Quizzes in Moodle can help assess student learning. They can be used as a formative exercise that includes feedback and multiple attempts or a summative test with a strict time limit and shuffled questions. Learn how to create numerical questions in quizzes with this article. From the student perspective, a numerical question looks just like a short-answer question. The difference is that numerical answers are allowed to have an accepted error. This allows a fixed range of answers to be evaluated as one answer. For example, if the answer is 30 with an accepted error of 5, then any number between 25 and 35 will be accepted as correct.
For more information on quizzes, adding questions, and the question bank:
For information beyond these articles, please visit Moodle documentation here and here.
1. Navigate to the course in which you would like to create questions. Locate your desired quiz or open the question bank, and add a question.
- If you are unsure of how to add questions to quizzes or to the question bank, please visit the articles listed at the top of this page.
2. You will be immediately directed to a window to choose your question type. Select "Numerical", and then click "Add" at the bottom of the window.
3. Select the category in which you would like to place this question.
- Category: Select the category you would like the numerical question to go into. For example, you may with to categorize questions by subject, unit, use in a midterm or final exam, etc.
4. Enter a question name and your desired question text.
- Question name: Give the numerical question a descriptive name. You'll use the name to track your questions later, so "Question 1" isn't a good idea. The name will be used in the question lists on the quiz editing page or in the lesson as a page title. It will not be shown to the students, so you can choose any name that makes sense to you and possibly other teachers.
- Question text: Create the question text. This is where you might write prompts, include relevant links, photos, etc.
5. Enter the question status, points, and general feedback.
- Question status: This allows you to set the question as a draft, or one that is ready to be used.
- Default points: Set the default question mark (grade).
- General feedback: If you wish, add general feedback. This text will appear to all students after they have answered the question, if you have allowed immediate feedback in the quiz settings. This is different than specific feedback, which will depend on the question type and response. For example, you might use this to provide students a fully worked example and links to resources about the material.
6. Enter Answer information for the question.
- This will help you streamline grading and feedback. Moodle will attempt to match student answers to the answers you have preformatted here, and provide feedback based on those answers. You can enter most common answers, select a degree of acceptable error, apply grades to these answers, and give feedback. Remember, none of the answers you enter here will be shown to students or made available to them in any way. This is solely for instructor/grading purposes.
- Answer 1: Enter the first accepted answer(s). Note: Floating point numbers, e.g. 23.4, may also be written as 23,4 or 2.34E+1.
- Error: Enter an accepted error for this answer. This is the range above or below the answer that Moodle will accept as a match. For example, if the correct answer is 5, but you will accept 4 or 6 as answers, your accepted error is 1.
- Grade: Enter a grade for this answer.
- Feedback: Enter feedback for the accepted answer. This is the text that the student will see if they enter a number within the accepted error of the answer. For example, you might provide a worked example, or links to resources about the topic.
- Please note: You must provide at least one possible answer. Answers left blank will not be used. '*' can be used as a wildcard to match any characters. The first matching answer will be used to determine the score and feedback.
- If more than three answer choices are needed, click the 'Blanks for 3 more choices' button.
7. Enter the Unit handling information for the numerical question.
- Unit handling: Decide if unit will be used, if units are optional, or if the unit must be given.
- Unit penalty: The penalty is applied if:
- the wrong unit name is entered into the unit input, or
- a unit is entered into the value input box
- Units are input using: Units are input using either the text input element, a multiple choice selection or a drop-down menu.
- Units go: Decide if units go on the left or right.
8. Enter the Unit information for the numerical question
- Unit: Units can also be specified. For example, if you enter a unit of 'cm' here, and the accepted answer is 15, then the answers '15cm' and '15' are both accepted as correct.
- Multiplier: You can also specify a multiplier. So, if your main answer was 5500 with unit W, you can also add the unit kW with a multiplier of 0.001. This means that the answers '5500,' '5500W' or '5.5kW' would all be marked correct. Note that the accepted error is also multiplied, so an allowed error of 100W would become an error of 0.1kW.
- If you need more units, click the "Blanks for 2 more units" button.
9. Enter any necessary settings for multiple tries and hints.
- When you run your questions using the 'Interactive with multiple tries' or 'Adaptive mode' behavior, so that the the student will have several tries to get the question right, then this option controls how much they are penalized for each incorrect try. This can be changed in the settings for the quiz.
- Penalty for each incorrect try: The penalty is a proportion of the total question grade, so if the question is worth three marks, and the penalty is 0.3333333, then the student will score 3 if they get the question right first time, 2 if they get it right second try, and 1 of they get it right on the third try.
- Hint 1 and 2: Enter the text you want students to see when they ask for a first or second hint.
- Add another hint: If you need more than two hints for your multiple choice question, select this button.
10. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Save changes" button. This will add the question to your quiz or Question bank.
- For information on other question types, see the articles below: