Create and Manage a Quiz in Moodle

For advice on when to use online assessment, see the page Using Technologies to Support Assessment.

Moodle's Quiz activity allows you to design and build quizzes containing many question types (e.g. multiple choice, true/false, short answer). Moodle stores all quiz questions in a question bank, from which they can be imported into different quizzes—for example, for revision purposes.

Please click Add a Quiz page to view how to setup formative and summative quizzes, group quizzes, team quizzes, categorised questions, grading, importing quizzes from Word/Blackboard.

1. On the Moodle course home page, in the relevant section, click Add an activity, select Quiz.
   
2. In the General section, enter a Name, and an introductory Description if necessary.
3. In the Timing section:
   1) Enable and select dates to Open the quiz and Close the quiz.
   2) Enable and set a Time limit, if using.
   3) Select the appropriate option for When time expires.
   4) If you are allowing a grace period, Enable and nominate a Submission grace period.
   
4. In the Grade section:
   1) Select the Grade category within the Gradebook where you want this assignment to belong.
   2) Set the number of Attempts allowed, the Grade to pass and, if multiple attempts are allowed, which Grading method Moodle should use. This can be shown to students on the quiz main page.
5. In the Layout section:
   1) Select whether you want the Question order to be randomised, and where you want New page breaks to fall.
   2) Click Show more and select, at Navigation method, whether you want Moodle to force students to answer questions sequentially.
6. In the Question behaviour section:
   1) At Shuffle within questions, select whether you want multiple choice or matched question options randomised.
   2) Select How questions behave. Deferred feedback (students must submit entire quiz before they see any grade or feedback) and Interactive with multiple tries (students submit each questions and get immediate feedback as they progress through the quiz) are the most common choices.
   3) If you allowed multiple attempts, click Show more and select Each attempt builds on the last, if you want each new quiz attempt to contain the results of the previous attempt. This allows students several attempts to complete a quiz.
7. Under Review options, select what you want the student to be able to see when they view their attempt or report at various stages.
8. In the Appearance section, make choices about how you want the quiz to display:
   1) Do you want to Show the user's picture during the attempt, and on the review screen, to make it easier to check that they are logged in as themselves in an invigilated exam?
   2) How many Decimal places in grades do you want to display to the students for this quiz?
   3) How many Decimal places in grades do you want to display to the students for individual questions in this quiz?
   4) Click Show more and select whether you want the normal blocks to display during the student's quiz attempt.
9. Under Extra restrictions on attempts:
   1) Do you want to Require password for students to access this quiz?
   2) The Require network address setting is for proctored quizzes, to ensure that only students in a certain room can gain access to the quiz. Obtain the IP addresses for all rooms in which the quiz will be taken, and enter them in this field, separated by commas.
   3) Enable and select whether you want to set up the 2 levels of Enforced delay.
   4) Click Show more and select whether you want to set up Browser security and restrict students' view and activity further (read the relevant help text ).
10. Overall feedback: Enter the Feedback text the students will automatically see, depending on which range of scores they fall within, as defined by the grades or percentages in the Grade boundary fields.

You can add questions to a quiz in 3 ways:

• create them one at a time within the quiz
• retrieve them from a question bank
• import them from a file on your network or computer, or from one of your uploaded course files

To create questions one at a time within a quiz:

The general behaviour settings for most of the quiz questions will be saved to your account. For example, if you create a multiple choice with the display option 1. 2. 3., Moodle will remember that and for your future multiple choices that you create, it will start with that setting until you change it again. This helps with bulk creating questions.

1.On the course home page, with editing turned on, click the link for the quiz.

2. On the quiz's home page select Edit quiz.

3. On the Editing quiz page, click the Add dropdown, then click "a new question".

4. In the Choose a question type to add window, select the question type and click Add.

5. On the Adding a [question type] question page, select a question Category, enter a Question name and some Question text, then complete the remainder of the fields as required, clicking Help  for assistance if necessary.
 

Multiple choice question with multiple answers allowed: When you set up the answers for a question of this type, not only must the questions' combined Grade amounts add up to 100%, but you must also assign a negative Grade for the incorrect answers. If you don't, a student who selects incorrect answers as well as all the correct answers will be marked as if they answered the question correctly.

1. If the question is complex and you want to check how it will display to the student, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save changes and continue editing. Then:
   • Click Preview, and the question will display in the Preview question window.
   • If necessary, adjust the Attempt options and click Start again with these options to see how the revised question behaves.
   • If necessary, change Display options and click Update display options to check the display.
   • Close the window when you are happy with the way the question behaves.
2. Click Save changes. The question displays on the Editing quiz page. Click the arrows  to change its position within the quiz.
3. 

To retrieve questions from a question bank:

1.On the Editing quiz page, click the Add dropdown, then click from question bank. 

2. Make your choice from the Select a category list.

3. Select the check box(es) of the question(s) to be added to the text.

4. Click the plus icon next to the check box to add a single question, or click Add selected questions to the quiz to add multiple questions to the quiz. The questions are added

Click here for more detailed instructions on using question banks.

To import questions:

1.On the course home page, in the Settings block, select Course administration > Question bank > Import.

1. On the Import questions from file page:
   • Select the File format.
   • Complete the General fields as desired.
   • Choose a file to import.
   • Click Import.

Click here for more detailed instructions on importing questions into your Moodle course.

