Assess · In-Video Quizzes

Turn any video into a graded quiz — right on the timeline

Drop multiple-choice and open questions into the exact moment a concept appears. Learners answer as they watch, get instant feedback, and every score syncs straight to your LMS gradebook.

Grades sync via LTI 1.3CanvasMoodleBlackboardBrightspace
Lecture 4 — Cell Division
Question · 04:12
Which phase separates the sister chromatids?
Prophase
Anaphase ✓
Telophase
Correct — instant feedback
Learn more: In-video quizzes, from first question to final grade
IN-VIDEO QUIZZES

In-Video Quizzes, From First Question to Final Grade

An in-video quiz places questions directly on the video timeline. When playback reaches one, the video pauses, the learner answers, sees feedback, and continues watching. It is retrieval practice at the moment the material is freshest, built into the viewing experience instead of bolted on as a separate assessment afterward.

How quizzes work in the player

Instructors write questions at the timestamps where concepts have just been explained, choose between graded and practice modes, and decide whether an answer is required before playback continues. Learners get immediate feedback, including an explanation when the instructor provides one. Annoto delivers this inside Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, Brightspace, and Open edX through LTI 1.3, on top of Kaltura, Panopto, Wistia, YouTube, and Vimeo, and Lumo, Annoto's AI copilot, can draft the questions for review when authoring time is short.

Where in-video quizzes fit in teaching

In flipped classrooms, a graded quiz inside the pre-class video makes preparation dependable rather than hoped for. In long lectures, questions spaced every few minutes reset attention and stop passive drift, including the quiet failure mode of double-speed skimming. Before exams, practice mode turns the same videos into a self-testing resource, letting students find their weak spots while there is still time to fix them.

What the results show

Every answer feeds Annoto's comprehension analytics, and completion and gradebook sync writes scores into the LMS gradebook automatically, with no export step. Item-level statistics show which questions most of the cohort missed, which usually says more about the explanation in the video than about the students. Full results are available through analytics export as CSV or through the API for anyone doing deeper course analysis.

In-video quizzes are the assessment core of Annoto's engagement layer: polls capture quick opinion pulses, reflection points capture open reasoning, and quizzes capture whether the material landed. Institutions worldwide use them across their video courses. Authoring and grading documentation is available at docs.annoto.net.

Authoring questions that respect the video

Good in-video quizzes follow the shape of the material rather than a fixed quota. A useful rule of thumb is one question per major concept, placed shortly after the explanation ends — close enough that the learner can still reconstruct the reasoning, far enough that answering requires recall rather than echo. Short videos may need only a single well-aimed question; a dense forty-minute lecture might carry five or six. The explanation attached to each answer deserves as much care as the question itself: a one-line justification of why the right answer is right, written in the instructor's own words, is often the piece students screenshot for revision.

Grading policy: keep the stakes small

The most reliable pattern across courses is low stakes, high frequency. Quizzes graded heavily enough to cause anxiety push students toward caution and second-guessing; quizzes worth a small, steady slice of the participation grade keep everyone answering honestly, which is what makes the data trustworthy. Decide up front whether credit follows correctness or completion — many instructors grade preparation quizzes on completion and reserve correctness grading for review quizzes, so early mistakes cost nothing while the incentive to engage stays intact. Whatever the policy, state it in the syllabus in one sentence; ambiguity about stakes is what generates support email.

What sync means for your gradebook

Because scores flow through the LMS integration, a quiz behaves like any other graded activity in Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, Brightspace, or Open edX: results appear against the learner's record without the instructor exporting, reformatting, or uploading anything. Practice-mode quizzes stay out of the gradebook entirely, so students can self-test without consequence. That separation matters pedagogically — the same question can serve as a graded checkpoint in week four and an ungraded rehearsal in week thirteen — and it means the gradebook reflects deliberate assessment decisions, not every keystroke a student made. Configuration details for each LMS live at docs.annoto.net.

Why recall beats rewatching

The pedagogy underneath all of this is the testing effect: retrieving an idea from memory strengthens it in a way that re-reading or rewatching does not. Rewatching feels productive because the material seems familiar, but familiarity is not the same as being able to produce the answer — which is exactly what an exam demands. A question that interrupts playback converts a passive moment into a retrieval attempt, and the immediate feedback closes the loop while the context is still on screen. Spread those attempts across a course, and students arrive at revision week having already practiced the recall the exam will require, dozens of times, in small doses.

