Quiz settings

Creating a new quiz is a two-step process. In the first step you create the quiz activity and set its options which specify the rules for interacting with the quiz. In a second step you will then edit the quiz to add questions to it. This page describes the options you can set for the quiz activity, the page Editing a quiz describes how to set up the questions for the quiz.

Quiz options

There is a large number of options and your administrator should already have chosen the default values for most of them so that you will not have to modify them for the type of quiz that you use most often. The administrator may also have classified some of the settings as 'advanced' which means that they will be hidden from the setup screen by default. This can help to keep the screen simpler. You can turn on the display of these advanced options by clicking on the Show advanced settings button. They will then remain visible until you click on Hide advanced settings.

Name

This is the standard name field that every activity has. The name will be used for the link text on the course page and also on the quiz index screen.

Introduction

Write an introduction for the quiz. Be sure to include any special instructions for taking the quiz like the number of attempts allowed or scoring rules. This introduction will be shown to the student already on the quiz introduction screen that they reach after clicking on the quiz name on the course page. So they can see this description before they click on the "Attempt quiz" link and thus before the quiz timer is started (if used).

Open the quiz

You can specify times when the quiz is accessible for people to make attempts. Before the opening time the quiz will be unavailable to students. They will be able to view the quiz introduction but will not be able to view the questions.

Close the quiz

After the closing time, the students will not be able to start new attempts. Answers that the student submits after the quiz closing date will be saved but they will not be marked.

Even after the quiz has closed students will still be able to see the quiz description and review their attempts. What exactly they will see depends on the settings you choose under Students may review:.

Time limit

By default, quizzes do not have a time limit, which allows students as much time as they need to complete the quiz. If you do specify a time limit, several things are done to try and ensure that quizzes are completed within that time:

1. Javascript support in the browser becomes mandatory - this allows the timer to work correctly.
2. A floating timer window is shown with a countdown
3. When the timer has run out, the quiz is submitted automatically with whatever answers have been filled in so far
4. If a student manages to cheat and spends more than 60 seconds over the allotted time then the quiz is automatically graded zero

Questions per page

For longer quizzes it makes sense to stretch the quiz over several pages by limiting the number of questions per page. When adding questions to the quiz, page breaks will automatically be inserted according to the setting you choose here. However, you will also be able to move page breaks around by hand later on the editing page.

Shuffle questions

If you enable this option, then the order of questions in the quiz will be randomly shuffled each time a student starts a new attempt at the quiz. This is not related to the use of Random Questions, this is only about the displayed order of questions. The intention is to make it a little harder for students to copy from each other.

Shuffle answers

If you enable this option, then the order of answers within each question will be randomly shuffled each time a student attempts this quiz. Of course, this only applies to questions that have multiple answers displayed, such as Multiple Choice or Matching Questions. The intention is simply to make it a little harder for students to copy from each other. This option is not related to the use of Random Questions.

Attempts allowed

Students may be allowed to have multiple attempts at a quiz. This can help make the process of taking the quiz more of an educational activity rather than simply an assessment. If the quiz is randomized then the student will get a new version for each attempt. This is useful for practice purposes.

Each attempt builds on the last

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. If this option is chosen then each attempt by a particular student uses the same questions in the same order, independent of randomization settings. To show a fresh quiz on every attempt, select No for this setting.

Grading method

When multiple attempts are allowed, there are different ways you can use the grades to calculate the student's final grade for the quiz.

• Highest grade - the final grade is the highest (best) grade in any attempt
• Average grade - the final grade is the average (simple mean) grade of all attempts
• First grade - the final grade is the grade earned on the first attempt (other attempts are ignored)
• Last grade - the final grade is the grade earned on the most recent attempt only

Adaptive mode

Adaptive questions allow students to have multiple attempts at the question before moving on to the next question. The adaptive question can adapt itself to the student's answer, for example by giving some hints before asking the student to try again. These kinds of questions are new to Moodle and will be described more on the page Adaptive questions.

