How to Write Effective Questions and Answers:

Before you start creating content, look over your assets!

Is the document the most current version? Do the materials cover everything that needs to be in the training content? Confirm your source materials are good to go before they're used for content creation.

Remember: Your learning content is only as good as your assets.

When collecting assets, take some time to look them over. Familiarizing yourself with the materials is vital to ensuring your Q&A makes the most sense and will help you understand how to approach each subject.

Try and switch up the style of your questions! Including various questions will keep your learners engaged, so we recommend using as many different types as possible.

For example, if you have lots of “fill in the blank”-style questions, you could rephrase some of the questions like so:

A fill-in-the-blank question such as:

Could instead be written as:

You might also consider using these types of questions:

Make sure you are using terminology that ALL of your learners will understand.

Acronyms and corporate jargon can confuse new employees and distract them from their questions, ultimately detracting from their learning experience.

"Do non-profit organizations address many kinds of issues?"

"Do NPOs address many kinds of issues?"

Exceptions can occur if an acronym is presented and will be a central term of a Course.

Should you wish to teach learners what an acronym stands for within the Steps themselves, that is welcome! (LemonadeLXP is all about learning, after all!)

Ensure your learners know what you're talking about before including an acronym!

Be specific in your answers. Avoid using terms that make the answer vague or approximate, as they will make it either incredibly obvious or end up with more than one valid answer.

"There are over/up to ____ Step training games in LemonadeLXP."

"There are approximately ____ Step training games in LemonadeLXP."

"There are exactly ____ Step training games in LemonadeLXP."

“On average, people live up to a maximum of ____ years.”

Learners tend to click “all of the above” without reading the options as it's usually the correct answer (and a dead giveaway)!

We have a step type ideally suited for this type of QA: MultiChoice! MultiChoice rounds will have your learners select each correct answer individually rather than simply have them choose the one “all of the above” option, making it more interactive and, therefore, more likely for them to remember what they’re learning!

Ensure you never include “all of the above” in a MultiChoice round. Since MC rounds have the learner select several correct answers at once, expecting them to pick only “all of the above” when other selectable answers are correct will be confusing and frustrating - it’s best not to include it as an option altogether!

When you have several questions needing an “all of the above” answer, and you’d instead use a step type other than MultiChoice:

The goal is to create microlearning rounds! Excessive text in answer options makes the content hard to consume, and learners may lose focus.

Hot Tip - Format your questions so that answers can be a few words or a short sentence. It’s better to have more text in the question than individual answers!

“Answer options should:”

“To keep learners engaged, answer options should be:”

When faced with several answers, learners often choose the longest one without even reading it, believing that the more detail = the more likely it's right.

To make the correct answer less obvious:

Have one incorrect answer about the same length as the correct answer, and the remaining two short! Or vice versa!

Hot Tip: This is especially helpful in a MultiChoice round if one correct answer is long and the correct answer is short - have the incorrect answers mirror those lengths!

A1 - "This is the correct answer, and it's undeniable due to its excessive length!"

A2 - "Wrong answer."

A3 - "Wrong again."

A4 - "Still wrong."

A1 - "This is the correct answer, and it's undeniable due to its excessive length!"

A2 - "This is not the correct answer, but as its length mirrors the correct one, it's hard to tell!"

A3 - "Wrong answer."

A4 - "Wrong again."

When it comes to questions involving numbers, avoid always making the highest (or lowest, or second-highest, etc.) number the correct answer.

Reusing answer options is a great way to highlight differences (or similarities) between concepts, terms, items, etc. - this is especially great for both MultiChoice and Streak rounds!

Here's an example of how two (or more!) questions could "reuse" the same answers in a MultiChoice round:

Q1 - “What are good clothing options for a Canadian Winter?”

Q2 - “What are good clothing options for Summer’s day?”

Note that if you are reusing options too often, you should instead consider putting your content in a Sorting Step!

In many step types, feedback will be given to a learner when they answer a question correctly or incorrectly.

Correct feedback is an excellent opportunity to reinforce the correct answer because it's safe to assume all learners will eventually get it right - that's the goal!

Incorrect feedback should typically state the correct answer without expanding on it because it's not guaranteed that all learners will see it - some may answer correctly on the first try! Since the goal is for learners to learn as they play, always give them the correct answer to understand what it is for next time and leave it at that.

To ensure learners see what they should, such as introducing new information on the question's topic, include that information in correct feedback (and keep incorrect feedback simple)!

For example:

Q (with A): "A [banana] is a type of fruit."