A unit on sound is taught with a diagram, a demonstration and a recording. Test it with twenty lines of print and the score says how well the class reads about sound. A mixed media quiz closes that gap: one theme, asked through a short text, a picture, an audio clip and a video in turn.
EdProcto, which publishes this guide, carries the structure as the Mixed media quiz: questions of different shapes, shown one to a page. Each medium has its own guide: audio clips, video, picture options and hotspots. This one is about the set: which idea goes to which medium, in what order, at what file size, and what a student who cannot see or hear a file is owed.
When does a quiz need more than one medium?
When the theme reaches students in more than one form, and each form holds something the others lack.
| Setting | Text | Picture | Audio | Video |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Languages | A notice | A menu | A conversation | A purchase, gestures and all |
| History and geography | A letter | A photograph, a map | A recorded memory | A newsreel |
| Science | A method, a table of results | A diagram, a trace | A heartbeat | An experiment as it happens |
| Museums and training | A procedure | An object, a sign | An alarm | A technique |
This is not interleaving, which mixes topics: here the topic holds still and the form of the evidence changes. A theme that lives in one form, as a grammar point does, needs one medium.
What does research say about words, pictures and sound together?
It says a medium helps when it carries part of the message and costs when it merely accompanies it. The usual explanation is two channels, one for what is seen and one for what is heard, either of which can be overloaded (Mayer et al., 2001). Four findings from multimedia learning bear on a quiz:
| Principle | What was found | In a quiz |
|---|---|---|
| Split attention | Words beside their picture beat words kept apart: g = 0.63 across 58 comparisons (Schroeder and Cenkci, 2018) | The question and its picture on one screen |
| Redundancy | A narrated animation taught less when on-screen text repeated the narration (Mayer et al., 2001) | Nothing to read while the action runs |
| Coherence | Interesting clips beside the point lowered understanding, in the same experiments | No decoration |
| Segmenting | Lessons in segments were learned better, by small to medium margins across 88 comparisons (Rey et al., 2019) | Short clips, one idea each |
Where two well-known rules weaken
Modality, a fifth principle, says a voice explains a picture better than print does. Reinwein (2012) repeated a meta-analysis that had put the advantage at d = 0.72: with twice as many effects it was 0.38, and 0.20 once corrected for publication bias.
On redundancy, Adesope and Nesbit (2012) pooled 57 studies. Speech with the same words in print taught as much as print alone and more than speech alone, mainly for beginners, at a fixed pace and where no picture was involved. So captions under a speaker help, and a paragraph laid over an experiment is a second task.
What changes in a test question
Pictures move scores too. Lindner et al. (2022) gave 575 fifth- and sixth-graders 28 science questions with or without a picture of what the text described: the picture raised scores on both multiple-choice and written-answer questions. A picture that only decorates is another matter, covered in our picture choice guide.
And the medium is part of the question. Wagner (2010) gave one listening test as sound alone and as video, and the video group scored 6.5% higher.
We read every study above in its abstract alone, and most are about lessons, not quizzes.
How do you plan the set so each medium earns its place?
Start from the ideas, not the files: list what the unit taught, then hand each idea to the one medium that can carry it.
- List six to ten ideas, as an exam blueprint does.
- Match each to a medium by what it is. A thing heard gets audio; a thing that moves gets video; a place, a shape or a reading gets a picture; a rule applied to a described case, or figures to compare, gets text.
- Take the file away. If the question can still be answered, the medium was decoration.
- Write the clip out. If the transcript answers the question as well as the clip, set it as text.
- Ask each idea once. Two media on one idea pay twice for one piece of knowledge.
- Vary the answer: a choice, a click on the picture, a typed sentence.
- Check who owns each file. Use pictures and clips you made, or ones whose terms allow this use, and read the terms of each. This is not legal advice.
- Build it in EdProcto's Mixed media quiz and sit it on a phone.
How long should each clip be?
Under a minute and one idea long, as a working rule: no study we read gives a figure for a quiz. The segmenting result argues for short pieces, and our guides to video questions and a clip that plays once have the evidence for each medium. Keep eight questions under three minutes of playing time.
What order should the media come in?
Text first, then pictures, then audio, then video, with a light question to finish: our reasoning, not a finding. The first screen opens at once on any connection, earphones go in once, and the heaviest files arrive while the clock is still long.
How do you keep a slow connection from sinking the quiz?