To reactivate a quiz:

1. Click Turn editing on 
2. Click the Edit dropdown, then click Edit settings.
3. On the Update quiz page, click open the Timing section and change the date in the Close the quiz fields to the new, extended close date.

To grant an extension to a quiz:

1. On the course home page, click Turn editing on .

2. For the relevant quiz, click the Add dropdown, then click Edit settings.

3. On the Editing quiz page, in the Settings block, under Quiz administration, click User overrides.

4. On the resulting page, click Add user override.

5. On the Edit override page, Search for the individual student, then make the appropriate changes. You can:

• require this student to use a password to enter the quiz
• specify different Open or Close dates or times (in the event of extenuating circumstances or special needs)
• allow this student a different number of quiz attempts.

6. Click Save. The overrides overview page displays, showing all current overrides and their details. Add another user override or return to the Editing quiz page.

Set up and usage

1. The group quiz uses a specific grouping. To create a specific grouping, please go to Creating a grouping page.

2. To activate the group quiz, the instructor must select a grouping in the “Restrict access” session when creating the quiz.

• On the course home page, with editing turned on, click Edit settings to edit the quiz setting.
• Under the “Restrict access” session, click Add Restriction > Grouping, and choose a grouping
        
  

3. To view the group quiz, please click the quiz link in the course page, go to Quiz Administration > Results > Group Quiz > choose the grouping you set for this quiz > click Save

To access reports relating to a quiz:

1. On the course home page, click the quiz's link.
2. In the Settings block, click Quiz administration > Results.
3. Select from the list of the 4 types of reports available: Grades, Responses, Statistics or Manual Grading.

Grades

The Grades report tells you about student quiz attempts, displaying the overall grade, and a summary of each correct/incorrect answer. It also reports on the State (student progress through a quiz), the time the quiz was started/completed and the total time the student took to complete it. You can re-grade quiz attempts by selecting Re-grade selected attempts. A  bar graph summarises the grade range and frequency.

Responses

The Responses report is visually similar to the Grades report, but it shows the responses students gave to quiz questions, not the marks they earned. You can view the question text/correct answer to compare students' responses.

Statistics

The Statistics report provides statistical ("psychometric") analysis of the quiz and the questions it contains. The report is divided into 3 sections:

• a summary of the whole quiz
• an analysis showing all questions in table format, and
• a bar graph of the percentage of correct answers (the "Facility index") and the "discriminative efficiency index".

Details about the data items are available on the Moodle Docs Quiz statistics report page.

Manual Grading

The Manual Grading report enables instructors to manually grade written submissions within a quiz.

It contains the following information:

• Question number
• Question name
• Items to grade
• Items already graded
• Total submissions

To grade submissions, in the To Grade column select Grade. All the quiz responses to be graded will display. Read each submission, provide comments and a final mark and repeat the process until all submissions are graded. The comments and marks are exported to the Gradebook when you  select Save and go to next page after marking each submission.

Further information

For more information about generating course logs and statistics, go to the Generate reports in Moodle page.

Embedded questions do not send grades to the gradebook, however, Instructors can view Student progress and results in the ‘Embedded questions progress’ report on each embedded question page.

To enable ATTO text editor in Moodle:

1. Click on your top right profile icon in Moodle, click ‘Preferences’.
   
2. Click ‘Editor preferences’ in the 'User account' section.
   
3. Select Atto HTML editor and click Save changes.
   

For a question to appear in the menu of 'Embed question', several conditions must be met:

1. Category the question is in must have an ID number
2. Question must have an ID number
3. ID numbers must be unique and exist to prevent accidental embedding of questions that shouldn't be embedded

To embedded quiz questions in course content:

1. In the activity or resource you want to add embedded quiz questions, under Content, click the expand icon and then click ‘Embed question’ option in the ATTO text editor. A Book activity is being used for this demo.
   
2. In the pop-up Embed question window, select the question category and question in the dropdown. You can select to choose a random question if the category has 3 or more questions in it.
   
3. In the Attempt options section, you can change how the question behaves as well as giving it a mark.
   
4. Under Display options, you can customise what information you want to display on the content page. Click Embed question to add this question in the ATTO editor.
   
5. A string will show up in the text field which represents the embedded question you just added.
   
6. Click Save changes at the bottom of the settings page.
   
7. Now students can see the embedded question in a certain page and start to interact with it once the activity or resource is available.
   

To view students’ progress within any embedded questions:

1. Click into the activity where the questions are embedded.
   
2. Click embedded questions progress report in the settings block on the left.
   
3. A list of students who have interacted with the question would be presented on the main page. You can filter the list based on students' names by clicking the letters or download the list by clicking the Download button.
   
4. For more information about each attempt in the list, click the date and time text in the 'Latest attempt' column. Some information such as 'Status' and 'Grade' will show up in a new window.
   
   
5. Embedded questions progress is also accessible through the reports section in 'Course administration' block. But this will give you the attempts of all the embedded questions in your course instead of just in one activity or resource.
   
    

• Want to give feedback with quiz grades? Click the link for instructions.
• Want to download grades and feedback for a single quiz from the Gradebook? Click the link for instructions.
• Want to grant an individual student special access to, or an extension on, a quiz? Click the link for instructions.

• Effective quiz practices
• Adding questions to a quiz (Moodle Docs)
• Importing questions into your Moodle course (Moodle Docs)
• Using question banks
• Quiz statistics report (Moodle Docs)

If you experience technical or other issues, consult the Where to get help page.