Getting Started as an Author
Assessments are organized in catalogs, much like how on your computer, files are organized in folders. The catalogs are indicated by the following icon: 
.
The assessments have a different icon: 
You can navigate into / out of the catalogs to place your assessment in a place you can remember. Currently, the folders are organized by Subject -> Sub-subject (optional) -> Unit -> Lesson, like English -> Basic English -> Unit X -> Lesson Y.
NOTE: currently there is no way for you to create new catalogs.
To navigate back up the catalog structure, you can use your browser's Back button, or the breadcrumbs in the navigation bar.
To create a new assessment, first navigate to the desired catalog in the UI.
NOTE: You cannot create assessments in the first, root catalog. You must always navigate to a specific catalog to create an assessment.
Then, click the New button on the upper-right of the screen.
Enter a title for your assessment. You can edit this later, but it is what will show up in the list-view screen, so make sure that the title is specific to the content (i.e. Quiz 1 on animal types would be better than My assessment). Note that all instructors will see the same list of assessments.
Click the Next button to create the assessment and start adding questions.
Once created, you can add new questions to your assessment via the Add Question button at the bottom of the screen:
NOTE: the first question is automatically added for you.
For detailed information about the options for each question type, please see this other page about authoring question types.
Once created, each assessment activity has two options that you can set, N of M and Unlock Previous. They show up below the title field, and are described in more detail below.
N of M controls how many questions the students must answer correctly for the given assessment.
By default, students must answer all questions correctly. If you set N of M to any number other than all the questions, students will be able to click on the Next and Previous buttons to select which questions they will answer.
For students, they will see an N of M heading that indicates how many questions they need to answer correctly, and how many they have already completed.
Unlock Previous allows the author to show the Previous button to students, whether always or never.
By default it is set to never, which means that for non-N of M questions, the students must answer each question correctly, in sequence. When this setting is set to always, students can skip around the assessment and answer the questions in any order.
From the list of assessments and catalogs, you can perform four actions on each assessment. By default, clicking on the assessment row itself causes the page to load either the 1) Edit Assessment page (if the assessment is unpublished), or the 2) Preview Assessment page (if the assessment is published).
The row itself contains the assessment title -- this is why it's important to give each assessment a meaningful name. Once you identify your assessment, you'll see that there is an icon in the middle of the row.
This indicates the published / unpublished state of the assessment, which will be described in detail in the next section. When the icon appears as a cloud with a green checkmark in it, that means the assessment has already been published, so clicking on the row will take you to the assessment preview.
If the image is a gray cloud with an up arrow in it, then the assessment is unpublished, and clicking on the row takes you to the edit assessment page.
When you hover over the row, you can see three or four more icons appear on the right (depending on the published state of the assessment. These additional icons give you access to more assessment functionality.
For unpublished assessments, there are three additional icons:
For published assessments, there are four additional icons:
More details about publishing / unpublishing and the implications are provided on this other page about the publish / unpublish process.
While this icon is used to indicate the published / unpublished state of the assessment, it is also a toggle button you can use to change the published state. If the assessment is currently published, clicking on the icon will convert the assessment to an unpublished state, meaning that you can edit the assessment. If the assessment is currently unpublished, you can publish it by clicking on the icon, which means that you can then preview the assessment / generate an embed code for your students.
The edit icon is only enabled (a bright color) when the assessment is unpublished. Clicking on it lets you edit the assessment and its questions.
When the assessment is published, the edit icon will be disabled / grayed out. Clicking on it takes you to the assessment preview.
The preview icon is only enabled (a bright color) when the assessment is published. Clicking on it lets you preview the assessment and interact with its questions.
When the assessment is unpublished, the preview icon will be disabled / grayed out. Clicking on it takes you to the assessment editor.
Deleting an assessment is permanent -- so you will get an alert confirming that you want to delete the assessment, when you click this button.
Currently, deleting an assessment does not delete its questions; however, since there is no "search and add existing questions" interface, you cannot find old questions and re-use them. So, deleting an assessment effectively removes the questions from your access.
This action allows you to generate an iframe embed code that you copy / paste and put into your gstudio activity. The iframe code appears where the button was:
You can copy this code by clicking the copy icon, or manually via the keyboard shortcut control-c. Once you paste it (control-v) in gstudio, students will then be able to take the assessment in gstudio.