Topic outline

  • Step 1: Create a New Course

    One does not simply open Moodle and create a quiz. First, you need to create a course and enter the course details; only after that will you be able to add quizzes.

    To create a new course, go to Site Administration → Courses → Add a New Course. 

    Enter a full and a short name for the course, then go to the Course Format tab below and choose “1” in the Number of sections line.

    To add a quiz in Moodle, you have to create a new course first

    Choose the necessary number of sections. For a sample course, one is enough

    The Moodle course structure is similar to that of a book. It consists of chapters, or sections, that you fill with theory and drills. The number of sections is usually set at the beginning. 

    There are also a number of other settings below, such as course start and end date and course appearance — we’ll get back to them later. For now, scroll down the page and click Save and Display.

    The course is ready; now you need to provide yourself with admin access rights so that the course will appear in your profile. Click Enrol users, enter your name in the pop-up window, and choose Manager from the dropdown menu. Then click Enrol users. 

    Assign yourself a manager role

    If you don’t assign yourself a manager role, you’ll have to spend some time to find this course in the admin panel


  • Step 2: Add and Set Up a Quiz

    Now you can add a quiz to Moodle. Click Proceed to course content → Add an activity or resource. The Moodle toolbar will appear on the screen. Choose Quiz in the Activities section → Add.

    Enter the quiz name and its description. It’s also important to set a number of options so that your learners don’t cheat. You can find details on each option in this Moodle help doc; in this article, we’ll cover the basic settings.

    Setting #1: Timing. Protect From Cheating

    By default, learners 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’ll set an assessment period and time limit.

    Assessment period

    Let’s make the test automatically open on September 17 at 11:00. Until that time, learners will see only the exam description in their account. 

    The end date is September 18 at 12:00; at this time the quiz will be closed. If a user forgets to take the test in time, he or she will automatically fail.

    Define assessment period in the Timing settings

    Set the start and the end dates

    Time limit

    Usually, 30 minutes to an hour is enough, but it depends on the complexity of the assessment. In some cases, learners may need 3 or 4 hours.

    When the learners start answering questions, they see a countdown timer that shows how much time is left. When the time expires, the quiz is automatically closed.

    Set a time limit for taking a quiz in Moodle

    Set a time limit for taking a 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 employees 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 learners not to play guessing games, limit the number of attempts and set a passing score.

    Number of attempts

    If this is a final exam, you can give just one attempt, and perhaps three for a pop quiz.

    Specify how many attempts are allowed

    Limit the number of attempts to avoid guessing games

    Passing grade

    This is the minimum score required to pass a quiz. The pass grades are highlighted in green, and fail grades in red. 

    Define a minimal passing grade

    Set a minimal passing grade

    As there are only two questions in our sample quiz, let’s set one point as the passing grade.

    Setting #3: Layout. Build a Structure

    You can group questions into blocks and place each question on a single page, or all the questions on one page.

    Place each question on a new page or all questions on one

    If all the questions are on one page, learners 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 line so that the parts making up each question will be randomly shuffled each time users take the quiz.

    Shuffle within questions

    Enable shuffle within questions

    Setting #5: Overall Feedback. Provide a Final Comment

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

    Provide learners with a customized feedback message

    Overall feedback is a message your learners see after completing the quiz


    For now, we’re done with the main settings. Click Save and Display. The system will forward you to a new page:

    A new Moodle course is ready

    You’ll see this page when you create a sample course

    Previously, we set the minimum passing grade for the quiz. Now, we need to indicate the highest score. Click Edit quiz and enter the mark in a field that appears after clicking. Since there are only two questions in our sample test, the highest score will be two points.

    Editing a sample quiz in Moodle

    Specify the maximum score. In this case it’s 2 points


  • Step 3: Create Tasks for Assessment

     Step 3: Create Tasks for Assessment

    In Moodl, there are 15 types of questions.

    Types of question in Moodle Cloud

    The Moodle built-in quiz editor

    We’ll 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.

    True/False Question

    To add a True/False question, click Add → a new question → True/False → Add.

    Add a new question

    In the new window, fill in a question name and question text (here’s the source file for the sample quiz). You can also add images, video, audio, or a link to additional material on the topic of the question.

    Adding a True/False question in Moodle

    You can add images, video, audio, or a link to additional material

    Then set the correct answer. In our sample, the statement is true, so choose True in the dropdown list.

    Set the correct answer in a True/False question in Moodle

    Choose the correct answer

    By default, learners get one point for each correct answer, but you can increase the reward. You can also add feedback for the response so that a learner can better understand the topic and improve next time.

    Click Save changes to publish the task; it will look like this:

    A published True/False question in Moodle

    This is what a published True/False question looks like

    Multiple Choice Question

    To add a multiple choice question, click Add → a new question → Multiple choice → Add. Fill in the question name and question text by copying it from the template.

    In multiple choice questions, there can be more than one correct answer, but there’s only one correct response in our sample question. Let’s choose this option in the question settings.

    Set how many answers are allowed in a Multiple Choice question in Moodle

    Choose how many answers are allowed

    Now, you need to select the correct answer and give it a 100% grade. The rest of the responses are false, so we don’t give points for choosing them.

    Define a grade for the correct answer

    Define a grade for the correct answer

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

    A published Multiple Choice question in Moodle

    This is what a published Multiple choice question looks like

    You can also apply some additional display options such as:

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

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

    • General feedback: show learners 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) and set them up in a pop-up window.

    Moodle quiz display options

    The list of additional settings

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


  • Step 4: Open a Question Bank

    So far, we’ve been discussing creating a quiz from scratch. If you’re going to conduct regular assessments, it’s convenient to use a question bank.

    A question bank in Moodle is an overall stock of all the questions and tasks you’ve 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, go to the course page in your account.

    Moodle question bank

    To open a question bank, click the gear icon and select More

    Choose More from the dropdown menu and click Question bank in the new window. On this page, you can create new tasks and find the ones you’ve already used.

    Working with a question bank in Moodle

    A question bank keeps all the questions you’ve ever created with Moodle

    Next time you can try creating questions right on this page and build a new quiz with them. 


  • Topic 5

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