Blackboard Ultra (Faculty) - Analytics: Question Analysis

Accessing Question Analysis

To access Question Analysis for a test or assignment in Blackboard Ultra, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to your course in Blackboard Ultra.
2. In the course content area, locate the graded assessment you want to analyze.
3. Click the ellipsis (...) and select Question Analysis from the drop-down menu.
   
   
   
   
4. Click the Rerun Report button to generate the most up-to-date report.

Interpreting Question Analysis Data

Question Analysis provides several metrics for each question. Here's how to interpret the key data points:

1. Discrimination: This indicates how well a question differentiates between students who know the subject matter and those who don't. Values range from -1.0 to +1.0.
   • Good: Generally, a discrimination value of 0.3 or higher is considered good.
   • Fair: Values between 0.1 and 0.3 suggest the question could be improved.
   • Poor: Values below 0.1 indicate the question is not effectively differentiating students.
2. Difficulty: This represents the percentage of students who answered the question correctly.
   • Easy: A high difficulty value (e.g., above 80%) suggests the question might be too easy.
   • Medium: Difficulty values between 30% and 70% are generally considered optimal.
   • Hard: A low difficulty value (e.g., below 30%) suggests the question might be too difficult or poorly worded.
3. Graded Attempts: The total number of graded attempts for the question.
4. Average Score: The average score received on the question.

Using Question Analysis to Improve Assessments

Here are some ways you can use Question Analysis to improve your assessments:

• Identify poorly performing questions: Focus on questions with low discrimination or difficulty values.
• Revise or remove problematic questions: If a question has poor metrics, consider revising its wording, content, or answer options. In some cases, it might be best to remove the question entirely.
• Ensure alignment with learning objectives: Use Question Analysis to confirm that your assessments are accurately measuring student understanding of the course material.
• Provide feedback to students: Use insights from Question Analysis to provide targeted feedback to students on areas where they struggled.

Considerations

• Question Analysis is only available for assessments with automatically graded questions (e.g., multiple choice, true/false, matching). It is not available for essay questions or manually graded items.
• A sufficient number of student attempts is required for Question Analysis to be generated. A general rule is at least five attempts.

Need Additional Support?

This guide aims to provide useful information, but as technology changes, interfaces or steps might vary. Please use the Comment button to let us know if anything differs from your experience. Your feedback helps us keep this information accurate. Thank you!