Moodle Quiz for invigilated and non-invigilated online exams

If you are running a summative assessment in Moodle, consult the Module Assessment guidance in the Academic Manual alongside this guide. Together, these resources will help you set up your Moodle Quiz correctly and prepare for any potential technical issues.

Notify the Digital Education team of your upcoming exam

• For invigilated exams (occurring in a bookable room) it is vital that you complete the Exam Notification Form at least FOUR WEEKS before the exam is scheduled to take place. This is required so that the Digital Education team can complete any necessary tasks and notify ISD to perform room checks.

• For non-invigilated exams (online only) you should complete the same Exam notification form giving at least two weeks’ notice. 

• If this is the first time you are running an online Moodle exam, please state this in the Exam Notification Form under "Additional Info” and a member of Digital Education Support can check your exam settings in advance.  

Safe Exam Browser (SEB)

Moodle Quizzes can be configured so that students complete them in a locked-down browser called Safe Exam Browser (SEB).

SEB restricts what students can do whilst completing the Moodle Quiz. Typically, the student will be unable to access any other application or web page on their computer apart from the Quiz itself.

SEB is one of many approaches to supporting academic integrity, and should be considered in the context of assessment design for academic integrity.

If you would like to enable Safe Exam Browser, please refer to this set-up guidance: Moodle Quiz Safe Exam Browser

Recommended Moodle Quiz Settings 

General

• Description: This serves as an introduction and should include the scoring rules, number and types of questions, and the time limit. If applicable, note any extra time allowances. For numeric questions, make clear whether students must include units as well as values - this should ideally also be stated in each relevant question.
  You may add some additional standard text such as the statements below, that explain to students how their Moodle exam will work. You may copy and paste any of the below statement into the quiz Description as appropriate: 

  • You won't be negatively marked for incorrect answers, so you should attempt to answer all questions. 

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

  • If you want to revisit a question you may click Flag question so that you can easily return to it.

  • When you have finished, click Submit all and finish. You will need to confirm you want to finish. Once you confirm, you will not be able to re-enter the quiz attempt. 

Timing

• Open / Close the quiz: Ensure the quiz availability times are accurate. These dates will display on the module page for students.

• Time limit: Restricts how long students have to complete the quiz. It can be set to any duration between the Open and Close times. When enabled, a timer is displayed during the attempt.

• When time expires:  

  • For INVIGILATED exams (in bookable rooms): We recommend setting to There is a grace period when open attempts can be submitted, but no more questions answered, with the grace period set to 1 week.  This allows a period of 1 week when the student can go back into the quiz and click submit, but not answer any further questions. If students do not submit the quiz after the grace period has elapsed, their attempt will remain in an open state, whereby a Tutor or Course Administrator is required to intervene, and can select the 'Reopen' option next to the student's entry in the quiz results screen. Once selected, the student's attempt will be submitted. 

  • For NON-INVIGILATED exams (online only): We recommend setting to Open attempts are submitted automatically. This setting will prevent questions entering the Never Submitted state which can occur if, 'Attempts must be submitted before time expires, or they are not counted' is selected. If an attempt becomes Never Submitted then it cannot be graded. 

Grade

• Attempts allowed: Set to 1 for summative exams. If this is set to more than 1, students will be able to attempt the exam more than once.  

Layout

• New page: We recommend you set this to Every question. Student responses will automatically be saved each time they move to the next question. Students can also flag a question that they wish to return to later. 
  You can repaginate your quiz following these steps:

  • Go to the Quiz Settings tab. 

  • Expand Layout and select Every question in the New page drop-down menu and tick the checkbox next to Repaginate now.

  • Click Save and display. 

  • Click Preview quiz to check the quiz has been updated. 

Question behaviour

• Shuffle within questions: When enabled, answer options are presented in a random order each time a student attempts the quiz. We recommend enabling this to reduce the risk of collusion. Ensure your answer choices still make sense when shuffled - for example, avoid options like “None of the above,” or adapt them (e.g. “None apply”).

• Shuffle questions: Enable this option (via the Shuffle tick-box in the Questions menu) to present questions in a different random order for each attempt. This can reduce answer-sharing between students, but may make it more difficult for them to discuss specific questions with you.

• How questions behave: This should be set to Deferred feedback. This means that students do not see when they have answered a question incorrectly. All feedback is deferred until after the quiz has been submitted and graded. Availability is set via ‘Review Options’. 

Review Options

• All review options should be unticked so students do not see feedback until marking is finalised.  Once unticked, this will default to 'The attempt' as available 'During the attempt' only.  If you choose to allow students to see their exam attempts later, you can change the Review Options after the exam has concluded and the results analysed by teaching staff. 

Untick Review Options:	Review Options appearance once saved:

Untick Review Options:	Review Options appearance once saved:
Open	Open

Extra Restrictions on attempts

• Require password: You can set a password that students must enter before accessing the exam. This helps ensure that only those you have shared the password with are able to take the exam.

  • Use a password that is easy to enter, but hard to guess e.g. "purple".  

  • Only use lowercase letters.

  • Avoid special characters. 