Reading item statistics like an editor

Item-level results are a mirror held up to the teaching, and the productive stance is editorial rather than judgmental. A question everyone answers correctly may be doing no work — or confirming a concept is secure. A question half the cohort misses points at the minutes just before it: was the explanation rushed, was a term used before it was defined, does the example carry too much of the load? Instructors who review item statistics at the end of each term, revise the weakest segment or the weakest question, and run it again, end up improving the actual teaching asset — the video — not just the assessment wrapped around it.

Keeping the experience fair

A quiz layer earns student trust through predictability. Tell learners in week one how many questions a typical video carries, what they are worth, and whether playback will wait for an answer — the required-answer setting is powerful for must-know material and irritating everywhere else, so use it deliberately. Avoid questions that hinge on wording tricks; the goal is to check the concept, not the learner's parsing under pressure. And when a student flags a genuinely ambiguous question in the discussion thread beside it, fixing it visibly does more for course culture than any syllabus statement about fairness.

A rollout pattern that scales

Course teams that succeed with in-video quizzes rarely start by quizzing everything. The durable pattern is one course, one high-enrollment video, a handful of questions, and a look at the results after two weeks; then coverage expands video by video, with Lumo drafting candidates where authoring time is the bottleneck and the instructor keeping final say. Questions survive across terms once written, so the effort compounds: by the second run of a course the quiz layer is mostly maintenance, and the team's attention moves to the analytics — which is where the interesting decisions were hiding all along.

How do in-video quizzes turn watching into graded work?

An instructor places True/False and multiple-choice questions at chosen moments on the video timeline. Playback pauses, the learner answers, and the response is recorded in the LMS together with its timestamp — so you know not only what a learner answered but where in the lecture they answered it. Because each question interrupts the exact moment it refers to, learners are assessed on understanding as it forms, not on recall days later. Results roll up into per-question analytics that show which concepts landed and which need reteaching.

Can quiz questions be generated automatically?

Yes. Annoto can auto-generate draft questions from the video content, which the instructor reviews, edits, and places on the timeline. That turns question-writing from the slowest step of video assessment into a quick review task, and makes it practical to quiz every video in a course rather than only the high-stakes ones. Auto-generated questions use the same True/False and multiple-choice formats, so they are graded and passed back exactly like hand-written ones.

What does activity completion actually measure?

Completion goes beyond pressing play. Annoto tracks whether each learner finished the defined video activity — watched the required portion and responded to the embedded interactions — and generates progress reports automatically, with no manual tallying. Completion can carry a grade of its own that passes back to the LMS, which is how many programs award participation credit for video work. Completion grading is available for Canvas today, with Brightspace (D2L), Blackboard, and Moodle coming soon; the details live on the completion & gradebook page.

What are reusable assessment criteria?

The Assessment Criteria Library lets you build evaluation criteria once — what counts toward the grade, and at what weight — and reuse them across courses and semesters. Pre-defined, customizable templates cover grading in-video quizzes and activity completion consistently, for both formative checks and summative grades. For departments, that consistency matters as much as the time saved: two sections of the same course grade video work by the same rules, and criteria survive staff changes between terms.

How do grades reach the LMS gradebook?

Annoto runs inside the LMS as an LTI 1.3 tool and uses the standard's grade services to pass scores back to the gradebook automatically — across Assignments, Discussions, and Pages. There is no CSV export and no manual re-entry: the grade a learner earns in the video is the grade that appears in the gradebook column for that activity. Because pass-back is standards-based LTI rather than a per-platform plugin, it behaves the same way across supported LMS platforms.

How does graded video help with RSI evidence for online programs?

US distance-education programs must demonstrate Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) between instructors and learners. Graded in-video activity produces that evidence as a by-product of teaching: instructor-authored questions inside the course content, learner responses tied to timestamps, and grades recorded in the LMS. Paired with engagement data from Annoto's learning analytics, a program can show interaction that is both regular — every video, every week — and substantive — assessed, graded, acted on — without running a separate documentation workflow.

