How to Customize Quiz Settings in QuizMagic

Last updated: 7/10/2026

Before QuizMagic generates a single question, you get to customize quiz settings that shape everything about the output: how many questions you want, how difficult they should be, what question types to use, what language to write in, and what cognitive level the AI should target. Getting these settings right before you generate saves you editing time afterward and produces a quiz that fits your class, your content, and your purpose from the start.

This guide walks through every setting in the QuizMagic configuration panel, explains what each one does, and gives you practical guidance on which combinations work best for different teaching and training situations. By the end, you will know exactly how to customize quiz settings for any classroom scenario.

Where to Customize Quiz Settings in QuizMagic

After you log in to QuizMagic and add your content, whether that is a PDF or document, an image, pasted text, a YouTube link, or a typed topic, the settings panel appears directly below the input area. You customize quiz settings here before clicking Generate Quiz.

Every setting on the panel is optional in the sense that each one has a default value. However, taking a few seconds to adjust the settings before generating almost always produces better results than accepting the defaults and regenerating afterward. The AI uses your settings as instructions, and more specific instructions produce more targeted output.

The panel is laid out in this order: Quiz Type, Difficulty, Output Language, Number of Questions, Number of Options (for multiple choice), and Cognitive Framework. We will walk through each one below.

Setting 1: Quiz Type

This setting determines what format the AI uses when writing questions. QuizMagic supports five core question types plus a Mixed option that combines multiple types in a single quiz.

Multiple Choice

Multiple choice questions present a question stem followed by a set of answer options, typically four, though you can configure anywhere from 1 to 6 in the No. of Options setting described later. One option is correct, and the others are carefully constructed distractors. This is the most versatile question type for classroom use because it works across recall, comprehension, and application levels, and because it is fast to complete and easy to auto-grade.

Multiple choice works best when:

You need objective, instantly graded results
You are testing a large group and need efficiency
You want to cover a broad range of topics in one quiz
Students are familiar with the format from standardized tests

One limitation of multiple choice is that it does not reveal how a student arrived at an answer. A correct response could mean genuine understanding or a lucky guess. For this reason, it is worth mixing in at least a few short answer or fill-in-the-blank questions when deeper comprehension matters.

True/False

True/false questions are the fastest format for both writing and answering. Each question makes a statement, and students decide whether it is correct or incorrect. This format is useful for checking factual accuracy quickly, particularly on content-heavy topics where you need to assess a large number of facts efficiently.

True/false works best for:

Vocabulary and definition checks
Clarifying common misconceptions directly
Quick warm-up or exit ticket activities
Topics where black-and-white distinctions genuinely exist

However, avoid overusing true/false questions in a single quiz. Students have a 50% chance of guessing correctly on each item, which makes a quiz composed entirely of true/false questions less reliable as a measure of actual knowledge.

Fill in the Blanks

Fill-in-the-blank questions present a sentence or statement with one or more key terms removed. Students must supply the missing word or phrase from memory rather than selecting from options. As a result, fill-in-the-blanks is a stronger test of recall than multiple choice, because students cannot be guided by seeing the correct answer among the choices.

Fill in the blanks works best for:

Vocabulary, terminology, and definitions
Formulas and sequences where exact wording matters
Content where recall of specific facts is the primary learning objective
Checking whether students have internalized key terms rather than just recognizing them

Short Answer

Short answer questions ask students to write a response in their own words, typically one to three sentences. Unlike fill-in-the-blank questions, short answer responses are open-ended. There is no single correct phrasing, and the AI evaluates meaning rather than exact wording.

QuizMagic’s AI grading handles short answer questions automatically. The AI compares each student response to the model answer and assigns a score based on conceptual accuracy. You can review and override any AI grade at any time.

Short answer works best for:

Testing comprehension rather than pure recall
Asking students to explain, describe, or summarize
Checking whether students can express ideas in their own words
Identifying students who have memorized terms without understanding their meaning

Essay

Essay questions ask students to write extended responses, typically a paragraph or more, in answer to an open-ended prompt. QuizMagic’s AI essay grading evaluates these responses using configurable rubric criteria and assigns a score with detailed feedback. You review the AI’s assessment and confirm or adjust the grade.

