Moodle Teacher Guide: Create Quizzes

Creating a Moodle quiz involves two steps - setting up a quiz shell, and then adding questions. Questions created for quizzes are kept in a course question bank and can be reused in other quizzes.

Ideas for using quizzes:

• Assess student learning of course or unit objectives
• Pretest practice
• Student self-assessment

Click on the links below to view these topics:

• Create a quiz shell
• Create Questions and organize them in Question Bank Categories
• Add questions to quizzes
• Quiz Security

If you want to get a sampling of different Moodle quiz questions, follow the link to this demo. Login as parent, password: moodle

Create a Quiz

• On the course homepage > click Turn Editing on
• In the section where you want the quiz to appear > click Add an activity or resource
• Click the radio button beside Quiz
• Click Add

Configure these settings

• Add a Name and Description
  • The description should include an explanation of how to take and submit the quiz
• Configure Timing
  • Open and close the quiz - the date and time of the day the quiz is available
  • Time limit - the amount of time a student has to complete the quiz
    • Quiz timing starts when the student clicks on the Attempt quiz now button.  The timer continues even if the student closes the browser.
  • When time expires (click +Show more...) - configure what to do when the quiz timer runs out and the student is not finished
  • Submission grace period - configure a grace period if the grace period option is selected when time expires

More Information About Quizzes Timing Out:

• Configure Grade - set grading options and number of quiz attempts
• Configure Layout - the order students will see the quiz questions
  • Navigation method (click +Show more...) - configure if a student can freely return to previous questions and jump ahead, or if they must navigate through the questions sequentially
• Configure Question behavior  - shuffling of question parts for each quiz attempt and when feedback is given
• Review options - what the student sees when they review the quiz attempt.
  • For more information see http://docs.moodle.org/26/en/Quiz_settings#Question_behaviour
• Extra restrictions on attempts - set time delay between quiz attempts if multiple attempts are allowed and browser security (click +Show more...)
• Overall feedback - add feedback that is shown after the quiz attempt
• Click Save and return to course

Return to Quizzes Menu

Create a Question Bank Category

• Administration > Course administration > Question bank > click Categories

• Select the Parent category
• Enter a category Name
• Click Add category

Create Questions

• Administration > Course administration > Question bank > click Questions

• Select the appropriate question bank category
• Click Create a new question...
• Select a question type by clicking on its radio button (descriptions are displayed when question type is selected)
• Click Next
• Enter a Question Name
• Enter the Question Text (the question prompt)
• Designate a Default mark (number of points for this question) and the correct answer
• Fill in other question information (optional)
• Click Save changes

Moving questions to question bank categories

• Administration > Course administration > Question bank > click Questions
• Select a category containing the questions you want to move
• Select questions by clicking in their checkboxes or click the top checkbox to select all questions in that category

• Under With selected:
• Select your desitnation category from the drop down list
• click Move to >>

Return to Quzzes Menu

Add questions to quizzes by manually choosing them from a question bank or have Moodle randomly select them so that each student receives a different set of questions.

• Open the quiz
• Administration > Quiz administration > click Edit quiz

Manually add question from Question bank

• From the Question bank contents block > Select the category containing the question bank
• Place a check mark beside the questions you want to add or click the top check box to select all the questions in that category
• Under the With selected: section > click Add to quiz *
  • You can also add questions by clicking on the double arrows (<<) beside the question

Add random questions from a Question bank

• From the Question bank contents block > Select the category containing the question bank
• Under the Add random questions from category: section
• Select the number of random questions to be added to the quiz from the drop down list
• click Add to quiz *

*The number of questions added per page can be configured in the quiz's settings (Administration > Quiz administration > Edit settings > Layout > New page drop down list)

Return to Quizzes Menu

Configure these settings to help avoid cheating on tests:

• limit the amount of time a student has to take a quiz (Quiz > Edit settings > Timing > Time limit)

• set the number of quiz attempts to one (Quiz > Edit settings > Grade > Attempts allowed)

• randomize the question order displayed for each quiz attempt (Quiz > Edit settings > Layout > Question order > Shuffled randomly)

• randomize the answer order for questions with multiple answer parts, such as multiple choice questions (Quiz > Edit settings > Question behavior > Shuffle within questions = Yes) and (Question > Edit settings > select to Shuffle the answer choices)

• have Moodle randomly select questions from a large question bank for each attempt (see the above section on adding random questions to quizzes)

• Do not allow backtracking (Quiz settings > Layout > Show more... > Navigation method > Sequential)

Limit the possibility of students creating copies of the quiz questions and answers

• Restrict access to browser screens and features during quiz (Quiz settings > Extra restrictions on attempts > Show more... >  Browser security > select Full screen pop-up with some JavaScript security)

• Limit feedback until all attempts have finished and don't display the correct answer (Quiz settings > Question behavior > How questions behave > Deferred feedback) and (Quiz > Edit settings > Review options)

Additional Quiz Security Strategies

• Essay-type questions are more secure than true-false, multiple choice, etc. questions

• Proctor quizzes

Return to Quizzes Menu

Importing questions from a question bank

Many publishers offer question banks that can be uploaded to the Moodle quiz module. Typically, the question bank offers an option to make the quiz in the publisher's environment (cd or online) with the capability to export the questions as an exam view file or other format. If you have any questions, please contact John, Laurie, or Anne in the TLT Resources Department. Contact information is on the home page of the Moodle tutorials.

To begin, in Course Administration, click on Question Bank>import.

A list of format options will appear. Select the file type. Click on the ? to find out more about the question types.

Drag the saved quiz question file into the space provided. Click on Import.

Once the questions are imported, Moodle will show the questions numbered. Click Continue, and the screen will show the Quiz Bank. You can then select, move, or delete questions.

You cannot remove a question from a quiz after it has been given. However, you can change the score so that the question is not reflected in the students' final score. You can also flag the question.

To set the score for the question to zero:

From the Quiz Administration box, click on Edit Quiz

Select the quiz question in question, and click on the pencil to the right of the question. Enter 0 and press ENTER to change the value of the quiz. When you return to the actual quiz, the value of the question should be 0.