Question and Answer Workflow (Overview & Set up)

Overview:

The Question and Answer (Q&A) workflow in Bongo allows evaluators to create prompts, scenarios, or questions and provides users with a set amount of time to respond. Compared to traditional assessments (including multiple-choice), this workflow focuses on real-world communication skills, critical thinking, application of knowledge, and readiness for real-world tasks rather than simple recognition.

In a Question and Answer workflow:

• Evaluators create prompts, scenarios, or questions for users to respond to.
• Users are given a limited time to respond, replicating the high‑pressure environment of real-time response.
• Users can optionally practice their response before submitting a final version.
• Responses are reviewed using AI feedback, human evaluation, or both.

Low-Stakes vs. High-Stakes Assessment:

• The Question & Answer workflow supports both low-stakes and high-stakes assessments.
  • Low-stakes (Practice-enabled): Users can practice responses and receive feedback after each attempt. They may re-record and only submit the response they are satisfied with. This mode is ideal for learning, improvement, and confidence-building.
  • High-stakes: Practice is disabled. Users respond once, in the moment, with no retries, closely mirroring real-world expectations. This mode is best for validation, readiness checks, or formal evaluation.

Set up & Configuration

The configuration for Question and Answer is split up into tabs:

The General tab contains the basic information about the assessment.

1. Your LMS may populate the assessment title, but otherwise, you will need to add it.
2. You can optionally add a due date to the assessment. The due date is informational for users and does not prevent submissions after it passes. Evaluators may choose to adjust scores for late submissions at their discretion. 
3. Instructions are the first thing the user will see when taking the assessment. Use this space to provide any necessary context or guidance for users before they start the assessment. A video can be included with the instructions by clicking on the video icon next to the instructions. [DO NOT use emojis in your instructions].

More Options

In More Options, you can create Post-Submission Instructions. This is an optional message that users will see after completing the assessment.

The Evaluation tab determines how users will be evaluated. Bongo offers multiple ways to evaluate responses, including manual and automated options. Manual options, such as Percentage and Rubric, require an evaluator to review each submission and assign a score to each user. Smart Scoring is the recommended evaluation method when you want to automate scoring.

Evaluation Type Considerations:
Smart Scoring

• Smart Scoring uses only the question/prompt plus the criteria to automatically score a user's submission.  These are defined in the Questions tab. 
• Evaluators can still determine the final score, review responses, and provide comments.

The Questions Tab 
In the Questions Tab, you can

1. Add your own reference material that will generate questions to ask the user. The generated content can then be modified if desired.  The question generator is best suited for quizzes or knowledge checks. 

If you choose Smart Score as the Evaluation type, the generator will create questions and response criteria that the AI will use to evaluate responses.

Note: If using Smart Scoring as the Evaluation Type, user responses must be at least 10 words.

2. Create your own questions/prompts and response criteria.  Response Criteria will define what users are expected to articulate in their response. Typically, key concepts, actions, or behaviors that a strong response should include. Manually defining questions/prompts and response criteria is best suited for scenarios that require users to apply their knowledge, such as overcoming objections or responding to customer service calls.

Note: Response Criteria is only available when Smart Scoring is selected as the Evaluation type.  Both the question/prompt and the criteria are used to automatically evaluate submissions and provide targeted feedback.  Users do not need to follow a script or repeat the criteria verbatim to meet the objective.

  Pro Tip

If you do not use Smart Score as the evaluation type and AI Feedback is enabled, users will receive general feedback about their organization and details. It will also infer the video's context (presentation, sales pitch, demo, etc.) and provide feedback on the user's performance in that context.

The Answers Tab 

This section lets you customize how users complete the Q&A assessment.

1. By default, users must share their microphone and camera when answering a question/prompt. You can disable the camera if only audio is needed, and optionally require them to share their screen.
2. The start delay is the buffer time that users have after seeing the question/prompt.  You determine how long you want to give users to think about the question/prompt before they respond. 
3. The recording min/max determines the required duration of the video response.  Users cannot stop the recording until the minimum time has elapsed, and it will automatically end if they exceed the maximum time.
4. Optional: Random question mode presents questions/prompts in random order.  If you have a large number of questions/prompts, you can also specify how many each user will respond to.

The AI Feedback Tab lets you enable or disable AI Feedback for users. AI Feedback cannot be disabled when Smart Scoring or Delivery is used as the evaluation type.

The Peer Review Tab lets you enable Peer Review, allowing users to view and review submissions from other users.

Settings to note:

• Number of Peer Reviews: The number of reviews you want your users to complete. If this is the only setting you have enabled, peer review will consist of time-stamped comments only. If you want peers to provide scoring feedback, you must enable Evaluation Type in the More Options section 
• Reviewer Selection: By default, Bongo balances peer reviews so that users who haven't yet been reviewed are prioritized next. If you rely on this feature, we recommend setting the number of Peer Reviews to at least 2 to ensure proper distribution. Optionally, you can change this behavior to allow users to manually select whom they review.
• Evaluation Type: Users can provide quantitative feedback to their peers using a 5-star scale or the same rubric used for their main evaluation. If the Evaluation Type is Peer Review, the user’s score will be the average of their peers' reviews (either using a rubric or a 5-star rating). If the Evaluation type is any other option, the quantitative feedback is visible to the evaluator and should be taken into account when determining the overall score.