Create a Questionnaire in Moodle

You can create a Moodle questionnaire in 3 ways:

• create a completely new questionnaire from scratch.
• copy an existing questionnaire belonging to the course, or a "template" course, and change it to suit your purpose.
• use an existing "public" questionnaire. You cannot edit a public questionnaire, or view responses to it - only the person who created it can edit these. 

These instructions will help you create a completely new questionnaire, to which you will add your own questions.

1. On the course home page, click Turn editing on.
   
2. In the appropriate section, click Add an activity or resource, and from the pop-up menu, select Questionnaire.
   
3. On the Adding a new Questionnaire page, click Expand all then under the General section, enter a Name and if necessary, a Description.
4. Do you want the questionnaire to be available immediately and on an ongoing basis?
   • If yes, leave the Availability fields unchanged and continue to the next step.
   • If no, click the Allow responses from and Allow responses until check boxes and select dates, months, years, hours and minutes into the drop-down boxes to control the questionnaire's availability.
     
5. Select the Response options you want to give the respondents:
   • Type—Can students take the questionnaire once, or at regular intervals, or as many times as they want? 
   • Respondent Type—Will their names will be recorded with their answers?
   • Students can view—Will you permit them to see others' responses, and if so, under what conditions?
   • Save/Resume answers—Will you allow them to partially complete the questionnaire and return to it later?
   • Allow branching questions—Will the sequence of questions be different depending on respondents' answers?
   • Auto numbering—Will the questions and/or pages be auto numbered?
     • Show progress bar—Should a progression bar be visible as students go through the questionnaire?
   • Submission grade—Will marks be awarded for completing the questionnaire, and if so, how many
6. Under Content options, select where you will source the questionnaire content from. You can
   • Create new—create a completely new questionnaire from scratch. (These instructions presume you select Create New.)
   • Copy existing—copy an existing one belonging to the course, or a "template" course, and change it to suit your purposes
   • Use public—use an existing "public" questionnaire. You cannot edit a public questionnaire, or view responses to it; only the person who created it can.
     
7. Complete the remainder of the page and click Save and Display.
   
8. On the new questionnaire's editing page, click Add questions.
   
9. On the Manage questions page, select the Advanced settings tab.
   
10. On the Advanced settings page, under Content options:
    • Select which Questionnaire Type you are creating, Private, Public or Template. (These instructions presume you select Private.)
    • Add a Title to appear at the top of every page of the questionnaire (that is, if you want this to be different from the main name you entered at Step 2).
    • Specify any Subtitle or Additional information you want to display.
11. Under Submission options:
    • Enter the Confirmation details you want the user to see when they submit their answers.
    • Enter the Email address(es), if any, to which you want submissions to be forwarded.
    • Click Save and display.
      
12. On the questionnaire editing page, click Add questions.
    
13. On the Manage questions page in the Add questions section, from the drop-down box select the appropriate question type, then click Add selected question type.
    
    
14. The page that displays will be different for each question type. Take a look at our next section for information on how to create each question type.
15. Click Save changes when you have set up each question. The Manage questions page displays with all the created questions listed in the Manage questions section, where you can move, edit or delete them, or change whether a response is required for each one.
    

In this section, we will go through how to create and score each question type. Scoring is essential if we intend to use the questions to display personalized feedback.

Contents:

• Page Break
• Date
• Dropdown Box
• Essay Box
• Label
• Numeric
• Radio Buttons
• Rate
• Text Box
• Yes/No

Page Break

Used to split questions onto a new page. All questions after the page break will be placed on a new page.

Students must answer all required questions on the current page, before they can enter the new page.

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Date

Question where students select a date.

When creating a date question, you will need to specify:

• Question name: Used to refer to the question during setup. This will not be shown to students, make sure to use a short and informative name.
• Response is required: Is this question a required field. if 'No' is selected, students can choose to skip this question.
• Question text: Enter the question to show students here

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Dropdown Box

Question where students select an option from a dropdown box.

When creating a dropdown question, you will need to specify:

• Question name: Used to refer to the question during setup. This will not be shown to students, make sure to use a short and informative name.
• Response is required: Is this question a required field. if 'No' is selected, students can choose to skip this question.
• Question text: Enter the question to show students here
• Possible answers: List of answers to include in the dropdown, each answer should be entered on a new line. If you need this question to be scored, you can enter your own scores for each answer in the format "score=answer". For example "1=one packet per week", means the option 'one packet per week' is worth 1 point if selected.
  

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Essay Box

Question where students can enter a long text response. For short responses, try the text box instead.

