Keywords: quiz, question, exam, multiple choice, e-exam, e-assessment, summative, formative, feedback, instant, detail, further help, assistance, extend

What is it?

A quiz is a useful way to test or evaluate students knowledge on a particular subject or area of study. It can be used for both formative and summative (credit bearing) assessment, such as in class tests or examinations.

Why use it?

When used for formative testing, it can check the student's current knowledge levels, and let them see areas for improvement.
Marking can be automated on some question types (such as multiple choice).
Staff can see a detailed breakdown of results, as well as statistics on how easy or discriminating each question is.

Who can use it?

Tutors can create quizzes and provide detailed feedback for each question to help students learn (for formative quizzes).
Students can take quizzes and view feedback for each question (in formative quizzes).

Before I start...

Think about:

What type of questions would work best?
Do I want to apply a penalty for wrong answers?
Should I allow multiple attempts?
Do I want students to review their attempt(s)?

Moodle Quiz for online exam

If you are running a summative test or exam in Moodle, please refer to our guidance on using Moodle Quiz for online exams.

Meeting the baseline

The UCL Connected Learning Baseline includes the following for Orientation :

2.1 Include the module syllabus and intended learning outcomes

2.2 Explain participation requirements:

Outline how students are expected to use Moodle in a course usage statement.
Identify which activities are compulsory and optional.
Explicitly signpost all online and offline activities and how they interrelate.
Provide an indicator of effort (such as timings or page counts) for all compulsory tasks.
Explain how students are expected to use UCL and any external e-learning tools as part of programme or module induction. Wholly online courses might provide this information as a screen-cast video, with a voice over.
Link to instructions for any e-learning tools that students are expected to use.
Explain what digital devices and software students are expected to provide for themselves.

The Assessment category suggests that you should:

4.1 Provide an assessment outline with a clear description of the module assessment, including schedule, criteria and submission details. To avoid duplication this might include a link to a module webpage.

How do I set one up?

Creating a quiz in Moodle is actually a three stage process.

Firstly you create questions in a Question bank .
Next you set up a Quiz.
Finally you add questions from the bank to the quiz.

Watch How to create a Moodle Quiz (video 16 minutes) for an overview of creating a Moodle quiz, or follow the text instructions provided below.

Add a Quiz

(For exams, refer to our separate settings guidance).

To create a Quiz remember to toggle Edit mode to on.
In the topic where you want the quiz to appear, click on the Add an activity or resource link and select Quiz.
Give the quiz a meaningful and unambiguous Name.
Enter whether the assessment is summative or formative
In the Description, explain clearly what the students have to do, any pre-quiz requirements and so on. Note you can use the Editor to add links, images etc.
For Timing, you can choose when the quiz is available to students, by setting an open date/time and closed date/time. Tick the Enable box to allow this. When a Time limit is set, Moodle will automatically submit the quiz after this time expires. The student is warned when time runs low. You can also set a time limit on the quiz. We recommend you set When time expires to Open attempts are submitted automatically.
Grade controls which Grade category the results will come under, Attempts allowed controls how many attempts your students are allowed to take, and Grading Method controls how multiple attempts (if allowed) are graded.
Layout - Placing Every question on a New page is recommended for exams, as student responses will be saved every time they change page.
Question Behaviour - Shuffling within the question (i.e. randomising the answers) can also help stop repetition, predictable patterns and cheating off a neighbour (in exams). You can choose which kind of feedback (if any) to provide students. For exams, you will probably want to keep this set to deferred feedback.
Review options - Information is presented at various stages throughout the quiz - for exams, these should all be unchecked so students can't see their attempts or marks.
Appearance - Here you have options for the display such as whether the student's profile picture shows, the number of decimal places for a question, for the quiz and whether to show the usual Moodle blocks at the side of the quiz.
Extra Restrictions on attempts - If you are setting an exam, you should require a password. If you need to check what it is, click the Reveal icon to the right.
Overall feedback - This is the feedback that is shown after a quiz has been attempted. You can also specify feedback depending on grade boundaries (as a mark or percentage).
Note: If editing a quiz, you can also send a content notification to students if required by ticking the checkbox to the right of Send content change notification at the bottom.
Once you are happy with the settings, click Save and display.
Go to the Questions tab. If you would like the questions to appear in a random order for each student for each attempt, tick the Shuffle checkbox in the top right. Shuffling the question order randomly can help stop repetition, predictable patterns and cheating off a neighbour (in exams). If you want the questions to display in the order they appear on the edit screen, leave the shuffle checkbox unchecked.
To add questions, go to the Questions tab and click the Add dropdown menu, then +new question. Alternatively, you may wish to create questions in the question bank and then allow Moodle to randomly assign a question from a particular category for that student. To add questions to the question bank, go to the Question bank tab and then click the Create a new question button in the relevant question bank category, then choose the relevant question type and follow the usual steps for question creation.