Why in-video quizzes

Built with learning designers, for how people actually learn

Annoto was shaped alongside instructors and learning designers to fix what other assessment tools get wrong. The result is a quiz layer built for simplicity, speed, and insight you can act on.

SimpleAuthor, preview, and publish without ever leaving the video.
FastThree steps take you from idea to a live, graded activity.
InsightfulSee exactly how learners answer and where they get stuck.
The interface

Author quizzes right where your learners watch

Everything happens inside the player. Add questions to the timeline, pick a question type, then preview and publish from the same panel — no separate tool and no export.

Multiple choiceMultiple answerTrue / falseOpen-endedFill in the blank& more
PBS · NOVA
“…on the mission feel they've only been gone for a few hours.”
24:31 / 53:57
QuizzesPublished
08:07
What is quantum mechanics?
Multiple choice
09:38
Why did quantum mechanics replace classical models?
Multiple choice
14:08
Analyze the effect of observing a quantum system.
Open-ended
17:45
Based on the explanation, entanglement is instantaneous.
True / false
Publish
Preview
+Create

It all happens inside the video

Create, edit, preview, and publish right in the player your learners already use. No external platform, no separate tool, no new workflow to learn.

No external platformNo separate toolSame workflow you use today
Question types

Every kind of question you need

Mix formats to match the moment — fast checks, multi-select, or open reflection. Every type can carry points, correct/incorrect feedback, retries, a time limit, and shuffled answers.

Multiple choice
One correct answer from a set of options.
Multiple answer
Select all that apply — more than one right answer.
TrueFalse
True / false
Fast, unambiguous checks for understanding.
Open-ended
Free-text responses for reflection and higher-order thinking.
Fill in the blank
Learners type the missing word or phrase right inside the sentence.
+
…and more
More formats, all authored in the same simple editor — with no new tools to learn.
Adaptive paths

Branch the video on how they answer

Annoto supports video branching, so a learner's answer can route them down the right path — send a wrong answer back to a quick review, and move a correct one straight ahead. One video adapts to every learner instead of forcing everyone through the same line.

Pair it with fast-forward limits to make sure the key moments are never skipped.
In-video question
Correct
Advance to the next concept
Needs review
Replay the explanation, then retry
What you can do

Everything you need to assess inside the video

In-video quizzes are a full assessment workflow: authoring, layout, feedback, insight, reuse, and grade sync, all built into the player your learners already use.

Seamless & quick

Create, preview, and publish in three steps — all from the video interface, with no separate authoring tool.

Flexible layouts

Show questions as pop-ups during playback, or docked beside the Annoto side panel — your choice per activity.

Immediate feedback

Learners see whether they were right the moment they answer, reinforcing the concept while it is still fresh.

Actionable insights

Get deep, performance-level insight into how learners answer and which questions work — not just completion ticks.

Reusable activities

Copy a quiz from one course to another, including Blueprint copies, so your best assessments scale effortlessly.

Advanced controls

Require learners to answer the required questions before they can fast-forward, keeping attention where it matters.

Real-time updates & versioning

Edit questions after publishing with full versioning — changes sync automatically, with no re-upload.

Fully accessible

Every quiz is built to be fully accessible to all learners, meeting the standards your institution requires.

Flexible layouts

Two ways to show a question

Match the format to the moment. Interrupt with a pop-up when a check-for-understanding needs full attention, or keep questions in the side panel so learners answer without losing the frame.

Quick check
Pop-up during playback
The video pauses and the question takes center stage — ideal for must-answer checkpoints.
Which statement is true?
Docked in the side panel
Questions sit beside the Annoto panel, so learners keep watching while they respond.
How it works

From idea to graded activity in three steps

No separate quiz builder, no waiting on IT. You do it all from the video, in minutes.

1
Create
Add questions on the timeline
Pause at any moment and drop in a multiple-choice or open question — or let Lumo AI draft a full quiz from your video, then refine it.
2
Preview
See it exactly as learners will
Play through the activity, check the timing and layout, and adjust anything — before a single learner sees it.
3
Publish
Go live and sync grades
Publish in one click. Scores flow to your LMS gradebook automatically, and you can edit or re-version at any time.
Lumo AI Copilot

Let AI draft the quiz — across all of Bloom's Taxonomy

Lumo watches your video and drafts questions at every cognitive level, from quick recall to create-level projects — so you assess real understanding, not just facts. You review, tweak, and publish.

