August 26, 2020, by Helen Whitehead

A Summer of Moodle #12: Engaging students with Moodle Quizzes

The Quiz activity in Moodle allows you to design and set quizzes consisting of a large variety of question types, including multiple-choice, true / false, and short answer questions. Moodle questions that you create are kept in the course question bank and can be re-used within courses and between courses.

Quizzes can allow multiple attempts. Each attempt is automatically marked, and you can choose whether to give feedback and/or show the correct answers.

It is strongly recommended that you use the Quiz tool in Moodle only for formative assessment.

Creating a quiz in Moodle consists of a three-step process:

1. You set up the quiz activity and configure its options, which specify the rules for how users will interact with the quiz.
2. You create the questions that sit in the question bank (a database that holds questions which can be divided into categories).
3. You then add the questions to the quiz body.

Examples of when you could use quizzes

There are numerous instances you might choose to use quizzes on Moodle. A few examples are:

• To check a student’s prior knowledge of a topic
• To check a student’s understanding of a lecture
• To check a student’s understanding of a piece of reading, a video or podcast
• To check a student’s understanding of some practical work
• To reinforce key concepts and threshold knowledge

The benefits of using Moodle quizzes include:

• Grades can be returned to the gradebook
• You can monitor engagement through completion tracking
• Conditional activities can be based on whether the quiz is completed or not.
• Questions can be re-used in your own course and in other Moodle courses

The question types

There are a number of different types to choose from when adding questions to a quiz on Moodle. They are:

• Calculated– Calculated questions offer a way to create individual numerical questions by the use of wildcards that are substituted with individual values when the quiz is taken.
• Calculated Multichoice– Calculated multichoice questions are like multichoice questions with the additional property that the elements to select can include formula results from numeric values that are selected randomly from a set when the quiz is taken.
• Calculated Simple– Simple calculated questions offer a way to create individual numerical questions whose response is the result of a numerical formula which contain variable numerical values by the use of wildcards.
• Description– This is not a real question. It simply prints some text (and possibly graphics) without requiring an answer. This can be used to provide some information to be used by a subsequent group of questions, for example.
• Drag and Drop into Text– This is where missing words have to be dragged into gaps in a paragraph of text.
• Drag and Drop Markers– This question type allows students to drop markers onto an area on a background image.
• Drag and Drop onto Image– Images or text labels are dragged and dropped into drop zones on a background image. (This question type is not accessible to users who are visually impaired.)
• Embedded Answers (Cloze Test / Gap Fill)– These very flexible questions consist of a passage of text (in Moodle format) that has various answers embedded within it, including multiple choice, short answers and numerical answers.
• Essay– In response to a question (that may include an image) the respondent writes an answer in essay format.
• Matching– A list of sub-questions is provided, along with a list of answers. The respondent must “match” the correct answers with each question.
• Multiple Choice– In response to a question (that may include a image) the respondent chooses from multiple answers. There are two types of multiple-choice questions – single answer and multiple answer.
• Numerical– From the student perspective, a numerical question looks just like a shortanswer question. The difference is that numerical answers are allowed to have an accepted error. This allows a continuous range of answers to be set.
• Pattern match– Allows a short response of one or a few sentences that is graded by comparing against various model answers, which are described using the OU’s pattern match syntax.
• Random Short-Answer Matching– From the student perspective, this looks just like a Matching question. The difference is that the sub-questions are drawn randomly from Short Answer questions in the current category.
• Select Missing Words– Missing words in the question text are filled in using drop-down menus.
• Short Answer– In response to a question (that may include a image), the respondent types a word or phrase. There may several possible correct answers, with different grades. Answers may or may not be sensitive to case.
• True/False– In response to a question (that may include a image), the respondent selects from two options: True or False.
• Variable Numericand Variable Numeric Set – Allows a numeric response, expressions are evaluated on the fly and the evaluated expression is compared to the student response  or  the question can have several ‘variants’, where expressions are pre evaluated for each question variant.

More information on Moodle Quiz

• Moodle Help: Quiz
• How to Add a Moodle quiz (the settings)
• How to Add questions to a Moodle quiz
• How to export reports and statistics for Moodle quiz

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on Google+
• Share on LinkedIn