Moodle 1.9 Testing and Assessment

This section only has two separate fields, Name and Introduction. They are both simply explained, but very important for both students and teachers.

The first thing that needs to be done is to make sure that you have all the editing and administrative access required to create and edit things in the course you are using. You should see a Turn editing on or Turn editing off button in the upper right-hand side corner, similar to the next image, if you have editing rights in the course:

Once you have confirmed that you are able to add activities to the course, click on the Turn editing on button.

Once the toggle is changed to Turn editing on, you will see two drop-down menus, one called Add a resource and one named Add an activity in each Week or Topic section of the course. The Quiz module is found under the Add an activity drop-down menu as seen in the next screenshot:

Once you have opened the Quiz module, you should see something like the following screenshot. I showed you a full page shot earlier, but you'll only see this part of the screen when you open the module.

This is where we begin to add information and create the test. The first thing you see is the General section. Here, we will enter the name of the test and a brief introduction to the quiz. We will call the test My First Quiz. Under Introduction, we will write what the quiz is about:

For the time being, we are not going to make any changes to the Timing, Display, or anything else. Our goal here is to show you how to set up the most basic test using the Quiz module. After entering the Introduction, scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will see three buttons: Save and return to course, Save and display, and Cancel. Click on the Save and display button.

You always have the option of going back in the test and making changes, which is done with the Update this Quiz button located in the upper right-hand side corner of the Quiz Edit tab, as you will see in the next image. So, if you decide that you want to change the name of the test, the test date, or other settings later, you can. For example, I've decided I don't like the name of the quiz I made, so I am going to change the name of My First Quiz to Testing with Moodle.

Now that we have edited the name of the test, written a brief introduction, and clicked on Save and display, we have been taken to the Editing Quiz page. This page shows the Question bank on the right-hand side, where all the questions available are stored and where we can create new ones. On the left-hand side, we see the questions that are currently part of the test.

Note the Update this Quiz button on right-hand side of the screen. Clicking on it will bring you back to the Updating Quiz page where you can make changes to the global Quiz settings.

As you can see, there are several tabs, as shown in the previous screenshot: Info, Results, Preview, and Edit. Each of the tabs has a variety of options, which can help in many ways.

Expanding the Create New Question drop-down will show the list of all the question types available. I'm going to briefly describe each of them for you, but for the first quiz, we will be using True/False, which is highlighted in the next screenshot:

These item types are particularly valuable to math and science teachers. They allow the teacher to input questions that need to be solved using a calculation. The teacher writes a formula in Moodle, adds a set of specific variables, and Moodle can draw on the variables to produce questions. This is a great tool, but it does have its limits. There are only certain types of calculations it is able to handle: many single-variable and a few multi-variable ones. This particular item type is a bit more complicated than some, because a formula needs to be input, but once you get the hang of formulating these types of questions, the process is fairly easy.

These item types are not really questions, and they have no response options or grade component. They allow the instructor to add a piece of text, image, audio, or video related to questions that follow it in the test. Many people use Description questions for reading comprehension, graph or chart interpretation, and art-related questions.

This is the essay writing option included in Quiz, and mainly is used for open-ended responses. The student is required to read a prompt and write a response. The response can be written either in the test itself or in a separate word-processor and copy and pasted in, depending on your needs. This type of question is not graded by Moodle and requires you to read it and assign an appropriate mark based on whatever criteria you are using. You are also able to give individual feedback after reading the essay.

This option is the traditional matching item type. Students are given a list of items they need to match with another set. The questions and answers are placed in a mixed order. The answers are given in drop-down menus on the right-hand side of the screen. The results are marked by Moodle. If some answers are correct and some are wrong, Moodle will give a partial result based on the number of correct and incorrect matches.

This option is a fun item to work with. Using this item type, you can create a variety of fill-in-the-blank type questions and variations on multiple-choice questions. Cloze can handle numeric and written responses, and even allows hyperlinks to function inside of it. Embedded Answers (Cloze) however, isn't the easiest of the item types to use. It requires very simple coding to make the items look the way you want. The coding, which we will be demonstrating later, is fairly simple and limited to a few specific commands. Take it from me, a guy with only the most basic skills in this area, it's a breeze to learn. These questions are scored automatically by Moodle based on the parameters you set, so we need to be careful here and make sure we haven't made any mistakes.

This option is one of the most commonly used of the Quiz item types. It is easy to create quizzes with, allows for many different types of questions from text to image-based, and is familiar and easy to use. Questions can be made with single correct responses or multiple ones, and you can create any number of possible responses for each question. Responses can be shuffled, points can be awarded for multiple possible answers, penalties included for incorrect responses, and feedback given for individual items.

This is a fill-in-the-blank type of item. You create a question and the student must type in the correct answer. This item type can be a good tool for a variety of Test. Vocabulary and spelling are commonly tested using this item type, however there are multiple applications. You can include case sensitivity and what Moodle terms 'wildcards', search terms, which allow you to accept a variety of responses that include one of the set 'wildcard' phrases. For example, if students in an English language program were required to answer a question with the word 'color', you might add a wildcard with 'colour', since both spellings are considered correct.

