How to Create a Moodle Quiz: Step-by-Step Guide

In this tutorial, we will show you how to create a quiz in Moodle and how to set it up so users do not cheat and the results are credible. We will also create a small linear sample quiz together to put theory into practice right away. You can download the sample quiz here.

Now, let’s get started.

Step 1 - Open your Course in Moodle

Step 2 - From the course overview, open your class specific folder.

Step 3 - Click “Turn editing on”

When you open class specific folder on Moodle, on the top right corner of the page click on setting gear icon. A drop down menu list will open and from this list select Turn editing on.

Step 4 - Click on “Add activity or resources

Step 5 - Scroll down and you will see the option to Add an activity or resource. Click on it and a window will pop up with list of activity and resources.

Step 6 - Add quiz: From Add an activity or resources popup window, under the list of Activities look for Quiz, select this activity and click Add. You will be redirected to a page for the configuration of this new Quiz.

Step 7 - Set up Quiz: Enter the quiz name and its description. It’s also important to set a number of options so that students do not cheat. You can find details on each option in this Moodle help doc; in this article, we’ll cover the basic settings.

For this tutorial, we will name the quiz “Tutorial 1-Quiz” and description shown in the screenshot below.

• Setting #1: Timing. Protect From Cheating

By default, students have unlimited time to pass the quiz; they can get started today and finish in three days with the highest score by copying the answers from the textbook. To obtain credible results, we will set an assessment period and time limit.

You can set the start date and time of the quiz by checking Enable in Open the quiz option. The quiz will automatically open on the set date and time, for example in the screenshot below the test will open on 2 April 2020 at 10 am, until that students will only see the description of the quiz.

Likewise, you can set the end date and time of the quiz by checking Enable in Close the quiz option. The quiz will automatically close at the set time and date, for example in the screenshot below the test will close on 3 April 2020 at 10 am. If a student forgets to take the quiz in time then, he or she will automatically fail the quiz.

Next, we will set the quiz Time limit. Usually, 30 minutes to an hour is enough, but it depends on the complexity of the assessment. In some cases, students may need 3 or 4 hours. When students start answering questions, they see a countdown timer that shows how much time is left, and when the time expires, the quiz is automatically closed. For example, we will set a time limit for 30 minutes for this sample quiz.

The rest of the options in this section can be left as they are by default.

• Setting #2: Grade. Set a Passing Grade

With the default settings, your students have an unlimited number of attempts to answer the same question. As a result, a quiz can be passed by a random choice method: they make a mistake and immediately change the answer, and so on until they pass. If you prefer students not to play guessing games, limit the number of attempts, and set a passing score.

Grade to pass – Set a minimal passing grade. This is the minimum score required to pass a quiz. The pass grades are highlighted in green, and fail grades in red. As there are only two questions in this sample quiz, let’s set one (1) point as the passing grade.

Attempts allowed – Limit the number of attempts to avoid guessing games. If this is a final exam, you can give just one attempt, and perhaps three for a pop quiz.

• Setting #3: Layout. Build a Structure

You can group questions into blocks and place each question on a new page, or all the questions on one page. If all the questions are on one page, students can see the whole quiz at a glance.

• Setting #4: Question Behavior. Shuffle Answers

For additional anti-cheat protection, choose Yes in the Shuffle within questions so that the parts making up each question will be randomly shuffled each time users take the quiz.

• Setting #5: Overall Feedback. Provide a Final Comment

The overall feedback is a message which users see after completing the quiz. You can show different text depending on the final score: praise high performers and tell failed students the rules of retaking the quiz.

Step 8 - Set Maximum Score: Scroll down and click on Save and Display.

You will be redirected to a new page that shows the quiz you have just set up. Previously, we set the minimum passing grade for the quiz. Now, we need to indicate the highest score. Click Edit quiz.

Enter the maximum grade. Since there are only two questions in this sample quiz, the highest score will be two (2) points. Specify the maximum score. In this case, it’s 2 points

Step 9 - Add Quiz Questions: In Moodle, there are 15 types of questions you can add. We will create two of the most popular question types, True/False and Multiple Choice, so you can master the principles of making quizzes in Moodle and easily create other types of tasks on your own. Click on Add > a new question and Choose a question type to add window will popup.

• True/False Question

From Choose a question type to add popup window, under the list of Questions look for True/False, select this question type and click Add. You will be redirected to a page to set up True/False questions.

In the Adding a True/False question page, fill in a question name and question text (download sample quiz). You can also add images, video, audio, or a link to additional material on the topic of the question.

Step 10 - set the Correct answer. In our sample, the statement is true, so choose True in the drop down list. You can also add feedback for the response so that a learner can better understand the topic and improve it next time.

Step 11 - Click Save changes to publish the question; it will look like this:

• Multiple Choice Question

From Choose a question type to add popup window, under the list of Questions look for Multiple Choice, select this question type and click Add. You will be redirected to a page to set up True/False questions.

In the Adding a Multiple choice question page, fill in a question name and question text (download sample quiz). You can also add images, video, audio, or a link to additional material on the topic of the question.

In multiple choice questions, there can be more than one correct answers, but there is only one correct response in our sample question. Let’s choose this option – One answer only,  in the question settings. You can also set to shuffle choice for better control on cheating answers.

Now, add all the choices for the queston and you need to select the correct answer and give it a 100% grade. The rest of the responses are false, so we do not give points for choosing them and select None.

The rest of the options can be left at default. Click on Save changes. The published task looks like this:

You can also apply some additional display options such as:

• Whether correct: show or don’t show students if the response was correct

• Marks: show or don’t show students how much they score

• General feedback: show students a certain message upon completing the quiz

To find these options, click Preview question (a magnifying glass with a plus sign next to each question), scroll down and set them up in a pop-up window.

The quiz is now ready. All you need to do now is to assign it to students and keep track of their results from the Grades tab.

Open a Question Bank:

So far, we have been discussing creating a quiz from scratch. If you are going to conduct regular assessments, it is convenient to use a question bank.

A question bank in Moodle is an overall stock of all the questions and tasks you have ever created on the platform. This feature saves time since there’s no need to create everything from scratch: if you need to prepare a test for a new course, you can simply copy ready-made tasks from the bank.

The two questions we created as a sample are already in the bank; to find them.

Step 1 - go to the course page and on the top right corner of the page click on setting gear icon. A drop down menu list will open and from this list select More.

Step 2 - Click Question bank in the new window. On this page, you can create new questions and find the ones you’ve already used. Next time you can try creating questions right on this page and build a new quiz with them.

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