Are your questions already in a document, or do you prefer working in a spreadsheet to an editor? Then there's no need to retype anything. Sparqel reads your questions from Excel, and can also give you a whole quiz back as an Excel file. Here's how it works.
Step 1: download the template
Open a quiz in the editor and, in the three-dots menu, choose Download Excel template. You get an Excel file with three sheets:
- Quiz: the title and description.
- Questions: one row per question, with sample questions already filled in.
- How to: what goes in each column.
The column headings are in your language, but that doesn't matter when importing. Sparqel recognises question types, yes and no, points and margins in Dutch, English and Spanish.
Step 2: fill in your questions
Each row is one question. The most important columns:
- Type: for example quiz, true or false, type answer, puzzle, slider, poll or slide.
- Question: the question itself, or the title of a slide.
- Answer 1 to 6: the answers. For a puzzle, put the pieces here in the right order; for Type answer, the variants that count as correct.
- Correct: for a quiz, the number of the correct answer, or several numbers separated by commas. For True or false, simply true or false.
- Time and Points: how many seconds, and whether the question gives standard, double or no points.
For a slider, fill in the minimum, maximum, the correct value, a unit if you like and the margin. For a scale, the labels for low and high.
Step 3: import the file
In the editor, choose Import questions from Excel in the same menu, or use the Import button in your library to turn the file straight into a new quiz. You first see what's in the file, before anything changes. A quiz can contain up to 200 questions.
If something in a row isn't right, you see exactly which row and why, for example an unknown question type or text where a number should be. That row is skipped, and the rest goes ahead as normal. Small issues are fixed automatically, with a warning: text that's too long is shortened, and a time that doesn't suit the question type is adjusted.
Images and video
You add images in the editor after importing. For questions that require an image, such as a Pin answer, you get a notification.
Exporting a whole quiz
With Export quiz to Excel in the same menu, you download your quiz as an Excel file. Handy as a backup, to share questions with a colleague, or to edit lots of questions at once in a spreadsheet.
The last column contains a block of data that you don't need to change. It holds things like the images and the area for a pin question. If you import the file again later, everything comes back, including what you changed in Excel.
Tips
- Start from the template rather than a blank file. That way the columns are right from the start.
- Add a slide for each round, with slide as the type and the name of the round as the question.
- Have a colleague send in questions using the template, and import everything in one go.
- Export your quiz before making big changes. Then you always have a version to fall back on.