Note: This documentation is for Moodle 2.7. For up-to-date documentation see Matching question type.

Matching question type

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Revision as of 09:38, 14 September 2007 by Steve Bond (talk | contribs) (→‎Question set-up: Updated to more closely match the form)



Matching questions consist of a list of names or statements which must be correctly matched against another list of names or statements. For example "Match the Capital with the Country" with the two lists "Canada, Italy, Japan" and "Ottawa, Rome, Tokyo". There is one correct answer. Each match is equally weighted to contribute towards the grade for the total question.

Question set-up

  1. Select the question category
  2. Give the question a descriptive name - this allows you to identify it in the question bank.
  3. Enter a question stem in the 'question text' field to tell the students what they are matching.
  4. Select an image to display if you want to add a picture to the question. For the student, it appear immediately after the question text and before the choices.
  5. Set the 'default question grade' (i.e. the maximum number of marks for this question).
  6. Set the 'Penalty factor'. If used in a quiz allowing multiple attempts at a question (adaptive mode), the student will lose this proportion of the maximum grade upon each successive attempt.
  7. Moodle 1.8: If you wish, add general feedback. This is text that appears to the student after he/she has answered the question.
  8. Check the 'shuffle' box if you want the answers in the drop-down menus to be shuffled. Note that the questions are not shuffled and always appear in the same order.
  9. For the first matching item, enter the question and a matching answer.
  10. Fill in at least three questions and answers. You can enter as many as 10 items (or more - see below). You can provide extra wrong answers by giving an answer with a blank question.
  11. Click Save changes to add the question to the category.

Repeated entries

It is possible to have repeated entries in one of the lists but care should be taken to make the repeats identical. For example "Identify the type of these creatures" with the lists "Ant, Cow, Dog, Sparrow" and "Insect, Mammal, Mammal, Bird".

Ordered questions

Unlike Multiple choice questions, where the choices are shown in a random order, the first list of items in a matching question is not shuffled but shown in the same order as entered. This allows for "Ordered" questions to be constructed.

Consider the question "Put the following into the order they were born, the earliest first" with the lists "1., 2., 3., 4." and "Longfellow, Lawrence, Lowell, Larkin". The second list is shuffled before being used in the question, of course.

Version differences

  • In Moodle 1.5, when creating this type of question the items for the first list go into the Answer boxes and items for the second list go into the Response boxes. Once created a more sensible labelling scheme is shown. When the student successfully matches the items the jump on the first answer is used. An unsuccessful answer jumps to the page on the second answer. The question does not support custom responses, the student is told how many matches are correct or if all the matches are correct.
  • In Moodle 1.6, when the student successfully matches the items, the Correct answer jump is used. An unsuccessful answer jumps to Wrong answer jump. The question supports only 2 response (= feedback) messages: the Correct response message is displayed if all matches are correct, and the Wrong response message otherwise.

Template:Moodle 1.7

  • From Moodle 1.7 onwards, there can be more answers than questions, to make it harder for the student if they do not know the right answer. Before, there could only be as many answers as questions. The extra answers are included by adding question-answer pairs where the question field is left blank.

Tips and tricks

  • Matching questions look better on screen if you put the longer piece of text in the question and not the match. For example, when vocabulary matching put the single word in the match and the definition sentence in the question. Otherwise the drop down for long questions will be awkward to use and difficult to read.
  • Matching questions in a Lesson module are slightly different than in a Quiz module when the teacher is in edit mode. For example, there are scoring differences and a quiz does not use jumps.

See also