Moodle Help & Support
This refers to Moodle 4.1 from December 2023 onward
There are many question types in Moodle quiz. A key feature is that it allows the use of MathJax for Mathematical notation in questions, student answers and feedback.
If you are creating online summative exams then ExamSys should be used. It is more secure than Moodle quiz and has features that are used to support the full lifecycle of a summative exam. We shall also be developing ExamSys to meet University needs whereas Moodle quiz is developed by the Moodle community whose priorities may not be the same as ours.
Add a Moodle Quiz
- Click on the 'Edit mode' toggle switch in your module (top right).
- In the section you want to add it to click on the + Add an activity or resource hyperlink
- Select the 'Quiz' activity
- Fill in and select your options from the Settings page. The settings are outlined below
- When you have finished with the settings, click on the Save and display button to start adding questions
- When you have finished your quiz, click the 'Edit mode' toggle switch.
Settings
General
- 'Name': Title of quiz
- 'Description': The instructions for completing the quiz
- 'Display description on module page': Checkbox as to whether to display the description on the main Moodle page. Default is not to show description
Timing
- 'Open the quiz': If this is enabled, students will only be able to start their attempt after the open time.
- 'Close the quiz': If this is enabled, students must complete their attempts before the close time.
- 'Time limit': If enabled the time limit is displayed on the initial quiz page and a countdown timer is displayed in the quiz navigation block.
- 'When time expires': If ‘Time limit’ or ‘Close the quiz’ have been enabled, this setting determines what happens when the time limit expires. If the student is attempting the quiz at the time, their attempt will be submitted automatically. If they have an open attempt they can submit in the grace period if this has been set otherwise the attempt will not be submitted.
- 'Submission grace period': This is where you set the ‘extra time’ a student is allowed to finish the quiz once the ‘Close the quiz’ or ‘Time limit’ has passed.
Grade
- 'Grade category': This relates to categories you create in the grade book (Grades). These are rarely used.
- 'Grade to pass': This setting determines the minimum grade required to pass. The value is used in activity and module completion, and in the Gradebook. It is not essential and normally not used.
- 'Attempts allowed': The default number of attempts is ‘unlimited’. You can restrict attempts to 1 -10.
- 'Grading method': This is useful if students are allowed multiple attempts. You can select how the grade is calculated including Highest grade or last attempt.
Layout
- 'New Page': As you create and add questions in the edit screen, they form pages. The number of questions that appear on those pages is determined here. If you want it to vary, you can manually change this on a page-by-page basis in the edit screen.
- 'Navigation method': ‘Free’ navigation means students can jump between pages. ‘Sequential’ means they are restricted to the order in which the pages have been created and cannot return to a previous page.
Question behaviour
- 'Shuffle within questions': You can shuffle the options within the question such as multiple choice type. Each time a student attempts the quiz the options will be randomly shuffled if this is enabled in the question settings.
- 'How questions behave': ‘Adaptive mode’ allows students to access hints you have set-up for each question. This require you to use ‘Whether correct’ under the ‘During attempt’ options within the Review options section. ‘Deferred feedback’ means students will only see the feedback you’ve added for each question once the quiz has finished. ‘Immediate feedback’ enables you to use the ‘Immediately after the attempt’ option within the Review options section, so that students see feedback after they answer each question. ‘CBM’ (certainty-based marking) enables an option within questions whereby students state how confident they are that they’ve got the question right. This impacts the scoring for each question. ‘Deferred feedback’ and ‘immediate feedback’ are the most commonly used options.
- 'Each attempt builds on the last': If multiple attempts are allowed and this setting is enabled, each new quiz attempt will contain the results of the previous attempt. This allows the quiz to be completed over several attempts.
Review Options
These options control what information students see when they review a quiz attempt or look at the quiz reports.
- 'During the attempt': These options are enabled when ‘Adaptive mode’ or ‘Immediate feedback’ have been selected in the Question behaviour section.
- 'Immediately after the attempt': These settings apply for the first two minutes after 'Submit all and finish' is clicked.
- 'Later, while the quiz is still open': Even if these options are ticked, whether anything shows up or not depends on whether you’ve written in the relevant feedback field within each question. If 'Right answer' is selected, students will see what the correct answer was even if they get it wrong. If you’re using ‘highest grade’ or ‘last attempt’ (set in Grade), you may want to untick that option.
- 'After the quiz is closed': These settings are only used if a date has been set under 'Close the quiz'.
Appearance
- 'Show the user's picture': Choose whether to display the user's profile picture in the quiz
- 'Decimal places in grades': This option determines how many digits will be shown after the decimal separator when the grade is displayed. By default this is set to two. If you only want whole numbers to show (rounded up/down) choose zero.
- 'Decimal places in question grades': This lets you have a different display of grades for each question compared to the quiz total. E.g. you might want to see the total as a whole number, but still show fractional grades for each question.
- 'Show blocks during quiz attempts': If set to 'yes' then normal blocks will be shown during quiz attempts.
- 'Require password': Using a password might be useful if you want to restrict access to the quiz beyond e.g. Groups and Groupings or only to students that attended the lecture (give the password out at the lecture).
- 'Require network address': Limits access to the quiz to people accessing it from a certain location (using full or partial IP address numbers)
- 'Enforced delay between later attempts': If you have enabled students to attempt the quiz more than once, setting a time lapse between attempts could be useful. E.g. if you want to test their memory delay it by a couple of days or a week; if you are using it as a revision tool, do not enable a delay or make it a short delay, e.g. 5 mins.
- 'Browser security': If "Full-screen" pop-up with some JavaScript security is selected,
- The quiz will only start if the student has a JavaScript enabled web-browser
- The quiz appears in a full screen popup window that covers all the other windows and has no navigation controls
- Students are prevented, as far as is possible, from using facilities such as copy and paste.
- 'Allow quiz to be attempted offline using the mobile app': If enabled, a mobile app user can download the quiz and attempt it offline. Note: It is not possible for a quiz to be attempted offline if it has a time limit, or requires a network address, or uses any question behaviour other than deferred feedback (with or without CBM).
Overall feedback
The 'Overall feedback' is received at the end of the quiz. If you are providing overall feedback, it is advisable to enter various boundaries. The boundaries control which piece of feedback the student receives. In this example, students that achieve 50% or above will receive the top feedback. Students that achieve 49.99% or less will receive the bottom piece of feedback.
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