Make every file small, keep it where a phone can fetch it without a sign-in, and test on mobile data. EdProcto holds the address of each picture and clip and the student's browser fetches the file from there, so its size is yours to set.
| File | A working size | The arithmetic |
|---|---|---|
| Picture | Under 300 KB | About 1,200 pixels across is ample for a phone |
| Audio | Half a megabyte a minute | Speech at 64 kilobits a second: 64 × 60 ÷ 8 = 480 KB |
| Video | Under 6 MB | 45 seconds at one megabit a second, sound included: 45 ÷ 8 = 5.6 MB |
A megabyte is eight megabits, so a phone receiving two megabits a second needs about 23 seconds for that video. Mozilla (2026) recommends MP4 for general-purpose video, as a standard widely supported by devices and browsers, and MP3 for general audio playback.
Trim each clip to the part you ask about. Keep the files on the school's site, or a file store you control, at addresses that open the file itself and stay put while the quiz is in use. Set the time generously: a time limit keeps running while a file loads.
What is a student who cannot see or hear a medium owed?
The same information in a form they can take in or, where that would hand over the answer, another question on the same idea. The guidance pages of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) say what the web accessibility standard, WCAG, asks:
| Medium | A student who | WCAG asks for |
|---|---|---|
| Audio | cannot hear it | A transcript, at Level A (W3C, 2024c) |
| Video with sound | cannot hear it | Captions, at Level A; automatic ones only once confirmed fully accurate (W3C, 2024a) |
| Video | cannot see it | Description of what is seen, or a descriptive transcript, at Level A (W3C, 2024b) |
| Picture | cannot see it | A text alternative (alt text), at Level A (W3C, 2026) |
A test is the hard case: where telling two notes apart is the skill, a transcript removes the question. WCAG's first criterion allows for it. When a test would be invalid as text, the alternative need only identify the content, and a hearing test is the W3C's own example.
So where a medium only delivers content, such as a recorded memory in a history set, give captions and transcripts to everyone. Where the medium is the skill, name the file in words and write a second question on the same idea for the same marks.
In EdProcto, say what a picture is in the prompt ("Diagram K: a section through the ear"). Put captions into the video file as open captions, which the W3C describes as always displayed, and paste each transcript into "Explanation shown to the student afterwards". For one student's adapted set, "Duplicate this quiz" makes a copy with its own code. Your school's policy and the law come first.
A worked example: eight questions on sound
This set is made up for the guide, for a class aged about twelve; every file is the teacher's own.
| # | Medium | The question | Shape in EdProcto | Why this medium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Text | A bell rings in a jar as the air is pumped out. What happens to the sound? | Multiple choice | A video would show the result |
| 2 | Picture | Click the part of the ear that sound sets vibrating first. | Hotspot | A place can only be pointed at |
| 3 | Picture | Which trace shows the higher note? | Compare two images | A trace is read by eye |
| 4 | Audio | A note is played twice. What changed: loudness, pitch or both? | Recognise the sound | Only the ear can tell |
| 5 | Audio | A clap in a hall. What follows it, and why? | Listen and answer | An echo is known by its sound |
| 6 | Video | A hammer strikes a post 200 m away. Why does the sound come late? | Watch and answer | Sight and sound on one clock |
| 7 | Video | Rice lies on stretched film. Say in one sentence what it does, and why. | Caption it, set to "Video" | Movement, with nothing to hear |
| 8 | Text | A wall 170 m away returns a clap after 1.0 s. How fast is the sound? | Multiple choice | Figures, at the student's pace |
The keys: 1, it fades, since sound needs a material to travel through. 2, the eardrum. 3, the trace with more waves in the same time. 4, loudness alone. 5, an echo: the clap reflected from the walls. 6, light arrives almost at once and sound takes about 0.6 seconds. 7, it jumps: a tray banged nearby sets the air vibrating, and the air shakes the film. 8, 340 m/s, from 2 × 170 ÷ 1.0.
No clip has a voice reading what could be printed, and no idea is asked twice. With sound clips of ten seconds and videos of twenty, the set plays for a minute and weighs about 6 MB. Question 4 is a small hearing test: its counterpart for a student who cannot hear it shows two traces of equal spacing and unequal height.
How does EdProcto build and run a mixed media quiz?
