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Overview

If you are running a summative test or exam in Moodle, as well as referring to the Module Assessment guidance in the Academic Manual, you also need to use this guidance and checklist to ensure you have set up the Quiz or Assignment properly and have considered what to do in case anything goes wrong with the technology. 
If you are running an invigilated exam using a Moodle quiz, please see the invigilated online exam guidance.
Quiz-specific information is preceded by ( quiz icon ).


Note
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Please be reminded that Exam Guard is in effect for quizzes open for less than 5 hours, so course editing will be disabled from 10 minutes before the quiz starts until 10 minutes after it ends. To avoid any disruptions, we recommend setting the "Open the quiz" time to match the exam start time when creating the quiz, as well as leaving the quiz availability setting on "Show on course page" rather than "Hide on course page".  You will be unable to change the quiz from hidden to available once the quiz start time has passed. 

At least four weeks before the exam is scheduled to take place, it is vital you complete the Exam Notification Form so that the Digital Education team and ISD can complete any necessary checks on your Moodle quiz settings and/or room.

If this is the first time you are running an online exam please state this in the Exam Notification Form in "Additional Info" and a member of our team MAY be able to assist you on the day (given enough notice). Please note: These members of staff are not a replacement for invigilators.

DO NOT schedule your exam during a planned Moodle outage or maintenance window. Currently, the window for Moodle maintenance is 1am – 4am GMT / 2am – 5am BST weekday mornings. Exact maintenance days will be communicated on the News ticker of the Moodle homepage and ISD news. You can also check the Moodle news ticker on the Moodle home page for any planned outages.

AVOID scheduling your exam within the UCL transition window of 5mins to or 5mins past the hour. Where possible, we recommend to adjust the start time of timed quizzes to 10 or 15 minutes past the hour (e.g. 11:10am, 12:15pm etc.) especially where the quiz is being taken by a large number of students.  

AVOID editing the settings of the Moodle course or its activities while students are actively undertaking a quiz on the same Moodle course.  Editing course content while a quiz is underway (specifically instances where there are a large number of participants) may impact the performance of your Moodle course and its activities.

Moodle Quiz - Activity Completion - please note if you have enabled Activity completion, then the 'Require view' field  MUST  be unselected. Otherwise, this can slow down student access during their attempt. Please refer to the Recommended Moodle Quiz Settings checklist.


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RequireView
RequireView
Activity completion setting 'Require view':  Student must view this activity to complete it.  Ensure this is not selected. 

Activity completion settings with require view selected

Moodle Exam guard

Exam guard will prevent users from editing their course from 10 minutes before the start of a Moodle quiz until 10 minutes after the quiz has finished. Exam guard does this by looking at the “open the quiz”/ “close the quiz”  setting when a Moodle quiz is created. The course editing freeze will only apply where the Moodle quiz is open for less than 5 hours as it is designed to target Moodle quizzes being used for controlled condition exams. 

A banner will appear at the top of your course when Exam guard is in effect.

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Exam guard will work automatically and should have no impact on the majority of workflows. You can still post to forums, and mark submissions in other assignments. You can also add user overrides for late minute ECs and SORA students to a quiz. However, you will not be able to edit course settings or create or edit activities in their course while the exam is running.

You will no longer be able to manually unhide and release a Moodle quiz by making the quiz visible at the exam start time. This workflow is not recommended or required. A better approach is for staff to set the Moodle “open the quiz” setting to the exam start date and time when creating the quiz. Students will see the quiz item on Moodle but aren’t able to access the questions or begin the quiz before the open date and time so there is no risk your exam is released early.

Back

3 weeks before

  • Practice material & briefing students:  Familiarise your students with the Moodle assessment tools before they sit the exam, e.g. ask them to complete a trial quiz or upload a test assignment. 

    • quiz icon Prepare a practice quiz for your students, or use Digital Education's example quiz.  

    • quiz icon Let them know the scoring rules, number and types of questions, any navigation constraints and the time limit.


  • Include an informative introduction (in the description of the quiz or assignment settings).

  • quiz icon Setup any required extra time for SORA students: If you are using a timed exam and need to give specific students additional time, you can change time settings for individual users via the User overrides option in the quiz Settings menu.

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