Moodle Quiz Settings FAQ

• There are two parts to the quiz setup:
  • “Edit Settings” where you add the criteria for the quiz, such as grading, time limits, availability etc
  • “Edit Quiz” which allows you to specify the questions and their order.
• The questions are stored separately from your quiz in a course Question bank. This means you can organise them into categories and reuse your questions in a later quiz on the same Moodle course.
• You may prefer to make your quiz questions in the question bank and then add them to a quiz ‘front cover’ later. To do so see the documentation on Question bank or just read on below.

• At the top of the main course page, select the main Settings Action Menu Cog > More
• 
• On the Course Administration Page, select Question bank where you will be able to see existing questions and create new ones.
• 

• In the course where you want your quiz, turn on the editing and from the Activity Chooser, select ‘Quiz’.
• Give it a name and a description telling students what the quiz is about.
• You can now scroll down to the bottom of the page, click ‘Save and display’ and start adding questions. (Go to the section ‘Add your questions’ below.)

1. Click the Activity settings cog, then the ‘Edit quiz’ button.
2. Click ‘Add’ on the right and then click ‘+ a new question’. (If you already made questions in the question bank, then click ‘+ from question bank’ or if you wish to add a question randomly picked from a category of questions, click ‘+ a random question’).
   
3. Choose the type of question you want to add and then click ‘Add’ at the bottom:
   
4. Add your question. If you need help, click the documentation link at the bottom of your question page or explore the Question types documentation. Note that students won’t see the question name; it is for your records only.
5. Click ‘Save changes’ when you have made your question.
6. Repeat steps 2- 5 for as many questions as you need.
7. If you want to change the maximum grade for your quiz to reflect the number of questions.
   

1. Go to the settings cog and Edit Settings.
2. Expand the Timing section, enable Timing and set and appropriate time limit.

Note: If using a time limit it is ESSENTIAL that you set the ‘When time expires‘ setting to ‘Open attempts are submitted automatically‘. 

Timing settings for an example scenario are pictured above. The settings are configured for a 48 hour quiz window (using the “Open Quiz” and “Close Quiz” settings), where students have 90 minutes to take the Quiz (using the “Time limit” setting). They can begin the Quiz at any time during the 48 hour window.

Advice

You may wish to limit the time that students have to answer all Quiz questions from when they start. In order to minimise the risk of students encountering technical problems when taking a Quiz, it is strongly recommended to allow a wider attempt time ‘window’ (i.e. they have 60 mins to complete the quiz, but can start at any point within a 24 period).

Please note if the Quiz should take around 60 minutes to complete, we recommend that you add, for example, 30 mins extra time to the Time Limit to account for any potential problems students may have with network or internet connections when taking the quiz. 

Yes. In order to have the expected 60 minutes to complete the quiz, students must begin the quiz at least 60 minutes before the end of the quiz window. The closure of the quiz window will cut off any in-progress attempts in accordance with the behaviour specified for open attempts.

To add extra time for a student: go to the Quiz, then from the pink settings cog icon towards the top right of the screen choose ‘User Overrides’

Click on the green ‘Add User Override’ button. On the next page, search for the student’s name, click on them, then add the extra time as necessary. When you are happy, if you need to add an override for another user choose ‘Save and add another override’ or, if you have finished adding overrides, click ‘Save’

• Once you have added all the questions you need, your quiz is ready for students and will already be visible on the page (unless you hid it while you were setting it up.)
• As a teacher, it is a good idea to preview your quiz by going to the quiz, clicking on the settings cog and “Preview”. You can then check for any oversights and edit a question directly from the Edit Question link that appears next to each question.

This is expected functionality, grades will only be displayed upon completion of the quiz, or if previewed while the quiz is ‘live’.

To view the results once students have taken the quiz, you can either:

• Click the quiz itself and then the link Attempts = (where the number is the number of attempts) – or –
• Click the quiz and then from the Quiz Settings cog and choose Grades (or relevant result option).

