Moodle Quizzes

Quizzes are an easy way to carry out self-marking tests that can include additional browser security settings.
Each Moodle course has a default Question Category or Bank. As quizzes are added to Moodle a sub-category is created to hold quiz-specific questions. This system allows you to re-use questions for later quizzes.

Below is a quick overview of some key quiz features.

Building and Previewing Your Quiz

To start your quiz, turn editing on and use the ‘Add activity or resource > Quiz‘ option. If you are new to Moodle Quiz, you are probably best to simply give your quiz a title and scroll down to the bottom and click ‘Save and Display’. This will allow you to start adding questions, you can return to the settings to fine tune them later.  Once you have added questions, take advantage of the preview feature to ensure the quiz functions as intended.  Previewing the quiz is a valuable practice to ensure a smooth and effective assessment experience for both you and your students.
If you make changes to a question in the middle of a preview, you may have to open the side panel and click ‘Start new preview‘ (see screenshot) to view the changes.
If you have set your quiz to show ‘General Feedback’ to students at the end of the quiz, your preview will not show General Feedback, but you can quickly preview General Feedback by clicking ‘Finish Attempt’ (as per screenshot) and clicking on ‘Submit all and finish’.

Question Types

There are 17 question types available, ranging from ‘drag and drop’ to calculations. The most common is the Multiple Choice Question (MCQ), along with variants like True/False, Matching, and Multiple Response. The Description question type is useful for displaying text and images without requiring an answer

Once you have created and previewed some questions and familiarised yourself with the basic operation of Moodle quizzes, you will feel ready to explore the general quiz settings further. Below are some considerations.

Quiz Timings

You can set time and date restrictions on quizzes, such as allowing students 30 minutes to answer 20 questions. Use checkboxes to enable Open, Close, and Time limit settings, and adjust as needed. User and Group overrides allow different time and date settings for individuals or groups.

Grade Options

Grade options in quizzes help you organize your grade book. ‘Grade to pass‘ can be combined with Activity Completion and conditional access to resources (see ‘Restrict Access’ below). The ‘Attempts allowed’ and ‘Grading method‘ options provide flexibility, allowing quizzes to be used as a single attempt or with multiple attempts.
Learn more: organising your gradebook

Layout

Layout options determine how many questions are presented per page and how students navigate between questions. The default is one question per page, but you can adjust this based on your preferences.

Question Behaviour & Review Options

Shuffling questions randomizes their order. Question behaviour settings control when students receive feedback. Options like deferred feedback mean students receive feedback only after submitting the quiz, giving instructors fine control over feedback timing.

Restrict Access

Here you can define who can access the quiz and when.

For example, if you only wanted ‘Group 1’ students to take this quiz, create groups in Moodle and and then restrict access to Group 1. Additionally you could hide it until the day of the quiz.

Activity Completion

If you are using Completion tracking you need to plan which activities are connected and which conditions need to be met.

A pass grade can be set, but here we would use that pass grade to signal whether the Activity Completion condition has been met. If so then the Activity report would be informed.

Respondus

Most teachers, after some familiarisation, will find the Moodle interface the simplest and most straightforward way to create Moodle quizzes. However for certain specialised purposes Respondus can help in the task of creating and importing questions. For example, it can help convert Word documents into a file format that can be uploaded into Moodle. Since Respondus itself has a learning curve and needs to be installed on your managed laptop, this is only advantageous if you have a considerable amount of material you wish to convert. Respondus can also be helpful for printing paper copies of quizzes. See the following guides for details. Feel free to consult a campus learning technologist if you wish to discuss the pros and cons of using Respondus for your use case.

• Connecting to Moodle quizzes with Respondus
• Uploading a quiz to Moodle with Respondus
• Create a paper copy of a Moodle quiz with Respondus

Use of AI

The following instructions, loaded into ChatGPT 3.5, produced a technically correct GIFT format quiz that was loaded without a problem into Moodle. However ChatGPT or any of the other freely available AI models will also be able to produce a 100% correct set of answers if the questions are fed back in.
At the moment therefore the use of AI is not recommended as a labour-saving device for creating quiz material. Discuss your quiz creation requirements with your campus learning technologist, who will be able to advise on the best way to proceed.