Choice settings

From MoodleDocs

Template:Choices

Select choice

Log in as the course teacher and turn on editing. Then select Choice from the drop down Add an activity menu.

File:Choice 1.gif
choose choice from the menu


Choice name

A short name of the choice (e.g. "Favourite colour"). This will be displayed on the course's homepage.

Choice text

Type the description of the choice activity here. It should contain the question that you want your students to answer. An example of the choice text could be "What is your favourite colour?"

File:Choice 3.gif
what do you want the students to tell you?


Choice 1 ~ Choice 10

Here is where you specify the options that participants have to choose from. In our example, the numbered options could be e.g. "blue", "green", "red", "yellow", etc.

You can fill in any number of these: if you leave some of the options blank, they will not be displayed.

Limit the number of responses allowed

This option allows you to limit the number of participants who can select each particular option.

Once Limits have been enabled, each option can be assigned a limit. When the limit is reached then no-one else can select that option. A limit of zero (0) means that no-one can select that option.

If Limits are disabled then any number of participants can select any of the options.

Restrict answering to this time period

This setting allows you to define a time window within which participants are allowed to make a choice.

To set an open-ended close date just set the time very far in the future.

If you don't need this at all then uncheck the box.

Display Mode

This setting allows you to choose how the choices will be displayed to the participants: horizontally, or vertically.

Hint: In most cases, if there are only a few choices with little text, they may be positioned horizontally. However, if there are more than 5-6 choices or if the text of the choices is longer than 2-3 words, it should be better to display them vertically.

Publish results

This setting determines whether (and when) the students will be able to view the results of the choice activity. They may:

  • never see the results of the choice
  • see the results only after they have given the answer themselves
  • see the results only after the closing date of the choice
  • always see the results

Privacy of results

If the choice results are shown to students, this setting determines whether the results will be anonymous.

Allow choice to be updated

If this is set to "Yes", students can change their mind after they have voted. If it's set to "No", students cannot change their choice.

Show column for unanswered

If set to "Yes", this will display a column showing how many participants have not answered the choice activity yet. If set to "No", the results will only include the participants who have already voted.

Group mode

The group mode can be one of three levels:

  • No groups

There are no sub groups, everyone is part of one big community

  • Separate groups

Each group can only see their own group, others are invisible

  • Visible groups

Each group works in their own group, but can also see other groups


The group mode can be defined at two levels:

  • Course level

The group mode defined at the course level is the default mode for all activities defined within that course

  • Activity level

Each activity that supports groups can also define its own grouping mode. If the course is set to "force group mode" then the setting for each activity is ignored.

Visible to students

You can hide the activity from students by selecting "Hide" here. It is useful if you wouldn't like to make the activity available immediately.