How to Create a Course in LifterLMS: From Blank Page to Published
Build one LifterLMS course from start to finish: the course post, Course Options, the outline, lesson content, a quiz, an access plan, publishing…
Read articleA LifterLMS quiz takes a few minutes to build. Deciding how it should behave takes longer: what counts as a pass, how many tries a student gets, and whether a failed attempt stops them from moving on.
This tutorial covers both. It walks through building a quiz in the course builder, then explains every setting that changes how the quiz is graded and retaken. Labels are quoted as they appear in the plugin at the time of writing.
It assumes you already have a course with at least one lesson. If you do not, start with our guide to setting up LifterLMS step by step.
How a quiz fits into a course
A LifterLMS quiz is never a free-standing item in the syllabus. It belongs to a lesson, and each lesson holds one quiz. That relationship drives three things you should know before you build:
- The lesson's button changes. A lesson with a published quiz shows a Take Quiz button where students would otherwise mark the lesson complete.
- Finishing the quiz completes the lesson. Whether a failed attempt counts depends on one lesson setting, covered below.
- The quiz inherits the lesson's restrictions. If the lesson is locked by a drip date or a prerequisite, so is its quiz.
A final exam is therefore a lesson of its own, usually the last one in the course, with a short introduction and a quiz attached.
Create the quiz in the course builder
- Go to Courses, hover over the course, and click Builder.
- Find the lesson and click its quiz icon. The tooltip reads "Add a quiz".
- Click Create New Quiz. Add Existing Quiz is there if you want to reuse one you built elsewhere.
- Give the quiz a title. Add a Description if students need instructions before they start.
- Click Add Question and pick a question type.
- Type the question, then fill in the choices. Click the letter marker beside a choice to flag it as the correct one.
- Set the points for the question in the small number field on its header.
- Repeat for each question. Drag questions to reorder them, or use the clone icon to copy one you want to vary.
- Switch the quiz's Published toggle on. A draft quiz is invisible to students.
- Click Save changes.
Each question can also carry a longer description, an image, and a video. Those options sit inside the expanded question, alongside Result Clarifications: a short explanation shown on the results screen to students who got that question wrong. Use it. A wrong answer with a reason attached teaches more than a red cross.
Core question types and what the add-on adds
The question picker groups types into basic and advanced. The basic ones ship with the free plugin. The advanced ones are visible in the picker but need the paid Advanced Quizzes add-on.
| Question type | Where it comes from | Grading |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple Choice | Core | Automatic |
| Picture Choice | Core | Automatic |
| True or False | Core | Automatic |
| Fill in the Blank, Reorder Items, Reorder Pictures, Scale | Advanced Quizzes | Depends on the type; check the add-on documentation |
| Short Answer, Long Answer, File Upload, Code | Advanced Quizzes | Reviewed by an instructor |
Two details about the core types matter in practice:
- Multiple Choice can have more than one right answer. Turn on Multiple Correct Choices inside the question. Grading is all or nothing: the student earns the points only by selecting every correct choice and no wrong ones.
- Content is not a question. The picker also offers a Content item, which inserts an unscored block of text between questions. It is useful for a case study that several questions refer to.
If your assessment depends on written answers or submitted files, decide that before you build. Our article on LifterLMS assignments compares the Assignments add-on with quiz-based answers.
Points, passing percentage and how the grade is worked out
Every new question is worth 1 point, and you can set any whole number from 0 to 99. The quiz header shows a running Total Points.
The grade is a percentage: points earned divided by points available. Make an important question worth more by giving it more points, not by writing it twice.
In the quiz settings, Passing Percentage is the minimum grade that counts as a pass. A new quiz starts at 65. Set it deliberately. On a five-question quiz with equal points, 65 percent means four correct answers, because three is only 60 percent.
A question worth 0 points is recorded but not graded. That is the way to collect an opinion or a self-rating inside a quiz without affecting the score.