If you choose Yes for this option then the student will be allowed multiple responses to a question even within the same attempt at the quiz. So for example if the student's response is marked as incorrect the student will be allowed to try again immediately. However, depending on the Apply penalties setting, a penalty will usually be subtracted from the students score for each wrong response.

In adaptive mode an additional Submit button is shown for each question. If the student presses this button then the response to that particular question is submitted to be scored and the mark achieved is displayed to the student. If the question is an adaptive question then it is displayed in its new state that takes the student's answer into account and will in many cases ask the student for another input. In the simplest adaptive questions this new state may differ only in the feedback text and will prompt the student to try again; in a more sophisticated adaptive question also the question text and even the interaction elements can change.

Apply penalties

If a quiz is run in adaptive mode then a student is allowed to try again after a wrong response. In this case you may want to impose a penalty for each wrong response to be subtracted from the final mark for the question. The amount of penalty is chosen individually for each question when setting up or editing the question.

This setting has no effect unless the quiz is run in adaptive mode.

Decimal points

This option determines how many digits will be shown after the decimal point when the grade is displayed. A setting of 0 for example means that the grades are displayed as integers. This setting is only used for the display of grades, not for the display or marking of answers.

Students may review

This option controls what information students will be shown when they review their past attempts at this quiz at various stages.

Students may review (see) their own Responses, the Scores for their responses, the Feedback from the teacher (if any) or the correct Answers. For each of these items you can choose whether the student should be able to see them immediately after the attempt, later but while the quiz is still open or after the quiz is closed.

Currently, the "Answers" shown to students work differently depending on the question type in a particular quiz. If the question type used is 'matching' then students get to see which of their responses are in fact correct answers. If the question type used is 'short answer' then students see their responses plus all correct answers to all questions.

Show quiz in a "secure" window

The "secure" window tries to provide a little more security for quizzes (making copying and cheating more difficult) by restricting some of the things that students can do with their browsers.

What happens is that:

1. Javascript is made a requirement.
2. The quiz appears in a new fullscreen window.
3. Some mouse actions on the text are prevented.
4. Some keyboard commands are prevented.

NOTE: This security is NOT watertight. Do NOT rely on these protections as your sole strategy. It is impossible to implement complete protection of quizzes in a web environment so please do not rely on this option if you are really worried about students cheating. Other strategies you can try are to create really large databases of questions from which you randomly choose questions, or even better, rethink your overall assessment to put more value on constructive forms of activity such as forum discussions, glossary building, wiki writing, workshops, assignments etc.

Require password

This field is optional.

If you specify a password in here then participants must enter the same password before they are allowed to make an attempt on the quiz. This is useful to give only a selected group of students access to the quiz.

Require network address

This field is optional.

You can restrict access for a quiz to particular subnets on the LAN or Internet by specifying a comma-separated list of partial or full IP address numbers. This is especially useful for a proctored quiz, where you want to be sure that only people in a certain room are able to access the quiz. For example: 192.168. , 231.54.211.0/20, 231.3.56.211

There are three types of numbers you can use (you can not use text based domain names like example.com):

1. Full IP addresses, such as 192.168.10.1 which will match a single computer (or proxy).
2. Partial addresses, such as 192.168 which will match anything starting with those numbers.
3. CIDR notation, such as 231.54.211.0/20 which allows you to specify more detailed subnets.

Spaces are ignored.

Group mode

Here you can choose whether the quiz should be organized by group. This only has an effect on the review screens of the teachers where it determines which groups of students they see.

Visible to students

Determines whether the quiz will be visible to students. If you are still in the process of setting up the quiz then it is highly advisable to leave this set to 'Hide'. Otherwise students might view or even attempt the quiz before it is tested and ready. This setting is common to all activities and can also be toggled by clicking on the eye icon behind the activity's name on the course page.