Open the Timings setting to adjust them:

• Open the quiz.  You can specify times when the quiz is accessible for people to make attempts. Before the opening time the quiz will be unavailable to students. They will be able to view the quiz introduction but will not be able to view the questions. Quizzes with start times in the future display both the open and close date for students.
• Close the quiz. After the closing time, the students will not be able to start new attempts. Answers that the student submits after the quiz closing date will be saved but they will not be marked. Even after the quiz has closed students will still be able to see the quiz description. The extent to which they can review their attempts is controlled by the Review Options settings (see FAQ below).
• Time limit. By default, quizzes do not have a time limit, which allows students as much time as they need to complete the quiz. If you do specify a time limit, several things are done to try and ensure that quizzes are completed within that time:
  1. A countdown timer is shown in the quiz navigation block.
  2. When the timer has run out, the quiz is submitted automatically with whatever answers have been filled in so far.
  3. If a student manages to cheat and go over the allotted time, no marks are awarded for any answers entered after the time ran out
     
• When time expires. There are three options as to what will happen when the time limit is up. Choose the one you need from the dropdown menu:
  1. Open attempts are submitted automatically (This is the default, and safest option).
  2. There is a grace period when open attempts can be submitted, but no more questions answered
  3. Attempts must be submitted before time expires, or they are not counted (We strongly recommend you DO NOT use this setting).
  4. If you select There is a grace period… then you can check the box to enable the Submission grace period and specify a period of time during which learners may still submit the quiz after the time is up.

Note: You can change quiz availability and duration for different groups or users in the Group or User override sections in the Quiz Administration settings.

• Grade category (optional). If you have specified categories in your Gradebook, select the one you wish the quiz to be in.
• Attempts allowed (default = unlimited). Specify the numbers of attempts you wish to allow students to have. Allowing multiple attempts can increase the value of the quiz for formative assessment.
  • Note: You can change the allowed number of attempts for different groups or users in the Group or User override sections of the Quiz Administration settings block.
• Grade to pass (optional). Here you can set a passing grade for the quiz. This may be connected with Activity completion and Conditional activities such that a student will not be able to access a follow up activity until they have passed the quiz.
• Grading method. When multiple attempts are allowed, there are different ways you can use the grades to calculate the student’s final grade for the quiz.
  • Highest grade – the final grade is the highest (best) grade in any attempt (Default and Recommended).
  • 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 (other attempts are ignored).
  • Last grade – the final grade is the grade earned on the most recent attempt only.

Note: the total points available and individual questions marks are set on the Edit Questions page (not the Edit Settings).

New Page settings

The Quiz is presented to students as a number of pages. For longer quizzes it is advisable to display only one question per page (or a few related questions maximum) because:

• Moodle saves students progress when they move between pages (this is essential if you are using the quiz for summative assessment).
• If you have many questions that use many high definition images and the server suffers performance issues, showing only one question per page means quicker and more responsive browsing for students.

When adding questions to the quiz, page breaks will automatically be inserted according to the New page setting you chosen here (Every question = 1 question per page – recommended). However, you will also be able to move page breaks manually later on the editing page. (Note that changing this setting has no effect on questions you have already added to the quiz. The setting will only apply to questions you add subsequently).

To change the page breaks in an existing quiz, you need to go to the Edit Quiz screen, tick the ‘Show page breaks’ checkbox, then use the repaginate control.

Navigation method (available by clicking Show More)

Choose Sequential instead of Free, if you want to force the student to progress through the questions in order and not go back to a previous question or skip to a later one. Sequential can be useful if an answer from a previous question informs the student response for later parts.

How questions behave.

This is the primary way to control how students can interact with each question.

• To replicate a traditional exam, select ‘Deferred feedback’ (most common)
• For immediate feedback on their response, with a chance to try again, if they get it wrong, then select ‘Interactive with multiple tries’ (and add some hints to your questions).
• For a description of all the behaviours, see Question behaviours.

Allow redo within an attempt (available only if Interactive or Immediate feedback mode is selected in Question Behaviours)

If using Interactive or Immediate feedback mode, enabling this setting means students can try a question again even if they have used up their allowed attempts. (This may help them act on the feedback given at the end of the attempts).

Each attempt builds on the last (available by clicking “Show more”)

If multiple attempts are allowed and this setting is set to Yes, then each new attempt contains the results of the previous attempt. (This allows students to concentrate on the questions they got wrong). To show a fresh quiz on every attempt, select “No” for this setting.

This section controls what information students will be shown when they review their past attempts at the quiz, and during the attempt in adaptive mode. It is a matrix with check boxes.

