The Tests & Quizzes tool allows you to create online assessments (i.e., tests, exams, quizzes, and surveys) for delivery via a web interface to your students or other groups. It was designed primarily to administer tests, but you may also create assessments to gather survey information or informal course feedback. Assessments are created question by question, or through already prepared text, or through import from a formatted XML file.

Tests & Quizzes offers many settings that allow you to control the layout, delivery, grading, student review options, and metadata of your assessment. These settings can be adjusted during the authoring. A bundle of values for the settings defines an Assessment Type, which you can store and re-use to set the settings of successive assessments. Common system-defined assessment types are already provided, and new ones can be created and saved.

Assessments in this tool fall into the two categories-- Working Copies and Published Copies, which represent the instructor and student phases, respectively. Authoring by the instructor takes place in Working Copies; a new assessment appears in that category.  The act of publication makes the assessment available to students and moves it to the Published Copies category, where submissions and results become available.