this value to 0 if you want the user to be able to continue the course as soon as the quiz is submitted, regardless of their score.
Quiz Certificates #
If you’d like to award the user a certificate for this quiz, you can choose one here. You need to create a certificate first.
- Click the “Search or select a certificate…” dropdown
- Choose a certificate from the list
After you select a certificate, you have the option to choose a score that the user is required to attain in order to be awarded the certificate. This may differ from the passing score above. For example, a user could pass the quiz with an 80% score, but might be required to attain a 90% score to be awarded a certificate.
Enable Quiz Saving #
This option enables the Quiz Saving feature, which lets users save their quizzes to the server so that when they return later, their progress is preserved and they can continue from where they left off.
Once enabled, specify the time interval at which the quiz’s progress will be saved in the “Save Quiz data to the server” box. The user’s quiz progress will be saved automatically within the specified interval.
Note: There is currently an issue affecting some users’ ability to interact with LearnDash quizzes, particularly around the “Check Answer” and “Quiz Saving” functionality. The most common cause is the “Save quiz progress” setting having an autosave interval that is too short (e.g., 5 seconds), which can cause incomplete data writes, especially under heavy website traffic.
What you can expect to see with this issue:
1. The “Check Answer” button not responding
2. Quiz attempts appear locked or unclickable
3. The appearance that quiz answers are saved when they are not
What can you do to prevent this issue from occurring?
Set your autosave interval to a higher value, between 30 and 60 seconds, to reduce risk on higher-traffic websites.
Solution: LearnDash Support can provide a plugin that identifies and removes old metadata, helping to resolve this issue. Please reach out to our support team if you experience this, and we will gladly provide the plugin download and instructions for using it.
Quiz Retakes #
Here you can control the number of quiz retakes that a user can have. Leave this setting disabled to allow unlimited retakes.
To put a limit on the number of retakes allowed:
- Enable the toggle to Restrict Quiz Retakes
- Enter the number of retakes allowed next to Number of Retries Allowed
- You can set the retake limit to apply to all users, only registered users, or only anonymous users
- (Optional) Check the box to use cookies to track retakes for anonymous (non-logged-in) users
If you want to reset the quiz retakes per user:
- On your WordPress dashboard, navigate to the Users > All Users
- Click on the user you want to reset the quiz retakes for
- Remove the desired quiz under the “You have taken the following quizzes:” section.
After doing that, it will reset the quiz attempts for that specific user.
Question Completion #
Enable this setting to require the user to answer all questions. They will not be able to submit the quiz until all questions are answered.
Leave disabled to allow users to submit the quiz without answering all questions. Questions not answered will be marked incorrect.
Time Limit #
Enable the Time Limit toggle if you’d like to limit the amount of time a user can spend on the quiz. They can only take the quiz during the specified time duration. The quiz will be automatically submitted after your specified amount of time.
Next to Automatically Submit After, enter a time in the format HH:MM:SS (hours, minutes, seconds). Here’s an example of a 1 hour, 30 minute time limit.
Leave this setting disabled for the user to have an unlimited amount of time to complete the quiz.