EdProcto is the best tool for a mixed media quiz when the files are your own, because one quiz takes any question shape the builder carries and each question keeps its own file. The page shows one question at a time with its picture or player directly above the prompt, the arrangement the split-attention studies favour.
- Starting. Choose "Mixed media quiz" among the templates. It opens with one "Multiple choice" question.
- Adding a medium. "Add a question", like "Another shape", opens a list headed "Which shape?": pick by how the student should answer. A shape made for a medium has an address box and "It is", with "An image", "Audio" and "Video". The box reads "Image address", "Audio clip address" or "Video address" to match, and takes the address of the file itself.
- Ordering. The arrows "Move up" and "Move down" place a question. A new quiz has "Shuffle the questions for each student" on, as do the Standard quiz and Exam presets: switch it off last to keep your order.
- Showing. "Layout" stays at "One question a page" through any preset, greyed on the settings page with the reason "the layout is part of the template". Audio and video play in the browser's own player, with its controls, when the student presses play. With "Plays once, no replay" on, the player is one button, "Play the clip", and a line that fills, with no pause and no going back; once the clip has ended, the page reads "The clip has played its one time."
- Timing. "Time limit for each question" applies one figure, "Seconds a question", to every question: set it for the longest clip, or use "Minutes overall" alone.
- Marking. Choices and clicks are marked by rule at hand-in. A typed answer counts as zero until it is read: mark it against your model answer and rubric or, on Tutor and above, press "Ask Procto AI" and keep or change the mark.
- Afterwards. On every plan the results list "Each question" with "Got it" and the median time: where a clip question shows a low "Got it" and a long time, check the file first.
A screen can be photographed and a clip recorded, so a quiz that counts still needs the integrity settings its stakes call for. Free covers ten quizzes a month, the core templates and marking by rule; Tutor opens all 111 templates and Procto AI's grading; Educator adds the full analysis. See pricing.
Quick questions
What is a mixed media quiz?
A quiz on one theme whose questions use different media in turn: a short text, a picture, an audio clip, a video. EdProcto's Mixed media quiz shows them one to a page.
Do the clips need captions and transcripts?
Where a clip only delivers content, yes: the W3C lists a transcript for audio and captions for video with sound at Level A. Where hearing is the skill, set another question on the same idea.
Can I use pictures and videos I found online?
Use your own, or ones whose terms allow this use, and check each file. Ask whoever handles copyright at your school; this is not legal advice.
What if a student's connection drops during the quiz?
EdProcto saves answers as they are given, and the same link in the same browser reopens the attempt with the clock still running.
References
- Adesope, O. O., & Nesbit, J. C. (2012). Verbal redundancy in multimedia learning environments: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(1), 250–263. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026147
- Lindner, M. A., Schult, J., & Mayer, R. E. (2022). A multimedia effect for multiple-choice and constructed-response test items. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(1), 72–88. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000646
- Mayer, R. E., Heiser, J., & Lonn, S. (2001). Cognitive constraints on multimedia learning: When presenting more material results in less understanding. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(1), 187–198. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.93.1.187
- Mozilla. (2026). Media container formats (file types). MDN Web Docs. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Media/Guides/Formats/Containers
- Reinwein, J. (2012). Does the modality effect exist? And if so, which modality effect? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 41(1), 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-011-9180-4
- Rey, G. D., Beege, M., Nebel, S., Wirzberger, M., Schmitt, T. H., & Schneider, S. (2019). A meta-analysis of the segmenting effect. Educational Psychology Review, 31(2), 389–419. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-018-9456-4
- Schroeder, N. L., & Cenkci, A. T. (2018). Spatial contiguity and spatial split-attention effects in multimedia learning environments: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 30(3), 679–701. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-018-9435-9
- Wagner, E. (2010). The effect of the use of video texts on ESL listening test-taker performance. Language Testing, 27(4), 493–513. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532209355668
- World Wide Web Consortium. (2024a). Captions/subtitles. Web Accessibility Initiative. https://www.w3.org/WAI/media/av/captions/
- World Wide Web Consortium. (2024b). Description of visual information. Web Accessibility Initiative. https://www.w3.org/WAI/media/av/description/
- World Wide Web Consortium. (2024c). Transcripts. Web Accessibility Initiative. https://www.w3.org/WAI/media/av/transcripts/
- World Wide Web Consortium. (2026). Understanding SC 1.1.1: Non-text content. https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/non-text-content.html