When creating a essay question, you will need to specify:

• Question name: Used to refer to the question during setup. This will not be shown to students, make sure to use a short and informative name.
• Response is required: Is this question a required field. if 'No' is selected, students can choose to skip this question.
• Response format: Whether students can use the HTML editor which allows them to use text editor features and insert images, or just plain text.
• Input box size: How many lines tall will be input area be
• Question text: Enter the question to show students here

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Label

Display some information on the screen. This is not a question where students can respond.

When creating a label question, you will need to specify:

• Question name: Used to refer to the question during setup. This will not be shown to students, make sure to use a short and informative name.
• Question text: Enter the question to show students here

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Numeric

Question where students can enter a number as their response.

When creating a numeric question, you will need to specify:

• Question name: Used to refer to the question during setup. This will not be shown to students, make sure to use a short and informative name.
• Response is required: Is this question a required field. if 'No' is selected, students can choose to skip this question.
• Max. digits allowed: The maximum number of characters students can enter. This includes any decimal places.
• Nb of decimal digits: The format that the average response will have, affects how the questionnaire report page will display when the average of the answers is calculated.
• Question text: Enter the question to show students here

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Radio Buttons

Question where students can select an answer out of several check boxes. Note that only a single answer can be selected.

When creating a radio question, you will need to specify:

• Question name: Used to refer to the question during setup. This will not be shown to students, make sure to use a short and informative name.
• Response is required: Is this question a required field. if 'No' is selected, students can choose to skip this question.
• Radio buttons Alignment: Will the options be displayed as a top down list or side by side
• Question text: Enter the question to show students here
• Possible answers: List of answers to include in the list, each answer should be entered on a new line. If you need this question to be scored, you can enter your own scores for each answer in the format "score=answer". For example "1=one packet per week", means the option 'one packet per week' is worth 1 point if selected.

  

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Rate

Question where students can rate a list of questions/topics depending on a scale.

When creating a rate question, you will need to specify:

• Question name: Used to refer to the question during setup. This will not be shown to students, make sure to use a short and informative name.
• Response is required: Is this question a required field. if 'No' is selected, students can choose to skip this question.
• Nb of scale items: How many options does the scale have. i.e a 5 here will provide users the options from 1 to 5
• Type of rate scale: The type of scale students will use to rate. Keep at normal unless looking for a specific type of scale.
• Question text: Enter the question to show students here
• Possible answers: The things that are being rated. Keep each thing on a different row
  
• Named degrees: Custom names for each scale option, if blank the scale will go from 1,2,3,4,5 etc. Each option should be entered on a new line with the amount of options kept the same as the Nb of scale items
  If you need this question to be scored, you can enter your own scores for each answer in the format "score=answer". For example "1=one packet per week", means the option 'once a month' is worth 1 point if selected.
  

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Text box

Question where students can enter a text response. For long multi-line responses, try the essay box instead.

When creating a text question, you will need to specify:

• Question name: Used to refer to the question during setup. This will not be shown to students, make sure to use a short and informative name.
• Response is required: Is this question a required field. if 'No' is selected, students can choose to skip this question.
• Input box length: How many characters wide is the text box
• Max. text length: How many characters can students enter into the text box. This can be larger than the box length as text can scroll off the screen.
• Question text: Enter the question to show students here

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Yes/No

Question where students can select Yes or No as their answer.

When creating a Yes/No question, you will need to specify:

• Question name: Used to refer to the question during setup. This will not be shown to students, make sure to use a short and informative name.
• Response is required: Is this question a required field. if 'No' is selected, students can choose to skip this question.
• Question text: Enter the question to show students here

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Feedback can be set up in the questionnaire to display content to students depending on how they answered.

To enable feedback, the questionnaire must have at least one of the following question types as a required field to calculate scores or split students into different categories:

• Radio Button
• Dropdown Box
• Yes/No
• Rate (using the Normal or Osgood scale)

There are 2 main types of feedback messages that can be set up for students:

1. Global Feedback: All questions are scored depending on how they were set up and a specific response is shown to the user depending on the percentage of the score they got. ie you can set up a different feedback response if they got 0-50%,51-75%, etc.
    
2. Feedback sections: Similar to global feedback, however, questions are split into sections each with its own set of score percentages and feedback.
   
   Questions can be used in one or many sections to judge different aspects of the topic and provide several sets of customized feedback. For example, in a fitness questionnaire, we can have feedback for overall fitness that only takes into account fitness-related questions and another on lifestyle habits.

Global Feedback

Global feedback can be used to provide a different feedback message depending on the percentage score the student got across all the questions.