Across attempts, LifterLMS uses the student's best attempt as the quiz grade. That grade becomes the lesson's grade, and the course grade is an average of lesson grades weighted by each lesson's Lesson Weight. Raise the weight on the lesson that holds the final exam if it should count for more than the practice quizzes.
Attempts, time limits and retakes
These switches live in the quiz's settings panel, above the questions.
| Setting | What it does | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Limit Attempts | Caps how many times a student can take the quiz | Off by default, which means unlimited attempts |
| Time Limit | Sets a maximum number of minutes per attempt, from 1 to 360 | Students see a countdown. When it reaches zero the attempt is submitted as it stands |
| Can be resumed | Lets a student leave an attempt and pick it up again | Only offered when there is no time limit. The quiz documentation describes a 24-hour window for resuming |
| Show Correct Answers | Reveals the right answer on the results screen | Only for questions the student answered incorrectly |
| Randomize Question Order | Shuffles questions on each attempt | Content items stay where you placed them |
| Disable Retake | Closes the quiz once the student has passed | Stops students from retaking a passed quiz to raise the score |
Before starting, students see a summary with the minimum passing grade, their remaining attempts, the number of questions, and the time limit if one is set.
Think about Show Correct Answers together with attempts. With unlimited attempts and the answers on display, a student can pass on the second try without learning anything. For a quiz that certifies something, combine a small attempt limit with clarifications that explain the idea without handing over the answer.
Shuffling the order is as far as core randomization goes. Drawing a random set of questions from a larger pool is the Question Bank feature, and that is part of Advanced Quizzes.
Require a pass before students move on
Two settings work together here, and neither is in the quiz itself.
- Open the settings of the lesson that holds the quiz and check Require Passing Grade on Quiz. When it is on, only a passing attempt completes the lesson. When it is off, any finished attempt completes it, pass or fail.
- Open the next lesson's settings, enable Prerequisite, and select the quiz lesson. Now the next lesson stays locked until the quiz lesson is complete.
New lessons created in the builder start with the passing requirement switched on, but check it instead of assuming. Our guide to drip content and prerequisites covers the ordering rules in full.
One trap: a required pass plus an attempt limit can strand a student. Someone who fails every allowed attempt cannot complete the lesson and cannot continue. Decide in advance how you will handle it. You can delete an attempt from the reporting screens to hand one back, or raise the limit. Marking the lesson complete for the student from the admin does not get around it: while the requirement is on, the lesson will not complete without a passing attempt.
Review attempts and give feedback
Go to LifterLMS > Reporting > Quizzes and click a quiz. You get three tabs:
- Overview shows attempts, average grade, and passed and failed attempts for the period you select.
- Attempts lists every attempt with the student, grade, and start and end dates.
- Students Without Attempts lists enrolled students who have not tried the quiz yet.
Open an attempt to see each answer, the points earned, and the time taken. From there:
- Click Start a Review.
- Type a note in the remarks field under any answer. With instructor-graded question types from Advanced Quizzes, this is also where you award the points.
- Click Save Review.
The student sees your remarks on their results screen, next to the answer. Delete Attempt on the same screen removes an attempt entirely, which also gives the attempt back if the quiz is limited.
Students can reopen their own results from the quiz page, where a menu lists their previous attempts, and from My Grades on the Student Dashboard. Our article on LifterLMS reporting covers the rest of the reporting screens.
Test it, then decide what comes next
Take the quiz as a real test student, not as an administrator. Fail it on purpose, check what the results screen reveals, use up the attempts, then pass it and confirm the next lesson opens.
Once quizzes work, the usual next step is to tie a result to something: an email, an achievement, or a certificate awarded when a student passes.
Help is worth having when the assessment rules go beyond the settings above: grading logic the plugin does not offer, results pushed to another system, or a large question set that needs importing. That is the kind of work our LifterLMS customization service handles, and you can describe what you need at any time.
