Moodle Quizzes
How to add a quiz to your Moodle space
Firstly turn editing on and then scroll down to the section you want to add your quiz to. Click on the Add an activity or resource link and then choose Quiz from the activity or resource picker menu. Click on the Add button to complete the process.
Click on the Expand all link at the top right of the screen to open all of the fields. That way you will not miss any of the fields (and there are quite a lot of them).
Give your quiz a Name and add a Description. Students will see the description when they click on the quiz link but before they start their attempt. You might want to include such things as the number of attempts allowed, the time limit or how the quiz will be graded.
Choose whether you want to display the description on the course page under the link to the quiz by ticking the Display description on course page checkbox.
The Timing section lets you choose when to make the quiz available. You will need to put a tick in the Enable checkboxes to set the quiz availability. If you don’t it will be available immediately and will not have an end date. This will limit some of your feedback options (discussed below) so it is recommended that you set both the open and close dates and times for your quiz.
The Open the quiz field is the date and time that the students can access the quiz. Prior to this (if you have used it) the students will only be able to see the Introduction text if they click on the quiz link, they will not have access to the questions.
The Close the quiz field is the date and time after which the students will not be able to start any new quiz attempts. If the students have not completed the quiz by the closing date and time their answers will be saved but not marked. This works independently of the When time expires options discussed below.
Enable the Time limit field to limit how long the students have to complete the quiz. You can choose weeks, days, hours, minutes or seconds from the dropdown menu and a specific value. If you enable the time limit, the students will see a countdown timer in the quiz navigation block.
If you set a time limit you will need to set the When time expires field too. There are three options:
- Attempts must be submitted before time expires, or they are not counted.
- Open attempts are submitted automatically.
- There is a grace period where open attempts can be submitted, but no more questions answered...
If you choose the grace period option you will also need to enable and complete the Submission grace period field. Again you can choose weeks, days, hours, minutes or seconds from the dropdown menu and a specific value.
The Grade section controls how (and where) the grades for quizzes are recorded. If you have set up categories in the Gradebook to record specific activities you can choose to display the quiz results in one of these from the Grade category field (otherwise ignore this field).
You can also set a Grade to pass mark if you are using the activity or course completion options in your Moodle space. The grades will be highlighted in red (for a fail) or green (for a pass) in the Gradebook. Otherwise ignore this field.
The Attempts allowed field lets students have multiple attempts at the quiz. This is particularly useful for self-tests and formative quizzes. If the quiz is also randomised then the student will get a new version for each attempt.
When multiple attempts are allowed, there are different ways you can use the grades to calculate the student's final grade for the quiz. This is done from the Grading method field. The options are:
- Highest grade - the final grade is the highest grade in any attempt.
- Average grade - the final grade is the average (simple mean) grade of all attempts.
- First grade - the final grade is the grade earned on the first attempt (all other attempts are ignored).
- Last grade - the final grade is the grade earned on the most recent attempt only (all other attempts are ignored).
In the Layout section the New page field allows you to:
- display all of the questions on one page (Never, all questions on one page)
- to display each question on a new page (Every question)
- display x number of questions per page (Every x questions).
For longer quizzes, think about using the display x number of questions per page options to break the quiz into easier to digest chunks.
NB: If you have already added some questions to your quiz and then change this setting only questions that you subsequently add will be displayed on separate pages. You will need to manually change the format of the previously added questions from the Edit Quiz menu (not the Edit settings menu).
If you click on the Show more... link you will see a Navigation field. This dictates how the students can move around the quiz. If you want them to be able to skip questions and go back and forth amongst the questions, choose Free. Otherwise choose Sequential to limit their progression to the order the questions are displayed in.
The Question behaviour section allows you to choose how the questions are displayed and how feedback is/is not given. The Shuffle within questions field only applies to multiple choice or matching questions (i.e. those with several parts to them). If you are allowing multiple quiz attempts it is recommended that you also shuffle within questions to make the quiz more challenging for the students.
The How questions behave field has several options that are concerned with how the students receive the correct answers to the questions and any associated feedback. These choices should be considered with the Review options section choices.
- Adaptive mode - students can have multiple attempts at each question before moving on to the next question but they will be penalised for each subsequent attempt. Penalty values are set within the individual questions.
- Adaptive mode (no penalties) - students can have multiple attempts at each question before moving on to the next question without being penalised for each subsequent attempt. This is suitable for formative quizzes.
- Deferred feedback - students must enter an answer to each question and then submit the entire quiz before questions are graded or they receive feedback (this is the recommended option for summative quizzes).
