Educators can create activities from scratch or grab pre-made content from the Formative library, you can also use our AI to generate an activity.

In this article we will focus on the creation of new activities, covering:

A quicker way to navigate items on the activity's Editor has been introduced recently. Using the Navigation Side-Bar teachers can quickly jump to individual items, take bulk actions such as copying or deleting items, and even re-order items on the activity. Head on over here to read more about this new and exciting feature!

A new cleaner and more organized editor experience is coming to Formative soon! Head over to your account's settings page to opt in to testing this experience in your account. Read more about the collapsible editor view and functions here!

If you have other content items you'd like to add to an activity, such as audio files, please review the corresponding help article in this linked support section.

Do not worry! You can add content items at any stage when building an activity, read on to find out more about adding content items!

When creating a new activity, start by giving it a title. Simply click the generic "Untitled Activity/Formative" in the banner and type in a different title.

To add general instructions to your activity click on "Add Instructions" and enter instructions to your students and/or teacher notes that will be visible only to you and other teachers who collaborate on the activity with you. Instructions and notes may include content items such as files, videos, audio recordings, images, emojis, etc. (See here for more details on teacher notes)

The header view also provides the option to tag the activity. Tagging the activity will assist in data collection and reporting.

Clicking the styling icon will offer the option to change the banner's color or upload a background image to it (ideal image size 1000x400). You can select a background from our existing gallery, upload an image from your device of Google Drive, take a photo with your device's camera, or search for an image directly on Google Image.

The body of a formative can include various content and question types, including enhanced uploaded content. Paid Teacher plan / School & District license users also have the ability to divide their activity into sections.

Adding any of these items to an activity begins by clicking the big blue + button.

After clicking the blue plus button you can choose any of the available options under the Add Item tab.

Note: The question types available to Free Teacher account holders are: Free Response, Multiple Choice, Multiple Selection, Short Answer, Drawing, and True Or False.

All other question types are part of the extended features set available to Paid Teacher plan/School & District license members.

You can add a question anywhere in the activity, even after you've already created others. The "+" button is located before, after and in between each question.

You also have the option to generate questions using ChatGPT AI under the 'Create with AI' tab.

Sometimes it's faster to duplicate a question and then tweak it!
​
Simply click on the 3 dots next to the point value, and select "copy" to duplicate the question:

You can also use AI to generate a new question that will be similar to the one you had just created. Click on the 3 dots next to the point value, and select "Generate similar" from the dropdown menu.

NOTE: Changing the type of a question that already has student responses will delete the question and the responses. If your activity is shared with other teachers as collaborators, their students' answers will be removed as well. If needed, you will be able to locate the original question in your deleted items list and restore it along with the answers. When restored, the original question will re-appear as the last item on the activity and not in it's original place.

To change the question type, click on the question type listed at the top left corner of the question box, and choose the new type from the dropdown menu. Then, confirm your request to change the question type.

File uploads of less than 100 MB are supported in all question types. Add any file type for students to download by clicking the plus button at the far right of your question's text bar, and choosing "File". You can upload a file directly from your device or grab one from your Google Drive. Students can also add a file upload to Free Response questions.

Start by clicking the big blue + button and then "Library + Item Bank" under the 'Add Item' tab:

You can edit and duplicate your grabbed questions as much as you like!

Library items show the Standard tagged by the author along with a brief description upon hovering. This will be helpful when selecting the appropriate item to assign.

You can choose to Add or Dismiss the standards set in your own use of the activity

If you're a member of an organization with a School & District license that has purchased our Item Bank Add-on, please review this article to learn how to add Item Bank questions to your activity from the Item Bank Tab

After clicking the blue plus button, you can choose any of the available options under "Content".

You can add media between other items/questions on your activity. Simply click on the + icon in between questions or content you've already created and select from the menu that appears:

NOTE: If a attempting to upload an unsafe file extension (ie .exe files) or other non-supported files, a "That file is not supported" notification will appear

Note: When grabbing items from Google Drive there is a limit of 25 pages per upload as well as a limit of 25MB file size per upload. If your slide deck or file is larger, please split it into smaller chunks and upload each portion separately.

** Free Teacher plan users have an uploading limit of 20 pages of media content per month.

To start, click on the "+" icon and choose the "Upload Images or Documents" tab
​

To add questions that will correspond with specific areas within your uploaded image/document, simply click anywhere on the image/document where you would like your question to be associated with. Select the desired question type from the list. Numbers will appear on the image/document and the corresponding questions will then appear on the right side, where you can tag standards, set an answer key for auto-grading and set the point value.
You can also use AI to generate the questions.

Need to adjust the location of the number on the image/document? Simply hold and drag it.

To remove a question, click the 3 dots next to it and choose "Delete"

Questions can also be moved around. You have the ability to switch the order of questions within the "Enhance" question type, or to move them out from the question type to be stand alone questions on the general activity. In a similar manner you can also move a stand alone question on the general activity into the "Enhance" question type.

To move a question to another location within the Enhance question type or outside of it:

To move a stand alone question into an Enhance question type:

Note: The scroll bar is separate for both the document and the questions so that students can always reference the document while they answer questions. Also, you can pick up and drag the question numbers if you choose to move them!

If you no longer need the original image/document within your activity, or if you'd like to replace it with a different one, you have the option to do so while keeping the enhancing questions or items. To do this:

Once the image/document has been removed, the questions will remain as stand-alone questions that are not dependent on the previously uploaded image/document item.

You can use AI to parse your uploaded PDFs and pull questions from within them into Formative automatically. Click here to learn how!

If you are uploading a Google Doc, then you may be trying to upload from a Shared Drive that we do not have access to. Try downloading the Doc to your device, then re-uploading it.

Another possible reason for this is if you are trying to upload a file that is larger than your upload limit, or a file in an unsupported format. (Note: TextEdit files are often labelled as PDFs in Google Drive.) Try checking the file size, then try downloading the file and exporting or printing to PDF, and then upload it again.

NOTE: If a attempting to upload an unsafe file extension (ie .exe files) or other non-supported files, a "That file is not supported" notification will appear

There are two ways to re-order questions and media items inside an activity:

NOTE: Deleting a question that already has student responses will also delete the responses. If your activity is shared with other teachers as collaborators, their students' answers will be removed as well. However, restoring the deleted question will restore the answers too.

There are two ways to delete a question/item from your activity:

You can use the Preview button to view & interact with your activities from a student's perspective!

While in Preview, you can see how your activity will appear to students on various devices by selecting the desired preview device icon - phone, tablet, or computer screen!

You can also click the "pop out" icon to open the Preview in a new tab. This will update every second as you build your activity, so you can quickly click between the two tabs to check how your activity will appear to your students:

You can even answer the questions while in Preview, and click on "View Responses" to see how your answers would be auto-graded!

Responses you give while in Preview will not be included in your Tracker, unless you hit "submit". Once submitted, your responses will be included in your Tracker under "Teacher Preview". You can un-submit these responses to exclude them from the Tracker.

Note: the Preview's display will behave based on the assign settings that were most recently used / updated with the assigned class. If no classes are assigned, the preview's display will behave based on the account's default settings.

Want to preview and test how your assignment will behave with different assign settings? This can be done from within the Assign Settings window.