A Moodle quiz is basically made up of two parts: The questions, which reside in the question bank, and the quiz settings. These two sections, once established, work together to provide an assessment experience that can be beneficial for both students and instructors.
QUICK VIEW - SETTINGS FOR A STANDARD QUIZ
Using the default settings with only a few changes will result in a "standard quiz" which is defined as:
Each student has one attempt, in a set window of time when the quiz opens and closes.
Student attempts are automatically submitted when the quiz closes.
Assuming all quiz questions are self-grading, students will see results only after they have completed and submitted the quiz (aka deferred feedback).
ADDITIONAL OPTIONS - ALL SETTINGS EXPLAINED
While so many settings options may seem overwhelming, it means teachers have a lot of control over how their quiz functions.
Scroll through all the settings explained below, or select a button to be taken to those specific instructions.
General
Name your Quiz. This is what students will see so be intentional.
Optional: Add a description. This is a good place to add instructions for students.
Optional: Choose whether or not to display the description on your Moodle Page under the title. (Checked = will be displayed, Unchecked = not displayed)
Timing
Enable an open and close date. Then, set the quiz to open and close by date and time (indicated in 24-hour, military time).
You do not have to set a close date, but you must set an open date.
"Opening the quiz" is not the same as showing the quiz on your Moodle page. For students to participate, you will still have to show (the eye icon) the quiz on your Moodle page.
If you want the quiz to be timed (ie: you have 20 minutes to answer all the questions), you can enable and set a time limit.
The recommended setting here is "open attempts are submitted automatically". This will ensure even if a student did not finish the quiz, their progress will be submitted to you when the quiz is set to close.
Grade
This setting controls the color of "pass or fail". If their score is "passing" it will turn green. If the score is "failing" it will turn red.
This controls the number of attempts allowed. You have the option of setting a specific number up to 10 or giving an unlimited number of attempts.
The default setting for the number of attempts is unlimited. This should be adjusted to 1 attempt, 2 attempts, etc to limit the number of times you will allow a student to retake the same quiz.
If you want to assign a "quiz" as practice or review, it is best practice to set it to unlimited attempts.
This setting controls how the scores are reported as grades. If there is more than one attempt, there are options to take the highest, average, first, or last score. For most quizzes, taking the highest grade is recommended.
Layout
This will control how the questions show up on a single page during the quiz.
"Every Question" will put one question per page. This works for a shorter quiz. "Never, All Questions on one page" would also work for a shorter quiz (think 3-5 questions).
For longer quizzes, it is recommended that you "chunk" the quiz by only a few questions at a time. You would want to consider if your quiz questions are related or rely information from other questions when making this decision.
For more on accommodations in Moodle Quizzes, click here.
This setting either forces students to answer questions sequentially or allows them to navigate the quiz freely. The default is set to "free".
Optional: When the repaginate box is checked, the quiz will renumber the pages based on your choice for "New Page".
Question Behavior
This setting will cause the answer choices in each question of the quiz to be shuffled. (i.e. Your answer choice A is my answer choice C in the same question.), unless the individual question settings override it.
To learn how to override this setting in a particular setting or to turn on shuffle within a specific question, click here.
What you select for "How questions behave" will also affect the default settings under "Review options". Together they control how students receive feedback during the quiz, after submitting the quiz, and after the quiz has closed. For each option under "how questions behave", there are multiple aspects under "Review Options" that teachers can change/control.
The default setting, which applies to most standard assessments, is "Deferred feedback".
Review Options
When creating individual questions, teachers can add feedback into each question generally and/ or to each answer choice within the individual question.
Choose whether or not you want to shuffle within questions. This means, for example, her answer choice A will be his answer choice C (and so on). You can turn this shuffle off at the question level as needed. This setting applies to the entire quiz.
“Question Behavior” controls how students will be able to interact with questions, whether or not students will see the feedback. (See above.) Therefore, it directly affects their “Review Options”.
For deferred feedback in a standard quiz, under "After the quiz is closed" check 'The Attempt', 'Whether Correct', and 'Points'. For a detailed explanation of all review options, see the graphic below.
All of the Quiz Review Options explained:
Appearance
Optional: The defaults under this block work for almost all quiz scenarios. Typically teachers will not have to make a change in this section unless they have a specific preference.
Whole number grades are entered into the gradebook, so setting the "decimal places in grades" to 0 automatically rounds the grade to the nearest whole number.
Safe Exam Browser
This feature is not functional.
Instead, use the Moodle for NISD app on student Chromebooks to meet this same need. (Optional)
Benefits include the quiz opening in a restricted window that does not have the option to open a new tab to access course materials, a search engine, or switch applications.
Extra Restrictions on Attempts
Optional: Teachers may choose to require a password for their quiz. This can be helpful when you want to reopen a quiz for only a few students or protect quiz access between classes.
Optional: Teachers may choose to enforce a delay between their 1st and 2nd attempts. You can limit this to days, hours, or minutes.
Optional: Turning on "Full-screen pop-up with some JavaScript security" is intended to keep students from being able to open additional browser windows during the quiz.
Overall Feedback
Optional: This gives teachers the opportunity to add feedback based on the overall final score. For instance, if a student scores below a 70, you could invite them to attend tutorials before their next quiz attempt.
Common Module Settings
From this setting, you can hide or show the quiz on the course page. You can also control this using the "hide" or "show" eye icon on your course Moodle page view.
Remember, even if your quiz is set with an open and close time, if it is not "Shown" on your course page, students will not see it.
Leave this setting as the default, "Separate Groups". This is the setting that allows you to see results by class period (which we set up using Moodle Groups). If this is not set to separate groups you will not be able to view the results by class period.
*This will change the setting below, Restrict Access, to force you to restrict access to a group. See below for details.
Restrict Access
Optional: Restricting access to a quiz is a great tool for differentiation. For example, teachers can create a modified version and restrict it to only the students eligible for that version. The most commonly used restrictions are by date, group, and user profile.
Multiple Restrictions
Teachers can add multiple restrictions to a quiz, such as by student last name AND a group. Alternatively, you can add a restriction by student name OR a group. Pay attention to the "And" or "Or" indicator between the groups as this affects access to the quiz.
Showing Restrictions
The eye next to the restriction settings indicates whether or not the details of the restriction will show on your course page. For this reason, it is important to be intentional about 1. how you name your groups and 2. whether or not you show or hide restrictions on your course page.
Activity Completion
Optional: This setting will only show if you have enabled Activity Completion for your entire Moodle Course. It allows you, as the course creator to see when individual activities have been completed by students, including timestamps. It also allows you to create a forced stream of work. See more detailed instructions here.
For instance, with activity completion turned on a teacher can require students to watch a video before taking a quiz, and to earn an 80 or above on a quiz before accessing their project rubric.
Tags & Competencies
Optional: There are no recommended changes to these settings beyond the default.
Tags, similar conceptually to hashtags, allow you identify like content across your course to later search for content with the same tag. Unless you use this setting in your tool overall you can ignore this.
Meanwhile, competencies allow you to identify course objectives for students and show when they have been met. This is useful when using Activity Completion, but is not a commonly used Moodle tool.
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