- Deferred feedback with CBM - as for deferred feedback but with Certainty Based Marking (CBM). CBM is when the student answers the question and indicates how certain he/she is that they answered it correctly. The grading is adjusted by the choice of certainty. If the student is certain he/she answered the question correctly and they did they will receive more marks than another student who answered the question correctly but was less certain that they had.
- Immediate feedback - students can submit their answers during the quiz attempt, they will be graded and they will receive feedback. However, they can submit only one response per question. They cannot change their response either. This is suitable for formative quizzes.
- Immediate feedback with CBM - as for immediate feedback but with Certainty Based Marking (thus the grading varies depending on how certain the student is that the answer is correct).
- Interactive with multiple tries - after submitting one answer and reading the feedback, the student has to click a Try again button before they can answer again. Once the student gives the right answer, they cannot change their response. If the student gives the wrong answer too many times, the question is marked as wrong (or partially correct) and the student is shown the feedback. They will not be able to adjust their answers again. Staff can set different feedback after each attempt. This is suitable for formative quizzes.
The Review options section controls what information students have access to when they review their quiz submission. As they control access during and after the attempt these settings should be considered at the same time as the How questions behave settings.
The attempt - this will show the student’s answer to each question in the quiz.
Whether correct - this displays whether the student’s answer to each question is correct or incorrect.
Marks – this shows the marks awarded to the student and the grade for the quiz.
Specific feedback - shows the feedback for the response to the individual question answers. You can set feedback for both correct and incorrect answers.
General feedback - displays the general feedback for the whole question (not the feedback for specific responses within a question).
Right answer - reveals the correct answer to each question, whether the student answered correctly or not.
Overall feedback - displays feedback for the whole quiz.
Each of the above items then needs to be considered for specific points in time, namely:
During the attempt - this is only available when the How questions behave option has been set to Immediate feedback, Immediate feedback with CBM or Interactive with multiple tries. A checkbox will appear below the answer and when ticked the student can submit their response and receive immediate feedback on that response.
Immediately after the attempt - means whatever feedback you have chosen to give will be displayed within two minutes of the student clicking the Submit all and Finish buttons.
Later, while the quiz is still open - means after two minutes, but before the closing date (if the quiz does not have a closing date, grades and feedback will never be released).
After the quiz is closed - you have to set an end date for the quiz to make this option work.
The Show the user’s picture field in the Display section is really a security setting as it is useful for checking that the right person has taken the quiz (well logged on to take the quiz at least).
Decimal places in grades is concerned with how many digits are shown after the decimal point when displaying overall quiz grades. This only affects the display of grades in the Gradebook. Any calculations (e.g. simple mean) are carried out using all of the digits in a grade.
Decimal places in question grades is as above but for individual question grades rather than the whole quiz grade. The default is to keep it the same as the Decimal places in grades field and personally I think that this is the most appropriate as it makes grade comparisons in the Gradebook easier.
The Show blocks during quiz attempts field is another security measure that allows you to hide blocks from the students when they take the quiz. If you have links to resources or discussion forums where the students might find the answers to the quiz in blocks then make sure this field is set to No.
The Extra restrictions on attempts section is concerned with quiz security and ensuring that your students take the time to sit the quiz properly.
Require a password blocks those students who do not have the password from taking the quiz. Simply type a password into the field (but do make sure you write it down!)
The Require network address option does not work for our PCs at OBU so please ignore it.
If you have enabled multiple attempts you can use the two Enforced delay options to make your students wait a specific period of time before being able to attempt the quiz again. You will need to tick one (or both) of the Enable checkboxes so that you can set the value(s) and time interval(s)
If Full screen pop-up with some JavaScript security is selected in the Browser security field the quiz will only start if the student has a JavaScript-enabled web-browser. We recommend that staff do enable this option as it also means that the quiz appears in a full screen popup window. This covers all other windows and has no navigation controls so students are prevented from using functions like copy and paste.
Overall feedback is feedback that is shown to students after they have attempted a quiz. By specifying additional grade boundaries (as a percentage or as a number), the text shown can depend on the grade obtained. If you only complete the first grade boundary box this will default to 100% and all students who attempt the quiz will receive it. You will need to adjust the percentages accordingly if you want to use the other grade boundary feedback boxes.
The Common Module Settings, Restrict Access and Activity Completion (if you have chosen to enable this) sections can be completed in the usual way or you can ignore them and just click on the Save and display button.
You now need to add questions to your quiz. Click on the Edit quiz button to do this (see the document entitled Adding questions to your Moodle quiz for more information).