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. See our article on Getting started with Quizzes if you are unfamiliar with this process. If you have concerns about academic dishonesty, please see recommendations for Elon professors here. If you need to extend exam time for a student with accommodations, visit our article on overrides here. Visit our other articles on quizzes here. For information beyond this article, visit Moodle documentation here.
1. Navigate to the course you would like to create an quiz for. Toggle the Edit switch to on.
2. Click "Add an activity or resource" link in the section where you would like to build your quiz.
3. You will be automatically directed to a window to pick your activity type. Select "Quiz" from the list.
4. After choosing "Quiz", you will be automatically directed the settings page for your new quiz. Begin by adding a name/title and description.
- If you check the box under Description, the description will display on the main course page.
5. Select the quiz availability. Read about your options below.
- Open the quiz: If you want to open the quiz at a certain date and time, check the box next to "Enable" and select the date and time. Students will not be able to take the quiz before this date.
- Close the quiz: If you want the Quiz to close on a certain date and time, check the box next to "Enable" and select the date and time. Students will not be able to take the quiz after this date.
- Time limit: If you want to set a time limit for the Quiz, check the "Enable" box and enter the time limit. This will give students a set number of minutes/hours/days/weeks to complete the quiz once it has been opened. This setting will not go into effect until the quiz is opened.
- When time expires: This setting controls what happens if the student fails to submit their quiz attempt before time expires. If the student is actively working on the quiz at the time, then the countdown timer will always automatically submit the attempt for them, but if they have logged out, then this setting controls what happens.
- Submission grace period: This setting will only appear under the option "There is a grace period when open attempts can be submitted, but no more questions answered". In this case, the set amount of extra time is allowed.
6. Enter the Grade information for the Quiz
- Grade category: This setting controls the category in which this activity's grades are placed in the gradebook. Placing activities in relavant categories is part of good practice for grading in Moodle.
- Grade to pass: Decide how many attempts students will have to take the quiz.
- Attempts allowed: Select the number of attempts allowed for this quiz. This can either be a number 1-10, or Unlimited. When multiple attempts are allowed, the following methods are available for calculating the final quiz grade:
- Highest grade of all attempts
- Average (mean) grade of all attempts
- First attempt (all other attempts are ignored)
- Last attempt (all other attempts are ignored)
7. Select the layout for the quiz.
- New page: Select how many questions you would like to appear on one page of the quiz. If you think you may need to print this quiz at any point, select "Never, all questions on one page".
- Navigation method: If you click "Show more...", you can select whether students are able to skip ahead in the quiz, or if they must go through questions sequentially.
8. Select Question behavior settings.
- Shuffle within questions: If enabled, the parts making up each question will be randomly shuffled each time a student attempts the quiz, provided the option is also enabled in the question settings. This setting only applies to questions that have multiple parts, such as multiple choice or matching questions.
- How questions behave: This will change how students receive feedback during and after their quiz.
- Deferred feedback - Students must enter an answer to each question and then submit the entire quiz, before anything is graded or they get any feedback.
- Adaptive mode and Adaptive mode (no penalties) - Allows students to have multiple attempts at the question before moving on to the next question.
- Interactive mode - After submitting one answer, and reading the feedback, the student has to click a 'Try again' button before they can try a new response. Once the student has got the question right, they can no longer change their response. Once the student has got the question wrong too many times, they are just graded wrong (or partially correct) and get shown the feedback and can no longer change their answer. There can be different feedback after each try the student makes.
- Immediate feedback - Similar to interactive mode in that the student can submit their response immediately during the quiz attempt, and get it graded. However, they can only submit one response, they cannot change it later.
- Deferred feedback or Immediate feedback with Certainty-based marking (CBM) - With CBM, the student does not only answer the question, but they also indicate how sure they are they got the question right. The grading is adjusted by the choice of certainty, so that students have to reflect honestly on their own level of knowledge in order to get the best mark. See the See Also section below for an example quiz using CBM and a blog post explaining the philosophy.
- Each attempt builds on the last: This is found under the "Show more..." button. 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 the student on the new attempt to concentrate on just those questions that were answered incorrectly on the previous attempt.
9. Select the Review Options for the quiz.
- Time frames for Review options
- During the attempt: These are default settings, and are only relevant for situations when the quiz is interactive, with multiple tries.
- Immediately after the attempt: These settings apply for the two minutes after the quiz is submitted.
- Later, while the quiz is still open: These settings apply after the allotted two minutes, and before the quiz closes.
- After the quiz is closed: These settings apply after the quiz close date has passed.
- Information for Review options:
- The attempt: Will show how the student responded to each question.
- Whether correct: Displays whether the students response to each question is correct or incorrect.
- Points: Reveals the marks awarded to the student and the grade for the quiz.
- Specific feedback: Will show the feedback for the response to the answer as set when adding the question to the quiz. Each response to a question can have feedback for both correct and incorrect answers.
- General feedback: Displays the general feedback for the whole question as set when adding the question to the quiz. You can use the general feedback to give students some background to what knowledge the question was testing.
- 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).
- Please note: In your list of review options, you must have 'The attempt' (the first option in the lists) selected before you can 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'.
10. Enter the Appearance settings for the quiz.
- Show the user's picture: If enabled, the student's name and picture will be shown on-screen during the attempt, and on the review screen, making it easier to check that the student is logged in as them self in an invigilated (proctored) exam.