Essay questions work best for:

Higher-order thinking at the Analyze, Evaluate, or Create levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy
Assessing a student’s ability to construct an argument or explain a process
Writing-intensive subjects where communication skills are part of the learning outcome
Summative assessments where depth of understanding matters more than speed

Because essay questions take significantly longer to complete and to grade, use them selectively. One or two well-crafted essay questions in a quiz often produce more insight than ten multiple choice questions on the same content. For that reason, QuizMagic caps essay quizzes at 10 questions.

Mixed (Multiple Question Types in One Quiz)

Mixed is a Premium feature that lets you combine multiple question types in a single quiz. Free users will see the Mixed option in the dropdown with a crown icon indicating it requires an upgrade. When Mixed is selected, you build the quiz one segment at a time: choose a question type and a count, add it to the quiz, then add another segment of a different type, and so on until you finish. This gives you full control over the composition, for example, five multiple choice, then three short answer, rather than relying on an automatic distribution.

Mixed is the setting that most closely mirrors the structure of real classroom tests and professional assessments. It challenges students across multiple formats, prevents them from settling into a single answering pattern, and gives you a richer picture of what each student actually understands.

Use Mixed when:

You are creating a mid-unit or end-of-unit test
You want to assess both recall and comprehension in the same sitting
You are preparing students for standardized tests that use multiple formats
You want to reduce the risk of students guessing their way to a passing score

Setting 2: Difficulty

The difficulty level tells the AI how demanding the questions should be. QuizMagic offers three levels: Easy, Medium, and Hard.

Easy

Easy questions test direct recall of information that is explicitly stated in the source content or that represents fundamental knowledge of the topic. The language is straightforward, the questions target single, clear facts, and the correct answer is not obscured by complex distractors.

Use Easy when:

You are introducing a topic for the first time and want to check initial comprehension
You are giving a warm-up quiz before a lesson
Your students are younger or are new to the subject
You want to build confidence before increasing the challenge

Easy questions align primarily with the Remember and Understand levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Medium

Medium questions require students to do more than recall a fact. For example, they may need to interpret information, make a comparison, identify a relationship between two ideas, or apply a concept to a slightly different situation. The distractors in medium multiple choice questions are more plausible than in easy questions, which means students cannot eliminate wrong answers as quickly.

Use Medium when:

Students have had time to study the material and should be ready to apply it
You are assessing comprehension at a lesson or unit level
You want questions that genuinely distinguish between students who understand the content and those who do not
You are building a regular formative assessment for an ongoing class

Medium questions align with the Understand and Apply levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Hard

Hard questions push students to analyze, evaluate, or synthesize information. They may involve multi-step reasoning, require students to compare competing ideas, evaluate the strength of an argument, or apply a concept to a novel scenario they have not explicitly encountered before. As a result, hard questions take longer to answer and produce the greatest differentiation between students at different levels of mastery.

Use Hard when:

You are preparing students for a major exam or standardized test
You teach advanced or honors-level content
You want to identify your highest-performing students
You are creating a challenge activity for students who need extension work

Hard questions align with the Analyze, Evaluate, and Create levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Mixing Difficulty Levels in a Single Quiz

QuizMagic generates questions at a single difficulty level per quiz. If you want a quiz that includes a range of difficulty, for example, a few easy recall questions, several medium application questions, and two hard analysis questions — generate separate quizzes at different difficulty levels and use the best questions from each. You can also use the Quiz Regenerator to regenerate individual questions using different settings after generation, without rebuilding the entire quiz.

Setting 3: Output Language

The Output Language setting controls the language the AI writes the quiz in. The default is Auto-detect, which matches the language of your source material. You can also override this by selecting a specific language: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, or Russian.

Auto-detect is the right choice in most cases. Choose a specific language when you want the quiz to be written in a different language from the source, for example, generating an English quiz from a Spanish textbook chapter, or generating a Filipino translation of an English article for bilingual classes.

Setting 4: Number of Questions

The Number of Questions setting is the most fundamental control in the panel after quiz type. It determines how many items the AI generates in a single quiz.

What the default is

QuizMagic defaults to 10 questions, which works well for most formative assessments and general comprehension checks.

How to decide how many questions you need

The right number depends on three things: the purpose of the quiz, the time available, and the cognitive level of the questions.

For quick classroom checks (5 to 10 questions)

Bell-ringers, warm-ups, and entry tickets do not need to be long. Five to ten questions at the start of class take three to five minutes and give you an accurate read of whether students understood the previous lesson. Short quizzes also have a lower cognitive load, which means students can focus on demonstrating what they know rather than managing fatigue.

For formative assessments and mid-lesson checks (10 to 15 questions)

A ten to fifteen question quiz is the most common length for a standalone formative assessment. Research published by Pear Deck Learning across data from over 400,000 teachers found that elementary teachers average 11.4 questions per assessment, and middle and high school teachers average 15.3 questions. This range gives you enough data points to identify knowledge gaps without exhausting students or eating into instruction time.

For unit reviews and summative practice tests (20 to 30 questions)

When students are preparing for an exam or reviewing an entire unit, a longer quiz produces more reliable results. Assessment research from Questionmark suggests that reliability increases significantly as you move from 10 to 25 questions, because more data points give you a more accurate picture of what a student actually knows. For a 30-question unit review, consider using the Mixed quiz type so students encounter multiple formats rather than 30 identical multiple choice items.

For comprehensive exams (30 or more questions)

Longer quizzes are appropriate when the stakes are higher and the content scope is broad. If you are covering an entire semester’s material or building a practice version of a major examination, generating 30 or more questions from a thorough source document will give students the volume of practice they need.

A practical tip on question count and question type

The right number of questions also depends on the types of questions you select. Multiple choice and true/false questions move quickly. Students can answer one every 30 to 60 seconds. Short answer and essay questions take significantly longer. If your quiz includes essay questions, ten questions may already represent 30 minutes of work. Adjust the number down when you use open-ended question types.

Setting 5: Number of Options (Multiple Choice Only)

When your quiz type is Multiple Choice, or when a Multiple Choice segment is being added inside a Mixed quiz, a No. of Options setting appears next to Number of Questions. This controls how many answer choices each item has. You can pick any value from 1 to 6, and the default is 4.

Four options are the classic and safest choice for most classroom quizzes. Fewer options make guessing easier; more options make items harder to write well because every distractor still needs to be plausible. Use 5 or 6 only when you have genuinely distinct incorrect answers to offer, and use 2 or 3 for younger students or introductory content where a shorter option list is easier to process.

Setting 6: Cognitive Framework

The Cognitive Framework setting is QuizMagic’s most powerful customization option and the one that most directly connects your quiz to formal educational frameworks. It tells the AI not just how hard to make the questions, but what kind of thinking the questions should require.

There are four choices in the dropdown:

None (Standard Mode) — the default. The AI writes questions without targeting a specific taxonomy level.
Bloom’s Taxonomy — target any of the six Bloom’s levels.
SOLO Taxonomy — target any of the five SOLO levels.
Mixed (Bloom’s + SOLO) — combine both frameworks using 11 predefined combinations.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Levels

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a six-level framework for classifying educational objectives, from simple recall at the bottom to complex creative thinking at the top. QuizMagic lets you target any of the six levels directly.

