Moodle quizzes are helpful for creating online, self-paced, automatically graded tests or even study guides. They take some time initially to set up, but you can use the Import function to transfer and reuse quizzes in future courses, so they could save you a lot of time in the long run.
Some things you can do with quizzes are configure them to open and close at a specified time, set limits on time to take the quiz and number of attempts, randomize questions, and give partial points for partially correct answers. Use the instructions on this page to learn how.
Video Tutorial
Video Coming Soon.
Step-by-step Instructions
Setting up the Quiz
Create the Quiz
First, go to your Moodle course page and click the Turn editing on button at the top right.
Then, in the desired week click + Add activity or resource and choose Quiz.
Give your quiz a name and optionally a description. Then, scroll down to view various settings. Not all settings will be covered in these instructions—we will focus on Timing, Grade, Layout, Question behavior, and Review options settings.
Timing
In the Timing section, check the Enable boxes and set when the quiz should open and close. Quizzes may only be attempted by students during this window.
Choose whether to set a time limit for attempts. For example, students only have 90 minutes to complete the quiz.
Finally, use the drop down menu to determine what happens when time expires
Change this setting to Open attempts are submitted automatically. Otherwise, when the time runs out students will not receive partial credit for the questions they did answer.
Grade
Choose what grade category the quiz grade will fall under, if you have created categories in your Gradebook. Otherwise, you can change this later on the Gradebook Setup for your course.
Optionally set a grade to pass, and the number of attempts allowed for this quiz, up to unlimited.
Layout and Question Behavior
In these sections, choose how often students will get a new page on the quiz (every question? every 10 questions?), whether to shuffle answers within each question, and how feedback will be given.
The default setting for “How questions behave” is deferred feedback, which means no grade or feedback information will be given until the whole quiz is submitted. Alternatively, you might want students to be told that their first response choice was incorrect, and have another chance to respond for partial credit. That setting is Interactive with multiple tries.
Review options
These settings determine what is visible to the student at different stages during the quiz. The screenshot below shows the default settings. Note that all the boxes in the during the attempt section are grayed out. Because the default feedback setting is deferred feedback, students will not be able see if the gave the correct response, the points, or any feedback until they submit the quiz.
The other sections determine what can be viewed immediately after the attempt, if they want to go back and view their responses later while the quiz is open, and finally after the quiz is closed which is when grades are typically made available to students.
Once satisfied with your quiz’s settings, scroll down and click the Save and Display button. You can always go back and adjust settings later, but keep in mind that changing settings after a quiz has opened may result in an inconsistent experience for students attempting the quiz.
Note: if you’re wondering why students can’t view the quiz grade until the quiz has closed, even if they’ve already taken the quiz, it’s because the box highlighted in the screenshot below is not checked by default.
Adding quiz questions
Now that your quiz is created you need to create the questions. This is the most time-consuming part, but once they are set up you can reuse questions in other quizzes or move whole quizzes to other courses.
Click Edit quiz, then click Add and + a new question. + from question back and + a random question can only be used if you already have questions built in your question bank
The question chooser will appear, showing you all of the possible question types supported by Moodle. Click a question type to see its description, and then click Add to begin building a question of that type. For the sake of demonstration, create a Multiple choice question.
Give your multiple choice question a name. Then, in the Answers section, enter the possible answers for the question and what percent of the total score each response is worth. Note that responses can actually be worth negative scores, offsetting points earned in other questions. If you have more than 5 choices, you can click the Blanks for 3 more choices button to add more. Blank choices will not appear on the quiz.
When done with the question, click Save changes to return to the Edit quiz view and add more questions. From here you can also change the maximum grade, and control how many points a question is worth by clicking the pencil icon next to a question’s point value.
About the Question Bank
The Question Bank is a repository of all quiz questions within a Moodle course. Any question created within a quiz for a particular course will reside in that course’s question bank.
Note: Once in the Question Bank, you can create questions but they will only reside in the Question Bank and will not be associated with a Quiz until you add them from the Edit quiz view.
You can access the Question Bank from within a quiz or on the main course page:
Within a quiz
Click the Gear and scroll down to and click Question Bank.
On the main course page
Click the Gear and choose More, and click Question Bank on the Course Administration page.
Granting individual extensions
You may need to grant an extension for extenuating circumstances if someone was not able to take the quiz at the scheduled time, or if they have an accessibility accommodation. Individual extensions are referred to as User Overrides in Moodle.
First, go to your quiz, click the Gear, and choose User overrides.
Click the Add user override button. On this screen, use the search box or drop down menu to choose the students the extension applies to.
Next, choose whether the time the quiz opens, time it closes, the time limit, or number of attempts should be adjusted for the chosen students. Click Save at the bottom.
These new restrictions will now apply to the chosen students, ignoring the guidelines set for everyone else.
Grading quizzes
Quiz questions will be graded automatically, with the exception of the Essay question type which must be graded manually.
Go to your quiz. If attempts are ready to be graded they will be shown here:
Click the Attempts link and scroll down to see the table of attempts, including the questions and points received for each question. You can click Review attempt to drill down into the responses within that attempt, or you can check the boxes next to attempts and Regrade (if changes were made to the quiz questions since the attempt) or Delete them using the buttons below the table.
Need more help? Check out the Moodle Quiz Quick Guide. It’s very helpful for setting up a quiz for the first time.