- Decimal places in grades: This setting specifies the number of digits shown after the decimal point when displaying grades. It only affects the display of grades, not the grades stored in the database, nor the internal calculations, which are carried out to full accuracy.
- Decimal places in marks for questions: This setting specifies the number of digits shown after the decimal point when displaying the grades for individual questions.
- Show blocks during quiz attempts: If set to yes, then normal blocks will be shown during quiz attempts.
11. Select any necessary Safe Exam Browser settings.
12. Select any necessary Extra restriction settings.
- Require password: If a password is specified, a student must enter it in to attempt the quiz. You may choose to require a password for access to an exam to prevent cheating. Professors may opt to use this to prevent students from taking the quiz outside of class, by only giving the password to students who are in the class.
- Require network address: Quiz access may be restricted to particular subnets on the LAN or Internet by specifying a comma-separated list of partial or full IP address numbers. This can be useful for a proctored quiz, to ensure that only people in a certain location can access the quiz.
- Browser security: If 'Full screen pop-up with some JavaScript security' is selected:
- The quiz will only start if the student has a Java-Script enabled web browser.
- The quiz appears in a full screen pop up window that covers all the other windows and has no navigation controls
- Students are prevented, as far as it is possible, from using facilities like copy and paste.
- Allow quiz to be attempted offline using the mobile app: If enabled a mobile app user can download the quiz and attempt it offline.
- It is not possible for a quiz to be attempted offline if it has a time limit, or requires a network address, or uses any question behavior other than deferred feedback.
13. Enter optional Overall Feedback for the Quiz
- Overall feedback is shown to a student after they have completed an attempt at the quiz. The text that is shown can depend on the grade the student got. Click "Show editing tools" to display the rich text editor, and drag the bottom right of the text box out to expand it. For example, if you entered:
Grade boundary: 100% Feedback: "Well done"
Grade boundary: 40%
Feedback: "Please study this week's work again"
Grade boundary: 0%
- Then students who score between 100% and 40% will see the "Well done" message, and those who score between 39.99% and 0% will see "Please study this week's work again". That is, the grade boundaries define ranges of grades, and each feedback string is displayed to scores within the appropriate range.
- Grade boundary: You can enter your preferred grade boundary between the 100-0% range. The highest and lowest boundaries, 100% and 0% respectively, are preset and cannot be changed.
- Feedback: Enter feedback you would like the student to receive here. The grade boundary below a specific feedback field is the the lowest grade a student can get and still receive that feedback. The grade above that field is the cutoff boundary.
14. Select any necessary Common module settings.
- Availability: If enabled, the assignment will be shown on the course page (This is the default). If not enabled, the assignment can be hidden from students. We do not recommend using "Make available but not shown on course page".
- Force language: You can enforce a specifc language for an assignment.
- Include in course content download: If enabled, the content will be downloaded in course backups. This will have no effect on mobile app content downloaded for offline usage.
- Group mode:
- No groups: There are no groups and all students submit their individual activities in one area.
- Separate groups: Students submit their activity and teachers/trainers can sort submissions by Group or view All Participants.
- Visible groups: All students submits their assignment within a single Assignment area but may choose which Group to associate their submission with before uploading. Teachers/trainers can sort submissions by Group or view All Participants.
- Grouping: This setting will only appear if you have group mode enabled. Groupings are a collection of groups that are set up on the course level. Select groups here.
15. Make any necessary Restrict access settings.
- You can restrict access on a variety of metrics, and even for individual student characteristics. To do this, click "Add a restriction" and select your restriction type from the given window. See below for more details on restriction types.
- Student _____ match the following: Select whether you want to include or exclude students based on certain characteristics.
- Activity completion: Require students to complete (or not complete) another activity. After selecting this option, you can select which assignment you require and whether it must be completed/not completed or passed/failed.
- Date: Prevent access until (or from) a specified date and time. This is another option beyond those in the Availability section.
- Grade: Require students to achieve a specified grade. After selecting this, you can choose a specific assignment to require a grade from, and set numerical parameters for that grade.
- User profile: Control access based on fields within the student's profile.
- Restriction set: Add a set of nested restrictions to apply complex logic.
16. Make any necessary Activity completion settings.
- Completion tracking: This will contribute to the percent complete tracker students see in their My Courses tab, and elsewhere in Moodle. Options include:
- If no activity completion is shown, then they will not be able to mark it complete or see a completion status.
- Students can manually mark the activity as complete.
- Completion will be shown if conditions are met. If this is enabled, more settings will appear which will allow you to set those conditions.
- Expected completion on: This will allow you to mark a date at which completion is expected. When this date approaches, it will be listed on the Timeline block in the Dashboard.
17. Scroll to the bottom and click "Save and display".
- Please note: If you have made significant changes to a quiz, we recommend selecting the box for "Send content change notification". We generally recommend ignoring the settings under Tags and Competencies.
18. After you have saved the settings for your quiz, you will be automatically directed back to the activity page. Click "Add question" to begin configuring quiz questions.
- For more information about adding questions to quizzes, visit our article here.
- To learn about different question types available in quizzes, please see the articles below:
- To learn how to print a quiz, see our article here.