Remember — recall specific facts, definitions, dates, names, or sequences. Examples: What is the definition of photosynthesis? Who wrote the Philippine Constitution of 1987?
Understand — explain, summarize, describe, or interpret information in your own words. Examples: Explain why leaves turn green during photosynthesis. Describe the role of the legislative branch.
Apply — use knowledge in a specific situation. Examples: Given the following data set, calculate the mean and standard deviation. A patient presents with these symptoms, which diagnosis is most likely?
Analyze — break information into parts, examine relationships, or distinguish between competing ideas. Examples: Compare and contrast mitosis and meiosis. What are the main differences between the 1935 and 1987 Philippine Constitutions?
Evaluate — make judgments, assess the quality of an argument, or justify a position. Example: Do you agree that social media has had a net negative effect on student learning? Support your answer with evidence.
Create — produce something new by combining knowledge in an original way. Examples: Design a lesson plan that incorporates retrieval practice. Propose a policy to address food insecurity in urban communities.

SOLO Taxonomy Levels

SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) is an alternative framework that describes the complexity of a student’s understanding rather than the type of thinking required. QuizMagic supports SOLO taxonomy as an alternative to Bloom’s for educators who work within institutions or curricula that use this framework.

Mixed (Bloom’s + SOLO) Combinations

If you want the precision of Bloom’s paired with the structural view of SOLO, choose Mixed (Bloom’s + SOLO). QuizMagic exposes 11 curated combinations, including Remember + Uni-structural, Understand + Multi-structural, Apply + Relational, Analyze + Extended Abstract, and Create + Extended Abstract. This is the best option for advanced course design, thesis-level assessments, and accreditation reports that reference both frameworks.

When to Use None (Standard Mode) vs. a Specific Framework

If you leave the cognitive framework on None (Standard Mode), QuizMagic writes questions that are appropriate for your difficulty level and source material without formally tagging each item to a taxonomy level. That is a good starting point for everyday classroom quizzes when you do not need explicit framework alignment.

Set a specific framework when:

You need to demonstrate curriculum alignment for accreditation or reporting
You are building assessments around stated learning outcomes that specify a cognitive level
You want to scaffold learning by deliberately moving students up the taxonomy week by week
You are teaching a unit that concludes with a higher-order task and want assessments to build toward it

Recommended Ways to Customize Quiz Settings by Use Case

Here is a quick reference guide for common scenarios and the best settings for each.

Scenario	Questions	Quiz Type	Difficulty	Cognitive Framework
Bell-ringer / warm-up	5	Multiple Choice or True/False	Easy	None or Bloom’s – Remember
Formative check after a lesson	10	Multiple Choice	Medium	Bloom’s – Understand
Exit ticket	5	Short Answer	Medium	Bloom’s – Apply
Mid-unit assessment	15–20	Mixed (Premium)	Medium	Bloom’s – Apply or Analyze
End-of-unit test	25–30	Mixed (Premium)	Hard	Bloom’s – Analyze
Student self-study / exam prep	10–15	Multiple Choice	Medium to Hard	Bloom’s – Apply or Evaluate
Corporate compliance check	10	Multiple Choice or True/False	Medium	Bloom’s – Understand

Bell-ringer or warm-up at the start of class

Five questions, Multiple Choice or True/False, Easy, None or Bloom’s Remember. These settings produce a quiz that takes three to five minutes and gives you a quick, clean signal of where your class stands before you begin instruction.

Formative check after a lesson

Ten questions, Multiple Choice, Medium, Bloom’s Understand. Ten medium-difficulty multiple choice questions give you enough data to identify which students are keeping up and which need more support, without taking more than eight to ten minutes of class time.

Exit ticket at the end of a lesson

Five questions, Short Answer, Medium, Bloom’s Apply. Five short answer questions asking students to apply what they just learned give you qualitative insight into their thinking that multiple choice cannot provide. AI grading handles scoring automatically.

Mid-unit assessment

Fifteen to twenty questions, Mixed (Premium), Medium, Bloom’s Apply or Analyze. A Mixed mid-unit quiz at medium difficulty covers more ground and tests students across multiple formats, which produces a more reliable picture of where the class is midway through a unit.

End-of-unit or chapter test

Twenty-five to thirty questions, Mixed (Premium), Hard, Bloom’s Analyze. Longer, harder quizzes with mixed question types are appropriate at the end of a unit when you need a summative measure of what students have learned. Hard questions at the Analyze level differentiate between surface-level understanding and genuine mastery.

Student self-study or exam preparation

Ten to fifteen questions, Multiple Choice, Medium to Hard, Bloom’s Apply or Evaluate. Self-study quizzes work best with a moderate number of questions at medium to hard difficulty. Students can retake them repeatedly using Smart Sharing, and the challenge pushes them to think rather than just recognize familiar answers.

Corporate compliance or onboarding check

Ten questions, Multiple Choice and True/False, Medium, Bloom’s Understand. Compliance quizzes need to be efficient and clear. Ten questions at the Understand level confirm that employees have grasped key policies or procedures without overwhelming them with a long assessment.

What to Do After Generating

Once you click Generate Quiz, review the output before sharing it with anyone. Even with well-configured settings, it is worth spending a minute reading through the questions to check for accuracy and relevance. Specifically, look for:

Questions that focus on minor details rather than the key ideas in your content — delete or regenerate these
Distractors that are too obviously wrong in multiple choice questions — edit the answer choices to make them more plausible
Questions that are too similar to each other — if two questions test the same fact, remove one
Any factual inaccuracies — the AI is highly accurate but not infallible; always verify the correct answers on technical or specialized content

After reviewing, use the Quiz Regenerator to swap out any individual questions you are not satisfied with. You can change the question type, difficulty, or cognitive framework for a single item without regenerating the entire quiz. This is the fastest way to fine-tune a quiz that is mostly right but has a few items that need adjusting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I change the settings after the quiz has been generated? You cannot re-run the configuration panel on an existing quiz, but you can use the Quiz Regenerator to change the type, difficulty, or cognitive framework of any individual question. If you want a completely different version, feed the same source content back in and generate a new quiz with your updated settings.

What is the maximum number of questions I can generate in one quiz? It depends on your plan. Free users can pick 5 or 10 questions per quiz and are limited to 10 generations per month (with a soft daily cap of 2). Premium users can pick 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, or 100 questions per quiz. Essay quizzes are capped at 10 questions for everyone. See the Free vs Premium plan comparison for full details.

Does the difficulty setting affect how the AI writes distractors in multiple choice questions? Yes, directly. On Easy, the distractors are clearly different from the correct answer so students can distinguish them without deep knowledge. On Hard, the distractors are designed to reflect plausible misconceptions, which means students must genuinely understand the content to identify the correct answer rather than just eliminating obvious wrong choices.

Can I use different difficulty levels in the same quiz? Not within a single generation. QuizMagic generates all questions at the difficulty level you set. To mix difficulties, generate separate quizzes at different levels and use the Quiz Regenerator to swap in questions at the difficulty you want for individual items.

What is the difference between difficulty and cognitive framework? Difficulty controls how demanding the question feels and how much students need to know to get it right. The cognitive framework controls the type of thinking required such as recall, understanding, application, analysis, and so on. A Remember-level question can be Hard if it requires recalling an obscure or complex fact. An Apply-level question can be Easy if the application scenario is straightforward. The two settings work together: pairing Hard difficulty with Evaluate or Analyze produces the most challenging questions in QuizMagic.

Should I always use the Mixed quiz type? Not always. Mixed is excellent for unit tests and comprehensive assessments where you want to cover multiple cognitive skills, and it is available on Premium. For quick checks, warm-ups, and self-study quizzes, a single question type is often faster to complete and easier for students to navigate. Choose Mixed when the quiz has a summative or evaluative purpose; use a single type for formative and low-stakes activities.

What cognitive level should I target for a first quiz on new content? Remember or Understand is the right starting point when students have just encountered a topic for the first time. As they spend more time with the material, move up to Apply and Analyze in subsequent quizzes. This progression mirrors the way learning actually works and ensures you are not testing students on thinking skills they have not had the chance to develop yet.

Now that you know how to customize quiz settings in QuizMagic, open the generator, drop in your source content, and try one of the recommended configurations above.