8 hrs
5 min
to build a full, Bloom-aligned quiz from your video
Explore Lumo AI →
Bloom's Taxonomy · what Lumo generates
CreateDesign projects, write reflections, co-create media
EvaluateDebate prompts and evidence-based justifications
AnalyzeCompare perspectives, map cause and effect
ApplyScenario-based questions and real-world tasks
UnderstandSummaries, plain-language explanations, analogies
RememberQuick knowledge checks and key-term recall
Reliable Grade Sync System · RGSS

Grades you never have to double-check

Manual grade entry breaks trust and creates disputes. RGSS syncs every quiz score to your LMS gradebook automatically and accurately, in real time — with built-in verification that confirms each write instead of assuming it worked.

Automatic sync — no CSV exports and no manual entry
Real time — scores land the moment learners finish
Built-in verification catches silent failures before they become disputes
Works across Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard & Brightspace via LTI 1.3
Quiz score
Learner submits an answer
Verified by RGSS
The gradebook write is confirmed, not assumed
LMS gradebook
Accurate scores, in real time
Insights

Know exactly how your learners performed

Every quiz feeds a live assessment view — for each learner and for the whole cohort. See scores, completion, correct-answer rates, time on task, and grade distribution, then let RGSS push the results to your gradebook.

Per learnerSample · Test Student
88%
Score
50%
Completed
75%
Correct answers
Down to each question — with time on task (longest, mean, and shortest) and every answer a learner gave.
Whole cohortSample · 11 learners
45%
Completion
Highest
96%
Mean
82%
Lowest
68%
Grades synced to the LMS
Automatic and verified by RGSS
Questions

In-video quizzes, answered

What kinds of questions can I add?
You can add multiple-choice, multiple-answer, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, and open-ended questions, and more — placing each one at the exact moment in the video where the concept appears.
Can I stop learners from skipping ahead?
Yes. You can restrict fast-forwarding until learners complete the optional or mandatory quizzes, so they can't skip past the questions that matter.
Do quiz scores reach my LMS gradebook?
Automatically. The Reliable Grade Sync System (RGSS) syncs every score to your LMS gradebook in real time, with built-in verification to prevent manual errors. It works with Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, and Brightspace via LTI 1.3.
Can I edit a quiz after publishing?
Yes. Quizzes support versioning and post-publication edits, and your changes sync automatically to the gradebook — so you're never stuck with a question you can't fix.
Do questions appear over the video or beside it?
Either. Choose pop-up quizzes that appear during playback, or quizzes docked alongside the Annoto side panel. You can pick the layout that fits each activity.
Can I reuse a quiz across courses?
Yes. Activities can be transferred between courses, including Blueprint copies, so you can build an assessment once and reuse it everywhere.
Are in-video quizzes accessible?
In-video quizzes are built to be fully accessible to all learners, so every student can participate.
Do learners get feedback right away?
Yes. Students receive instant feedback on their quiz results the moment they answer, which reinforces the concept while it's still fresh.
What insights do I get after a quiz?
For every learner you see their score, completion, correct-answer rate, time on each question, and the actual answers they gave. For the whole cohort you get completion and grade distribution — highest, mean, and lowest — and grades sync straight to your LMS gradebook.
Can Annoto create the quiz for me?
Yes. The Lumo AI Copilot watches your video and drafts questions across every level of Bloom's Taxonomy — from quick recall to higher-order thinking — in minutes. You review, edit, and publish.
Does Annoto support video branching?
Yes. Annoto supports video branching, so a learner's answer can route them down a different path — for example, sending an incorrect answer to a quick review before letting them continue.
Do I need a separate tool to build quizzes?
No. Everything happens inside the video, in the player your learners already use. You create, edit, preview, and publish in the same workflow — with no external platform and no new tool to learn.

Explore more

See it on your own course video

Book a 20-minute demo and watch in-video quizzes work inside your LMS, on your own content — grades syncing and all.