1. In the questionnaire activity, click the 'Feedback' button
   
    
2. Set the 'Feedback options' dropdown to 'Global Feedback'
   
    
3. Enter any general message that you want to be displayed to students on the feedback page into the 'Feedback notes' section. This text will be displayed regardless of what the student's score is.
   
    
4. Click 'Save settings and edit feedback sections'
   
    
5. You will be taken to the page to set up the mark-specific feedback. The 'Save settings and edit feedback sections' button can be clicked anytime in the future to reopen this page and edit any messages we create.
   
   Enter 'Label' text to display in charts and diagrams and also a 'Heading' which will be displayed to students on their feedback page. You can include the text '$scorepercent' or '$oppositescorepercent' within the Heading to directly display the student's score when they view it.
   
    
6. Enter the score-specific feedback into the 'Global feedback messages' section. You will see a 'Feedback score boundary' number input area where you can define the score ranges for each message. 
   
   In this example I added a 'Feedback score boundary' at 70%, so I can leave a message for scorers between 71% - 100% and a different one for 0% - 20%.
   
    
7. Click 'Save changes'

Feedback sections

Feedback sections are good for situations where not all of the questions are relevant to each piece of feedback.

Questions are grouped into the sections/topics that they relate to and each section will provide students a different feedback message depending on the percentage score that the student got for the questions in that section.

The feedback they got for each section will be displayed to students on their feedback page, leading to a highly personalized response.

For example in a questionnaire with a mix of exercise and nutrition-related questions, I can get an 84% for exercise questions and 40% for nutrition questions which will provide 2 sets of personalized feedback at the end of the questionnaire.

1. In the questionnaire activity, click the 'Feedback' button

   
    

2. Set the 'Feedback options' dropdown to 'Feedback Sections'
   
    

3.  Enter any general message that you want to be displayed to students on the feedback page into the 'Feedback notes' section. This text will be displayed regardless of what the student's score is.
   
    
4. Click 'Save settings and edit feedback sections'
   
    
5. You will be taken to the page to set up the mark-specific feedback for each section. The 'Save settings and edit feedback sections' button can be clicked anytime in the future to reopen this page and edit any messages we create.
   
   You can use the 'Go to feedback section' button and dropdown to navigate between the setup pages for each section. You can use the 'Add new section' button and text field to add a new section.
   
   
   For now please scroll down the page, we will not use the buttons on this step.
    
6. In the 'Section heading' part of the page, enter a short 'Label' text to name the section and also a 'Heading' which will be displayed to students at the start of this section on their feedback page.
   
   You can include the text '$scorepercent' or '$oppositescorepercent' within the Heading to directly display the student's score when they view it.
   
    
7. Go to and expand the 'Section questions' part of the page. Here we want to specify which question's score we want to use for this section. Use the 'Add question' button and dropdown to select the questions related to this section.
   
   
    
8. As we add questions to the section, they will be listed above the 'Add question' button. You can use the 'x' icon to remove any questions you don't want. You can use the number input area beside each question to specify the weight it has for this section. The weight will be applied to the student's score for that question.
   
   For example, a question with weight 0.5 will be worth half as much when calculating the score range for the feedback displayed.
   
    
9. Enter the score-specific feedback into the 'section messages' part of the page. You will see a 'Feedback score boundary' number input area where you can define the score ranges for each message. 
   
   In this example, I added a 'Feedback score boundary' at 66%, so I can leave a message for scorers between 67% - 100% and a different one for 0% - 66%.
   
    
10. Click 'Save changes'.
    
    We have now created the feedback for this section. Go back up the page and use the 'Add new section' button to create more sections. As you add more sections, you can use the 'Go to feedback section' button and dropdown to navigate between each section to modify them.
    
     
11. Repeat steps 6 to 9 to set up the newly created section. Take note that questions can be used in more than one section if they are useful for calculating the feedback.

 

To see who has and hasn't responded to a questionnaire, and to view respondents' answers:

1. On the course home page, click the questionnaire's link.
   
   
    
2. On the questionnaire's home page, click View All Responses. This button only appears when there has been at least one response.
   
   
    
3. On the View All responses > Summary page, you can view a summary of all the responses. (To see individual responses, click the List of responses tab, then the respondent's name.)
   
   
    
4. To view users who have not yet taken the questionnaire, click the Non-respondents tab
   
   
    
5. On the Non-respondents page, to remind non-respondents to take the questionnaire, either select individual students using their check boxes in the Select column or scroll to the bottom of the list and click Select all.
   
   
    
6. Under Send message to selected users, enter a Subject and a Message body for your reminder message.
   
   
7. Click Send. A message-sent confirmation displays, and the questionnaire's home page re-displays.