Aiken format

The Aiken format is a very simple way of creating multiple choice questions using a clear human-readable format in a text file. (The GIFT format has many more options and perhaps is less prone to errors, but doesn't look as straight-forward as AIKEN. ) The question must be all on one line. Each answer must start with a single uppercase letter, followed by a period '.' or a bracket ')', then a space. The answer line must immediately follow, starting with "ANSWER: " (NOTE the space after the colon) and then giving the appropriate letter.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• You have to save the file in a text format. Don't save it as a Word document or anything like that.
• Non-ASCII characters like 'quotes' can cause import errors. To avoid this always save your text file in UTF-8 format (most text editors, even Word, will ask you).
• The answer letters (A,B,C etc.) and the word "ANSWER" must be capitalised as shown below, otherwise the import will fail.

Here is an example of the format:

What is the correct answer to this question?
A. Is it this one?
B. Maybe this answer?
C. Possibly this one?
D. Must be this one!
ANSWER: D

Which LMS has the most quiz import formats?
A) Moodle
B) ATutor
C) Claroline
D) Blackboard
E) WebCT
F) Ilias
ANSWER: A

Both these examples imported into Moodle gave questions looking like:

Which LMS has the most quiz import formats? Choose one answer.

• a. Blackboard
• b. WebCT
• c. ATutor
• d. Moodle
• e. Claroline
• f. Ilias

Importing

When importing there are many options, but these do not influence Aiken Format import:

• Get category from file [_]
• Get context from file [_]
• Match grades [Error if grade not listed/Nearest grade if not listed]
• Stop on error [Yes/No]

Exporting

Moodle does not have an Aiken format export. See MDL-21904. Jean-Michel Vedrine committed on 9 Oct 2014 some code in GitHub.

Hints and Tips

• Use a text editor, like PSPad, (Windows "notepad" may not save with right encoding) to write the file with questions and save as a TXT file in UTF-8 format. Use only simple ' not slant ones ´ ` ! Avoid other exotic characters like … HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS (http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2026/index.htm, three dots as a single character).

• Moodle XML Converter - more extensive version of AIKEN format. Supports almost all Moodle questions types - multichoice, shortanswer, cloze, essay, order, matching, numeric, truefalse

See also

• Import questions
• GIFT