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.

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.

Grading a Quiz

If you wish to assign points to individual questions, see the Moodle guidance on assigning points.

If you wish to allocate points to a quiz section (new in Moodle 4.4), please see the Moodle guidance on Quiz section grades.

Overview of question types

You may add a variety of different types of questions in the Quiz activity:

Standard Question Types

Calculated

Calculated multi-choice

Calculated simple

Drag and drop into text

Drag and drop markers

Drag and drop onto image

Description

Essay

Matching

Embedded Answers

Multiple choice

Ordering

Short Answer

Numerical

Random short-answer matching

Select missing words

True/False

Additional Question Types

Besides the standard Question types that are part of the core Moodle distribution, there are a number of additional "third party" question types:

Further help

Further guidance on Quiz settings is available from moodledocs.

Further guidance on Question types is available from moodledocs.

If you find any inaccurate or missing information you can even update this yourself (it's a communal wiki).

If you have a specific question about the tool please contact the Digital Education team.

Caution

If you have a glossary within your Moodle course you may wish to disable the Glossary auto-linking filter, so that glossary definitions don't appear automatically for the quiz questions or answers.

Examples and case studies

Tips and good practice for Using a Quiz are available from moodledocs.
Quiz process:
- When creating questions and quizzes there is a process on how best to do it.
- We recommend creating questions in the Question bank before creating the quiz.
- The flowchart below shows how these elements of the quiz interact with one another.

Questions & Answers

Q. How do I grant one or more students an extension for a quiz with a deadline?

A. It is now possible to re-open a quiz for a student or more than one student who, for whatever reason, has missed the deadline. You can also give extensions to one student or more while the quiz is still open.

To reopen an attempt, go to the quiz Results tab and in the State column next to the appropriate student, click the Reopen button.
To grant an extension, go to the quiz More drop-down menu and choose Overrides then Add user override. You can then search for the user and set a timeframe to reopen the quiz for that particular user. You can also set a required password.

Q. What should I write in the description area of a Moodle quiz being used to run an exam?

A. It is recommended that the exam introduction on the settings page contains information about the exam that students can read while waiting for the exam to begin. Below is a template for the kind of information we suggest you include.

Replace all text in square brackets [] with the appropriate information for the exam.

Exam Description Template

About this exam:

This exam consists of [??] questions including [multiple choice questions, matching questions and free-text questions.]

The maximum marks you can receive is displayed to the left of each question. Partially correct answers will be awarded part marks. You won't be negatively marked for incorrect answers, so you should attempt to answer all questions.

You will have [??] minutes to complete the exam. Those who have been granted additional time to complete the exam will be allowed to continue for the agreed period. Numeric answers [DO/DO NOT] require you to enter the unit in the answer.

About Moodle quiz exams:

Moodle will save your answers each time you click to the next question.

When you have finished the exam press [Submit all and finish] and you will be prompted to confirm - once you confirm you want to finish, you will not be able to re-enter the exam!

Write down the page number of any questions you want to revisit so you can come back to them later.

The password will be announced by the chief invigilator at the beginning of the exam. When it is announced, press F5 to refresh this page and enter the password in the box that appears at the bottom of this page to start the exam.

Q. How do I print out my Moodle quiz?

Click on your Moodle quiz.
Click on the Settings tab.
Under Layout, change New page drop down menu to Never, all questions on one page, and click the Repaginate now tick box.
Click Save and display.
Click the Preview quiz button.
When the preview of your quiz loads, use your browser's print options to print the page.

Q. My quiz has been de-anonymised by accident, how can I get it re-anonymised?

A. Please fill out this web form to get your quiz or assignment re-anonymised.

Further information

Also see:

There are lots of other areas to explore in relation to quizzes on Moodle. Some other parts of the Moodle.org website you might find helpful include:

E-Examinations - M12a - Moodle Quiz for invigilated online exams.

Writing questions - Writing effective assessment questions.

Building a quiz - Guidance on Building a Quiz.

Question Types - More details on the range of Question types available in Moodle.

Question categories - In Moodle Question categories are great for organising your questions and can be used to quickly add random questions.

Quiz reports - How to access and understand various Moodle Quiz reports, including grades, responses and statistics reports.

Quiz quick guide - If you are still struggling you might want to try the Quiz quick guide from moodledocs.

Importing questions - How to import questions from Moodle from other sources, including Word table format.

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