Adding a math quiz
Once we’ve added a question or two to the question bank, we can add a quiz to our course. I want a simple quiz where each student is allowed one attempt with no help along the way. Let’s see how to achieve this now:
- Return to your course’s front page, choose a topic, click on the Add an activity drop-down menu, and select Quiz from the list.
- Give the quiz a name (this will appear on the course’s front page) and, if you wish, you can specify a short introduction:
- Scroll down to the Attempts box. Set Attempts allowed to 1 and Adaptive mode to No:
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click the Save and display button. A split screen page is displayed with the course question bank on the right and the (currently empty) quiz on the left:
- To add questions from the question bank to the quiz, simply select them and click on the Add to quiz button:
- The questions are now added to the quiz. You’ll now see them listed on the left-hand side of the page:
- To preview the quiz, click on the Preview tab at the top of the page:
- That’s it! The quiz is now configured.
Recall that I set Adaptive mode to No. Adaptive mode adds a Submit button to each question, allowing students (with some suitable feedback from me) to learn from their mistakes as they work through the quiz. Try experimenting with this setting. See how your students behave with the Submit button. For example, don’t let them think that they can guess a multiple choice answer until they eventually get it right. Remind them that they’ll be penalized for each wrong answer.
Encouraging students as they attempt the quiz
You’ve seen that there are a lot of settings I’ve simply ignored as I’ve configured this quiz. Return to your course’s front page, and click on Questions from the course administration block to open the course Question bank. Click on the edit icon next to the numerical question we configured earlier in this article. (Have you spotted that you can tell what type of question it is from the icon on the far-right? Hover the mouse pointer over the icon.):
Remember how I mentioned that I’d started filling out feedback? I’m going to finish doing that now in this question by giving some General feedback:
When you are happy with your feedback, remember to scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the Save changes button. Now, return to your course’s front page, turn editing on, and click on the update icon next to the quiz we added in the previous section:
On the quiz configuration page, scroll down to the Attempts section and set Adaptive mode to Yes:
Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click on the Save changes button.
Preview the quiz now, and notice that under each question there is a Submit button. Experiment with entering both correct and incorrect responses. Click on the Submit button, and see how Moodle reacts by giving the student our feedback. Remember: if you are planning to use Adaptive mode, then it’s worth reminding your students that they will be penalized if they get an answer wrong!
Reporting quiz results
What’s great about a Moodle quiz is the detailed reporting Moodle provides for us. Here is an example of the report page for my quiz once a student has attempted it. (In fact, this is a colleague of mine helping me to check that my feedback is understandable!):
Such reporting not only allows us to see what our students have been up to, but I also find it an invaluable tool for determining the success of my teaching.
Once someone has attempted your quiz, you can no longer modify it (add or remove questions). You will need to delete the attempts to unlock the quiz.
