Article verified for Release 15.1 on October 5, 2025
This article explains the different methods for creating an Essay question type. Essay questions require candidates to provide open-ended answers in their own words. YouTestMe offers two types of essay questions:
- Standard Essay Question – The candidate types their response directly into a text field.
- Fillable PDF Essay Question – The candidate should complete a fillable PDF form to provide their answer.
Manually creating an Essay Question
To manually create an essay question, follow the steps below:
- In the main menu, navigate to Tests and select the Question Pools module.
- Click on the name of an existing question pool to access its settings, or create a new one by clicking the New button.
- Navigate to the Questions tab. Here, you can view the questions in the question pool and add new ones to it.
- Click the Add Question button and select the Essay question type.
- In the Create New Question dialog, enter the question text.
- Click the kebab menu to enable the advanced editor to format the question text, upload a question attachment, add a formula, or provide question feedback.
- Here, you can edit the number of points and penalties, set the question difficulty level, and define the question duration. The question duration applies only to exams where candidates are given a specific time to answer each question rather than a total time for the entire test.
- Enable the Show More Settings option to access the question’s advanced settings.
Question Settings
In the Advanced Question Settings, you can configure the following options:
- Grading Settings – The only grading method available for essay questions is Manual Grading, as these questions require evaluation by an instructor or automated grading using AI Auto-Marking.
In this section, you can define the Total points for a correct answer, the Penalties for incorrect answers, and the Question duration (used only in exams where candidates have a specific time per question instead of a total exam duration).
- Advanced Question Setup – Here, you can add question tags for easier management and filtering in the question pool (e.g., questions with images), define a Common External ID to cross-reference questions with external systems, and set the question difficulty level and frequency.
- Note: The frequency determines how often the question appears when using the test generator. For example, a question set to Never will not be selected when generating a test that uses frequency factors.
- Question Categories – You can assign categories to better organize and group questions. Please refer to the related article for more details on Question Categories.
- Additional Attachments – Add extra resources to the question, such as PDFs, ZIP files, links, videos, or audio files. For detailed instructions, please refer to the article on Question Attachments.
- Translations – Use this option to manually add a translated version of the question in any language or to translate it into multiple languages automatically. Please refer to the related article for more information on Translations.
- Assistance – You can provide candidates with hints to help them answer the question or grant additional time (which is added to the question duration if the exam uses per-question timing). You can also define penalties for using assistance by specifying the number of points to be deducted when it is used.
Once you have defined the question settings, click the Add to Pool button to save the new Essay question.
Manually Creating an Essay question with a fillable PDF
YouTestMe offers the ability to create essay questions where candidates must complete a fillable PDF form to provide their answers.
To create an Essay question with a fillable PDF, follow the steps below:
- In the Create New Question dialog, enter the question text
- Enable the Answer question by filling out a PDF document option.
- Click the Upload PDF button and select the desired fillable PDF file.
- Update the question settings and click the Add to Pool button to save.
Other methods to create Essay questions
Regular Essay questions can be imported into the system using the Import Questions feature or generated automatically using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Please refer to the following articles for more details:
- How to Bulk Import Questions to the Question Pool Using an Excel Template
- How to Generate Questions with AI
Allowing or Disabling File Uploads in Essay Questions
In addition to the essay question types described above, candidates can also upload multimedia files (e.g., documents, images, audio, or video) as part of their essay answers.
By default, the Upload File option is enabled for all essay questions. You can disable this feature by following the steps below:
- In the main menu, click System and select Settings and Customization.
- In the System Preferences tab, select Additional Modules Setup.
- Scroll down to Disable attachment upload on essay questions and enable this option to remove the Upload Attachment button from essay questions.
Configuring Auto-Save Frequency
Editable PDFs used in essay questions are automatically saved during the test at a frequency you define. This setting helps prevent answer loss due to unexpected interruptions.
To configure the auto-save frequency :
- Go to System.
- Select Settings and customization.
- Navigate to the System Preferences tab.
- Scroll to the Autosave frequency section.
- Set the desired value in seconds (e.g., 300s for 5 minutes).
Note: The default auto-save frequency is 5 minutes (300 seconds). Lower values will trigger more frequent saving but may impact performance during tests. The minimum allowed value is 10 seconds.
Essay Questions Auto-Marking
The YouTestMe system allows the use of AI Auto-Marking to grade essay questions automatically. To enable this feature, follow the steps below:
- In the main menu, click System and select Settings and Customization.
- In the System Preferences tab, select Additional Modules Setup.
- Scroll down to Auto-Marking and enable this option to allow the AI to grade essay questions automatically.
For more information on how essay question types appear and function from the candidate’s perspective, please refer to this article.
