Quiz: Creating New Questions in a Quiz
- Distance Learning (LMS) (Unlicensed)
This guide will take you through the steps of creating new questions directly in your Moodle quiz. It will take you through all the general settings for several question types as well as some general settings for the quiz. Quizzes allow for quick feedback to students as they are graded automatically by Moodle (with the exception of Essay type questions which need to be manually graded).
Adding new Questions to a Quiz
Visit the UNIC Moodle site (https://courses.unic.ac.cy/) and log in to your account. Access the course and the specific Quiz you want to add questions to.
Once opened, click the gear icon on the upper-right and select Edit quiz. This will take you to the page to allow you to add questions.
On the right of the page click the Add button. This will provide you with 3 options:
a new question: create a new question directly in the quiz
from question bank: add a specific question or questions form the course question bank
a random question: add a random question or questions form the course question bank
Click a new question from the Add menu. You will be presented with the Choose a question type to add dialogue. This lists all the possible question types you can add to your quiz. A single quiz can contain as many questions of each type as you like. Select the type of question you want to add to the quiz then click Add. This will take you to the question editor.
Question Common Settings
Category
The Category setting refers to where the particular question will be saved in the course. Once selected for the first question in the quiz, it will remain the same for the remaining questions.
RECOMMENDED: Select either of the first two categories available:
Quiz: This question will be saved in the quiz. The question can only be used in this quiz.
Course: This question will be saved in the course. The question can be used in this quiz as well as any other quiz in this course.
Question name
The Question name can be used as the question numbering, i.e. Question 1, 2, 3, etc.
RECOMMENDED: Proper naming can make it easier for you to find and edit questions in the future if needed, especially if the wrong category setting above was selected. It is recommended to use the following formatting to name questions.
Question 1 for quiz 1 should be called: 1.01
Question 12 for quiz 3 should be called: 3.12
i.e. Quiz#.Question# with question numbers less than 10 to be preceded with a 0.
Question text
The Question text is essentially the question that you are asking the student. Feel free to make full use of the text editor to enhance your question with text formatting or other multimedia (images, video, audio).
Default mark
The Default mark is the maximum grade that the student can receive if they answer the question correctly. This is set to 1 point by default, but feel free to change it here. If you do not change it here, you can manually change it later once the question is added to the quiz.
The settings for the most common question types are described below.
Question Types
Description
While this is not actually a question, it can be used to provide additional information to the student for the quiz, e.g. additional information to be used to answer the next set of questions. All the information can be added to the Question text field.
True/False
One of the most popular question types use. It is also the easiest and fastest to add to a quiz.
After entering the question in the Question text field make sure to set whether the answer is True or False using the Correct answer field.
Moodle will default all new True/False questions to False.
Multiple choice
This is the most commonly used question type in Moodle and has a number of settings to be aware of.
One or multiple answers?: With this you can set if your question will have one or many correct answers.
Shuffle the choices?: If enabled the options (A, B, C, D, etc.) will be displayed in a random order for each student.
If the ordering of the options in the question is intentional (e.g. if you have an option like None/All of the above) then this setting should be disabled.
Number the choices?: How do you want your options to be displayed to students.
Choice X: This represents one option provided to the student. Enter the text for the option in the field provided. If shuffling is enabled then the order of the options will random for each student.
RECOMMENDED: Do not include any numbering (A, B, C, D, etc.) in the text area as this will be automatically inserted by Moodle according to the Number the choices? setting above.
Grade: If it is not the correct answer then leave this set to None. But depending on what it selected for the One or multiple answers? setting:
If this is the only correct option then change the Grade to 100%.
If this is one of the possible correct answers then set the percentage accordingly.
2 correct answers: Grade is 50% per correct option
3 correct answers: Grade is 33.3% per correct option, etc.
OPTIONAL: If you have multiple correct answers, some answers can hold more weight than others, provided that the total Grade for the question adds up to 100%.
If you have multiple correct answers, a student can select all the provided options and receive full points for the question. To counter this, you can implement negative grading at your discretion for the incorrect options so that if they do select all the provided answers they will not receive the full points.
Feedback: (Optional) If included, if the student selects this specific option to answer the question then the feedback you have included here will be displayed to them once they submit their answers for grading.
Short answer
This question type is best used when you expect the student to answer with 1-5 words. It is graded by comparing their answer against various model answers that you provide.
OPTIONAL: You can include several underscores (_________________) within the Question text to use this question type as a fill in the blank, with only one blank allowed.
Do not use use this question type if you want your students to provide a sentence or a paragraph. Instead, consider using the Essay type question.