  • If the password is easy to enter students will be more likely to all start their quiz at the same time.  

Completion conditions

• Ensure this is set to None.  If you enable Activity completion, the ‘View the activity’ field MUST remain unticked, otherwise, this can slow down student access during their attempt.  

Moodle Exam Guard

Open

When Exam Guard is active, a banner will appear at the top of your course page. Exam Guard applies to Moodle quizzes with a duration of less than five hours and prevents course editing from 10 minutes before the quiz opens until 10 minutes after it closes. It is designed for quizzes used in controlled exam conditions.

During this time, you will not be able to edit the course or create or modify activities. The only exception is extending the exam end time for students currently taking the quiz using the Extend time button. You can still post to forums and mark submissions for other assignments within the same course. While it is possible to add user overrides (e.g. for last-minute exceptional circumstances), this is not recommended.

We recommend setting the Moodle “Open the quiz” time to the official exam start time when creating the quiz. Students will be able to see the quiz in Moodle but will not be able to access or start it until the specified time, ensuring it is not released early.

Recommended Moodle Quiz Exam checklist 

• As early as possible

• 6 weeks before 

• 4 weeks before

• 3 weeks before 

• 2 weeks before 

• 1 week before 

• On the day of the exam 

• After the exam

• Troubleshooting

As early as possible

Book a computer room

• If the exam is taking place on campus, book the room as early as possible.

• It is recommended that you book a room with 10% more computers than you need, this will ensure that there will be spare computers in the room in case of computer failure.  

• If you use a non-centrally bookable room (e.g. Birkbeck facilities) please familiarise yourself with the login requirements/facilities in the room BEFORE the exam takes place. 

• Good practice for digital examinations (British Standard 23988) states that no online exam should last more than 90 minutes without a break. If you need to run a longer exam you should split the exam session into two parts with a break in between.  

• Decide what you would do if there were technical issues that prevent you from running the exam on Moodle, e.g. have paper copies ready to be printed/reschedule.  

6 weeks before 

• Remind students who require special arrangements to notify Student Support and Wellbeing.

4 weeks before  

• Set up and check your quiz settings against the recommended Moodle Quiz settings.  

• Notify Digital Education. For invigilated on-site exams please ensure you complete the Moodle Exam Notification Form with at least FOUR weeks' notice of the exam taking place, to allow sufficient time to make necessary arrangements. 

• Moodle Course Access:  Please be aware that all tutors and course administrators that have access to the course will be able to see the quiz questions and answers.

3 weeks before 

• Practice material & briefing students:  Familiarise your students with the Moodle quiz activity before they sit the exam, e.g. ask them to complete a test quiz, or use Digital Education's example quiz.    

• 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.  

• Set up any required extra time for RAA/EC/DAP extensions:  Import extensions automatically via the SITS Marks Transfer tool. For further guidance, see Automated Extensions on Moodle. You can also manually change time settings for individual students via More > Overrides (see M79 - Granting Manual Extensions (RAA/EC/DAP))

 2 weeks before 

• Thoroughly review the exam and ask a colleague from your discipline to test it and provide feedback. Check that:

  • Images load correctly and are referenced in the question text (so students are aware if any are missing).

  • Text is clear, legible, and appropriately sized.

  • Questions and answer options are clearly worded.

  • Distractors (incorrect answers) are plausible and not too obvious.

  • All answers are accurate, particularly for multiple-choice questions.

 1 week before 

• Remind students to ensure they are able to log into Moodle at least 2 working days before the exam. If they are unable to log in, please ask them to contact One Desk IT. 

• For INVIGILATED exams (in bookable rooms): Print a copy of Moodle Quiz Invigilator Checklist and share with invigilators.

On the day of the exam 

Immediately before the exam starts: 

• Remind students of the exam conditions and how to request assistance if issues arise.

• Ask students to log in to Moodle in advance. They may be prompted for Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), which requires access to their phones. Phones should be put away once they are logged in.

• Advise students not to use the Moodle app to complete the exam, as it is not supported.

 During the exam: 

• Periodically monitor the exam and use the Announcement or a Discussion Forum to communicate any updates to the quiz, or answer any common queries, so that all students on the course can see the answer. 

• If a user is experiencing technical problems, contact (or ask the student to contact) One Desk IT on 020 7679 5000 (Ext: 25000 within UCL).  

 At the end of the exam: 

• Check that all students have submitted their responses. You can use the Report inside the quiz from the Results tab to see who has not yet submitted their responses - those who have not submitted will have “In progress” in the State column and a “-” in the Completed column.

After the exam 

• Moodle provides statistics on your results and quiz questions, including a calculation of the discrimination efficiency of each question. You can access this report via Results > Statistics.

Troubleshooting 

• If there are widespread technical problems during the exam, you should use the Extend time button to extend time to students for whom the exam is in progress, so they are not disadvantaged. 

• If you need to extend time for an individual student only, you should use the User override option. 

• To report technical problems during the exam, call One Desk IT on 020 7679 5000 (Ext: 25000 within UCL). 

• If you suspect that there has been a problem with security or cheating during the exam, please contact Digital Education who will be able to advise you on how to proceed.