The various pieces of feedback items that can receive are:

• The attempt. Shows each question and how the student responded to each question.
• Whether correct. Shows whether the students response to each question is correct or incorrect.
• Marks. Shows the marks awarded to the student for each question and the total grade for the quiz.
• Specific feedback. Shows feedback for the student’s particular response. This relies on the specific responses for each question having feedback set.
• General feedback. Displays the general feedback for the whole question as set when adding the question to the quiz (independent if student is correct or incorrect). You can use the general feedback to give students some background to what knowledge the question was testing or a model answer.
• Right answer. Reveals the correct answer to each question, whether the student answered correctly or not (See note below).
• Overall feedback. Displays feedback for the entire quiz as set in the quiz settings (See note below).

For each of the above items, you can determine the timeframe when the students will see them:

• During the attempt. This is only available when ‘How questions behave’ has been set to ‘Immediate feedback’, ‘Immediate feedback with CBM’ and ‘Interactive with multiple tries’. If set to one of these options then a ‘Check’ button will appear below the answer and when clicked the student will submit that response and then receive immediate feedback.
• Immediately after the attempt. Means within 2 minutes of the student clicking “submit all and finish”.
• Later, while the quiz is still open. means after 2 minutes, but before the close date (if the quiz does not have a close date, this phase never ends).
• After the quiz is closed. Feedback available after the close date (option only available if a close date is set).

Tip: Checking any of the boxes in the timeframe row, will reveal the test to the student. For example, to allow students to see their quiz immediately after taking it but not later, make sure none of the boxes in “Later” or “After” rows are checked. The student will be able to see their grade but not get into the quiz.

More information:

• In your list of review options, you must have ‘The attempt’ (the first option in the Review options) selected if you want to enable the options to show ‘Whether correct’, ‘Specific feedback’, ‘General feedback’, and ‘Right answer’. If you choose not to let the students review the attempt, your only options are to display ‘Marks’ and ‘Overall feedback’.
• There are inconsistencies between the Answers display across question types. E.g. the matching question type shows students which of their responses are correct, but does not tell them the right answer for the ones they got wrong. The short answer and multiple choice question types do give students the correct answer.
• As a Moodle Teacher, you are not affected by these settings and will always be able to review all information about a student’s attempt at any time.

• Show the user’s picture. To assist with checking student identities, student’s profile pictures can be displayed on screen during the quiz.
• Decimal places in grades. This option determines how many digits will be shown after the decimal separator (see langconfig) when the grade is displayed. A setting of 0 for example means that the grades are displayed as integers. (Note: This setting is only used for the display of grades, not for the display or marking of answers).

• Require password. If you specify a password in here then participants must enter the same password before they are allowed to make an attempt on the quiz.
• Require network address. You can restrict access for a quiz to particular subnets on the LAN or Internet by specifying a comma-separated list of partial or full IP address numbers.
  This can be for an invigilated quiz, where you want to be sure that only people in the exam room are able to access the quiz. There are three types of numbers you can use (you can not use text based domain names like example.com).
• Enforced delay between attempts. This setting allows delays between attempts to be specified. For example, a student may be allowed to take the quiz twice immediately with no delay, but if they want to improve their score with a third attempt, they are forced to wait a week.
• Browser security. The options in this section offer various ways to try to restrict how students may try to ‘cheat’ while attempting a quiz. However, this is a complex issue and not just a problem of technology. Consequently it may not necessarily be best solved by technical solutions. We would not recommend trying to re-create formal exams on Moodle. Design of assessments may need to change for online delivery, and the TEL team can assist you with the design process.

In addition to the Review Options, it is possible to give “Overall feedback” to a student after they have completed an attempt at the quiz based on a predefined Grade boundaries you set.

An example setup case:

• In the Overall feedback settings section: “Add 3 more feedback fields”.
• Set the following grade boundaries and feedback statements:
  • Grade boundary: 100%
  • Feedback: “Well done”
  • Grade boundary: 40%
  • Feedback: “Please study this week’s work again”
  • Grade boundary: 0%
• After the students are able to see Overall feedback (the timing and availability is set in under Review Options):
  • Students who score between 100% and 40% will see the “Well done” feedback.
  • Students who score between 39.99% and 0% will see “Please study this week’s work again”.