Case sensitivity: If set to Yes then the students' answer will be case sensitive and will be marked as incorrect is if it not identical to the model answer.
RECOMMENDED: To be lenient towards the student keep the default No value, unless the answer must match the case.
You must provide at least one possible answer. '*' can be used as a wildcard to match any characters. The first matching answer will be used to determine the score and feedback.
Answer X: This represents one model answer that the student must input. Enter the text for the option in the field provided.
Grade: If this is the correct answer then then change the Grade to 100%.
OPTIONAL: You can include multiple possible answers with varying levels of correctness. So that if a student enters one of those instead they can secure a partial grade.
Avoid using punctuation in your model answers unless completely necessary. If a student fails to include the same punctuation then the answer will be marked as incorrect.
Feedback: (Optional) If included, if the student inputs this text to answer the question then the feedback you have included here will be displayed to them once they submit their answers for grading.
Essay
Allows a student to submit online text and/or upload a file to respond to the question. This answer must then be graded manually.
Essay type questions are not checked through Turnitin. If you require plagiarism checking consider using an Assignment activity instead.
Response format: How do you want your students to respond to the question?
Enter text only → HTML Editor
Enter text OR upload a file → HTML editor with file picker
Upload file only → No online text
Depending on your selection above additional settings will become available:
HTML Editor OR HTML editor with file picker
Require text: Require that the student input text or make it optional.
Input box size: How lines long do you want the input box to be. The input box size can be used as an indicator by students. They are always able to write more or less.
HTML editor with file picker OR No online text
Allow attachments: Specify how many attachment you will accept from each student, None, 1, 2, 3, or Unlimited.
Require attachments: This option specifies the minimum number of attachments required for an answer to be considered gradable.
Accepted file types: You can restrict students to only submit specified file types. These can be selected from the list provided, click Choose, or entered in the field provided for anything that is not found on the list. Multiple file types can be accepted per student answer if they are allowed to submit more than one file.
Numerical
This question type provides students with a field to insert a numerical response, possibly with units, that is graded by comparing against various model answers, possibly with tolerances. From the student’s 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.
OPTIONAL: Consider using the General Feedback area when creating Numerical questions to provide students with calculations on how to attain the correct answer.
OPTIONAL: You can include several underscores (_________________) within the Question text to use this question type as a fill in the blank, with only one blank allowed.
Moodle accepts TeX notation to insert mathematical equations. Alternatively, you can use the Equation editor in the Moodle keyboard to insert equations.
Answer X: This represents one value that the student must input. Enter the number for the option in the field provided.
Floating point numbers can be written with a period(.) or comma(.). e.g. 23.4 OR 23,4
OPTIONAL: For values that may be written in multiple formats, you can include each as a possible answer unless you explicitly inform students how to answer.
e.g. Percentages:
Answer 1: 1.85 ( % )
Answer 2: 0.0185
Error: This is the accepted error for this answer. This is the range above or below the answer that Moodle will accept as a match.
This can be used to safeguard students who might include too many decimal places or to counter incorrect rounding. e.g. If the correct answer is 5.9, you can include an error of 0.05 to accept any answers between 5.85 and 5.95.
Grade: If this is the correct answer then then change the Grade to 100%.
OPTIONAL: You can include multiple possible answers with varying levels of correctness. So that if a student enters one of those instead they can secure a partial grade.
e.g.
Answer 1: 1.85% → 100%
Answer 2: 0.0185 → 85%
Feedback: (Optional) If included, if the student inputs a value within this accepted error of the answer to answer the question then the feedback you have included here will be displayed to them once they submit their answers for grading.
Question Marks & Quiz Maximum Grade
Once all the questions are added to the quiz you can have a full view of what the quiz will look like for the students.
Total of marks
You will notice that to the right of each question there is a number value. This is the maximum grade that the student can receive if they answer the question correctly. It should be the value entered as the Default mark when the question was created.
This value can always be changed by clicking the pencil icon, inputting a new value and then pressing Enter on your keyboard.
The sum of the marks of each question makes up the Total of marks visible at the top-right of the page.
Maximum grade
The Maximum grade can be seen in the top-right of the page. This value may be different form the Total of marks. By default this is set to 10 points. You can change this and click Save.
What the student earns as the Total of marks will be automatically adjusted according to the Maximum grade and posted to the Course Gradebook in Moodle for the lecturer to see.
In the example above, if a student receives 3 points out of 7 for the Total of marks this will be adjusted to 8.57 points out of 20 for the Maximum grade and posted to the Gradebook.