Quiz
Moodle Quizzes are a great resource for every professor. Electronic quizzes can do many things that paper quizzes just can't. You can create different question types, randomly generate quizzes from pools of questions, allow students to retake quizzes multiple times, and have the computer score it all. These features open up a world of possibilities that just aren't practical with paper-based testing.
Moodle quizzes have two components: the quiz body and the question pools. The body is the final quiz that a student will see, after all the randomizing and question-picking--it is the "container" for the various questions pulled from the question pools. You can define rules for how the body pulls from the pools: for example, you might create three question pools, one for each chapter that you are testing, and tell the quiz body to pull five questions from the first chapter, two questions from the second chapter, and three from the third chapter. Pools can be reused, shared between classes, and moved between systems.
- Creating the Quiz Body
- Creating the Question Pools
- Making Questions
- Importing Questions
- Adding Questions to a Quiz
- Randomizing Questions
- Managing Quizzes and Questions
Creating the Quiz Body
1. Turn Editing on.
2. Select Quiz from the "Add an activity..." menu on the week that you would like the quiz to appear.
3. Give your quiz a descriptive name.
4. Write an introduction for the quiz. This is where you should put your instructions for the quiz, such as how many times students can/should take it, and any special scoring rules.
5. Choose opening and closing dates for the quiz. Students will be able to take the quiz at any time between the opening and closing dates.
6. Choose the options you want to use for the quiz:
Time Limit: This sets how long students have to complete the quiz. At the end of the allotted time, the quiz is automatically submitted with the current answers.
Shuffle Questions: This will randomize the order of questions as they appear to students.
Shuffle Within Questions: This will randomize the multiple-choice answers within each question.
Attempts Allowed: This sets how many times a single student is allowed to take this quiz. You can set it to unlimited, or a number from 1 to 6.
Each Attempt Builds on the Last: If multiple attempts are allowed, this will let students build their answers over time. That is, students' last attempts will still be visible to them the next time they take the quiz
Grading Method: If multiple attempts are allowed, this sets how grading works. You can choose to record the highest grade, average grade, first attempt, or last attempt.
Review Options: Choose if and when to display feedback to students. Select how much feedback you would like to give them.
Require Password: You can set a password that students will have to enter before they can take the quiz. This is another way to restrict times that the quiz can be taken.
Require Network Address: This restricts access to the quiz to certain IP address ranges. By turning this on, you can make students take the test from a certain lab on campus, for example, or from campus.
7. Click the "Save and display" button.
Creating the Question Pools
On the left side of the screen, you will see a block where the questions you've added to the current quiz are displayed.
On the right side, you'll see a category selection menu. Categories are used to organize your quiz questions for your course (each category is a different pool). By default, there is only one category, and it is called, interestingly enough, the Default category.
You should probably start by creating a category for this quiz. Click "Categories" at the top of the page. In the section below all currently existing categories, fill in your new category name and description. Hit "Add Category." Create more categories, if you want. When you are done making categories, click "Quiz" at the top of the page.
Making Questions
1. Once you are back to the "Quiz" page, select a category to which you want to add a question.
2. Select the question type that you want to answer. The question types are:
Calculated: A numerical question where moodle can change the values of the numbers involved.
Description: This embeds text into the body of the quiz. It is not a question; it is used to give mid-quiz direction.
Essay: An essay response to a prompt.
Matching: A standard two-column matching question.
Embedded Answers (Cloze): A question with multiple questions embedded within it.
Multiple Choice: This encompasses single-answer multiple choice as well as multiple-answer multiple choice questions.
Short Answer: The answer is a word or phrase. (You will have to provide a list of acceptable answers.)
Numerical: The answer is a numerical value.
Random Short-Answer Matching: A matching question for which the sub-questions are randomly drawn from the short answer questions in the category.
True/False: A multiple choice question with only two possible answers.
4. Fill in the form for the question type that you decided to create.
5. Click "Save changes."
Importing Questions
Moodle allows you to import any questions that you have in a text file. To use this option, click the "Import" at the top of the page. Import supports eight native formats: GIFT, Aiken, Missing-word, AON, Blackboard, WebCT, Course Test Manager, and Embedded Answers (Cloze). This is pretty advanced stuff, so the formats themselves will not be documented here. To get more details about each format, click the blue help button next to the File Format section.
Adding Questions to a Quiz
Once you've created your questions, you'll want to add them to your quiz. Do this by using the buttons at the bottom of the questions. You can select individual questions by using the checkboxes to the left of each question, then click "Add selected to quiz." The "Select all" button is also fairly useful. You can also choose a category and specify an amount of random questions for moodle to add from that category.
Once you add a question to a quiz, it will appear on the left side of the screen, in the quiz question list. When you're done adding questions, you can change the order in which the questions appear, and assign weights to each question if you want to make some worth more than others.
When you're done, click "Save changes."
To preview your quiz, go back to your course's main page, click on your quiz and click on the "Preview quiz" button.
Randomizing Questions
This feature allows you to randomize the variety and order of questions, so that each student may take a slightly different quiz. For example, each student could randomly get five out of ten questions from one category and two out of four questions from another. This reduces opportunities for cheating by giving every student a unique quiz while maintaining a consistent level of difficulty.
Basically, when you add a random question to a quiz, it will be replaced with a randomly chosen question from the currently selected category - for each attempt. This means that different students are likely to get a different selection of questions when they attempt this quiz. When a quiz allows multiple attempts for each student then each attempt is likely to contain a new selection of questions.
The same question will never appear twice in an attempt. If you include several Random Questions then different questions will always be chosen for each of them. If you mix Random Questions with non-random questions then the random questions will be chosen so that they do not duplicate one of the non-random questions.
Grading: The grade for the randomly chosen question will be rescaled so that the maximum grade is what you have chosen as the grade for the Random Question.
Implementing Random Questions: One method for making quizzes with random questions is to create a large questions pool, and then mark every question as random. However, if you would like at least some of the same questions to appear on every quiz, then you should only mark a few question as random.
To start, go to the page where you are creating your quiz questions. Choose one of your categories and look at the bottom on the right side. You should see dropdown input with label “add X random questions.”
There you add a specified number of random questions that are supposed to exist in the quiz. The maximum is the amount of questions already in that selected category. Random Questions may be added to any category.
You can always change the ordering of the questions, but remember that if you have already set your quiz to shuffle the questions, this new ordering will disappear.
Managing Quizzes and Questions
Moodle’s quizzing tool is flexible in terms of designing quizzes and in managing collections of questions. The following are some features that may be helpful to know about when considering how best to design a quiz.
- Teachers can define a database (or “pool”) of questions for re-use in different quizzes.
- Questions can be stored in categories for easy access, and these categories can be “published” to make them accessible from any course on the site.
- Quizzes are automatically graded, and can be re-graded if questions are modified.
- Quizzes can have a limited time window outside of which they are not available.
- Quizzes can be designed so that they can be attempted multiple times, and can show feedback and/or correct answers.
- Quiz questions and quiz answers can be shuffled (randomized) to reduce cheating.
- Questions allow HTML and images.
- Questions can be imported from external text files.
- Attempts can be cumulative, if desired, and finished over several sessions.
- Multiple-choice questions support single or multiple answers.
- Short Answer questions (words or phrases) can be used.
- Numerical questions (with allowable ranges) can be used.
- Embedded-answer questions (cloze style) with answers within passages of text can be used.
- Embedded descriptive text and graphics can be used in quizzes.