More notes

• Grade boundaries can be specified either as a percentage, for example “31.41%”, or as a number, for example “7”. If your quiz is out of 10 marks, a grade boundary of 7 means 7/10 or better.
• The maximum and minimum grade boundaries (100% and 0%) are set automatically.
• If you’re getting confusing error messages about a boundary being out of sequence (when it’s obviously in sequence), or “boundaries must be between 0% and 100%” (and they are) — check that the Maximum Grade for this quiz is set to something greater than zero.

Quizzes can’t be re-used once they have been run, however you can re-use the same set of questions by duplicating the quiz. This will create a copy without any user data, so there will be no record of any previous attempts.

To duplicate a quiz, with Editing turned on on, click on the edit button beside the link to the quiz and choose ‘duplicate’.

Alternatively, if you are reusing a quiz from one year to the next, we suggest performing a course Reset to remove old user data – see our Moodle Housekeeping Guide.

To copy a quiz from on course to another, you can use Moodle’s Import function. You will need Teacher access to both courses to make the import.

Prior to making the import, it is a good idea to check that the quiz only contains questions from its own Question bank, rather than from a course-wide Question bank. If the quiz contains questions from a coursewide Question bank, the entire question bank will be imported into the target course.

Note: in some cases where there are issues with questions not importing correctly, you can instead export the questions as Moodle XML from the Question bank and then import them to the question bank.

To shuffle all questions in a quiz, go to the “Edit Quiz” screen and select the “Shuffle” checkbox: see the example below. Please note this will shuffle all questions including those arranged in pages (i.e. questions on the same page will be split). In the example below the order could be {A,F,B,E,C,D} meaning that question B and C are split (they were previously on the same page).

It is possible to create sections, where questions in that section only are shuffled together by creating Section Headings in a quiz (follow the step-by-step picture instructions for creating Sections).

In the example below, Section 1 will contain questions {A,B,C} shuffled together (note that shuffling overrides pages, a possible order is C,A,B), followed by Section 2 with questions {D,E,F} in a shuffled order. Note it is not possible to shuffle the Sections, i.e. Section 1 will always appear first.

By using sections, it is possible to create parts of the test where the question order is shuffled and also sections where the questions appears in the specified order.

This assumes you have either

1. a large question bank that you want students to sample from (in which case you should ensure question are of comparable difficulty)
2. you have a question with a set of related variations.

In both cases you should setup manage the questions with either Tags or Categories in the question bank (this allows you to filter similar questions for selection). To add a random question follow the guidance.

For questions where the answer choices are listed (like multiple choice, matching questions) it is possible to shuffle the displayed list of choices within the question. Shuffled answer options are enabled by default when creating a Moodle question and quiz. For example, this prevents the answer to question 1 always being b) the second choice and creates a barrier for students sharing answers easily.

To enable question choice shuffling in the quiz, in the Quiz Settings under Question Behaviour you must select Shuffle within Questions.

It is also possible to locally override choice shuffling for a question (even if choice shuffling is enabled in the Quiz Settings). For example, you have a question with a series of choices ranked from lowest-biggest: shuffling the order would make the question cognitively harder without increasing the difficulty of the material so you would like to keep the order of choices unshuffled. To do this edit the question and under General settings, uncheck “Shuffle the Choices?” which will override the quiz settings.

To remark a Quiz question in Moodle:

• Go to the Quiz > Settings cog > Results: Responses. This displays all students and responses (and indicates correct/incorrect)

• Click on the link that indicates a student’s question attempt. This will open a pop-up window where you can scroll down and “Make Comment or override mark” to amend the mark for that question.

• You will need to edit each of the student question attempts individually to apply the new grade/feedback to all attempts.

The video below shows how to do this: 

To review a quiz attempt:

• Go to the quiz link and click on it, then click on Attempts  This displays all students and links to the quiz attempts.

• Click on the link to the student attempt for which you would like to override grades/feedback.

• The attempt overview will be displayed.

• To edit the grade/feedback for a question, click on ‘Make Comment or override mark’ for the relevant question.

• This will open a pop-up window where you can scroll down and “Make Comment or override mark” to amend the mark for that question.

• Click ‘Save’ then close the pop up window to return to the attempt overview.

• When you have finished making changes for the student’s attempt, click on Finish Review at the bottom of the page.