These questions are similar to questions of the 'short answer' type in that the student is required to type in a response The only difference is that with the Numerical item type, the answer needs to be a number. You may set a correct answer as an exact-only response, or you may allow anything that falls within a given set of numbers to be accepted. Again, like in Short Answer, the answer you expect might be 4.33, but you could make 4.3 or 4.35 acceptable answers, as well.

This item type looks just like Matching items to students, the difference is where the items are taken from. These items randomly take questions from the pool of Short Answer questions available in the category and mix up the answers to provide a matching-type question. This is a randomly generated test; therefore, students taking the test at the same time will not necessarily have the same questions. In addition, this type of item can be used as a test several times and, assuming the Question bank is large enough, students will be presented with a different test each time. This item type is also a way for you to have students review past material in no specific order or emphasis on the topic.

This is a simplified Multiple Choice item. Students are given a statement, question, reading, or some other prompt and asked to respond with either True or False. These tests have the advantage of being simple and fast to make, as well as helping with review situations. The drawback being, students have a high chance of guessing the correct answer without really knowing it.

These are all the item types Moodle has available in the Quiz module. There are also a few other question types available from third parties but they are not part of the core system.

Now, I'd like to continue showing you how to create a simple quiz using questions of the True/False type.

The True/False item creation screen is shown in the next screenshot:

Each question type will contain several decisions for you to make. True/False is the simplest and has the fewest number of options, which is one of the reasons we are starting with it.

This drop-down menu tells us where the questions will be saved. When making tests in multiple courses, it is important to know where the questions can be found. Also, you may want to use some of these questions on a different test, so knowing the location of specific questions can be important. If you want to change the category the question is in, you can do so at a later time.

Simply put, this option is where you write the name of the question. The name can be of any length, although, only the first 256 characters are stored in the database.

This option is where you enter the text of your question. You may include images and links, as well. You can also adjust the font size and style. Remember, this text is what the students taking the test will see, so make sure it is of good quality and an appropriate font and size for them.

This area is preset in the Quiz. You do have the option to change it, depending on how you are entering text and the browser you use. Moodle recommends that you leave the setting as it is. Beginning to intermediate users should ignore this setting, because, whichever setting it is on will work for what you are doing.

If you have added any images to your course, you will be able to see which one will be displayed in the question. You can see in my course that I have yet to upload any images, so the screen states that'No images have been uploaded to your course yet'.

This option is the number of points that will be deducted for each incorrect answer. However, the 'penalty factor' only applies when the question is used in a quiz using adaptive mode, that is, where the student is allowed multiple attempts at a question even within the same attempt at the quiz. If the penalty factor is more than zero, then the student will lose that proportion of the maximum grade for each successive attempt. For example, if the default question grade is 10, and the penalty factor is 0.2, then each successive attempt after the first one will incur a penalty of 0.2 x 10 = 2 points.

Here is where the teacher can give some advice, background, or anything else related to the question asked. This option is often used to help the student understand what was being asked, to give some additional information, or some background. The student will not see the feedback until after the question has been answered. This feedback is shown to all students, regardless of their response. If this option is left empty, there will be no general teacher feedback.

Here is where the correct answer is selected from the drop-down menu. Since we are using True/False, you can choose either True or False. Clicking on your choice will display the correct response in the drop-down window.

Here you can give specific feedback to students who answered 'True'. If the answer is correct, it could be praise. If the answer is incorrect, it could be an explanation as to why it is incorrect. This option can be a very useful tool for teachers to give specific information to students regarding important course information. This option does not need to be filled in. If it is left blank, there will simply be no teacher-given feedback for that question.

This is identical to the Feedback for the response 'True' section except it relates to an answer of 'False'.

Let's begin actually making the question now. We already have the page open, so from here, our first thing to deal with is the category. I am going to keep mine where it is because all the questions I am going to use are associated with the course I created; therefore, I'll use the Course setting. If you wanted the question available to a larger or smaller group, for example, all teachers using Moodle for just this Quiz, choose that setting.

Now we decide on the name of the question and what the question will ask. Curly decided to ask about the number of item types in Quiz, so I think I'll name my question Number of Item Types in Quiz.

Once I have entered the name of the question and the text of the question in the appropriate places, I'll scroll down to just under the Question text, where I can see the Format option, images in the question, penalty points, for the correct response, and the General feedback area. I'm going to keep all of these the same for now and add some brief comments in the general feedback area.

Under the general feedback option, is a drop-down, which allows us to choose whether the response is True or False. After selecting the appropriate choice (I'm not telling what it is yet, you are going to have to try and guess!), move down to the True and False feedback options.

In both True and False, I enter some feedback. Once I have finished all my work, I go back to the top of the page and check to make sure everything is correct. Once this is done, at the bottom of the page, I click on the Save changes button.

Once the question has been saved, we are sent back to the page where all this started. Take a look at the Question bank area of the Edit tab. You will see here that the question has been saved and is now available to be added to the test. You will notice that the newly made question has a gray background, which makes it stand out and easy to find.

Just under the Create new question drop-down, all of our newly available options for manipulating the question can be seen. Information and options about the question itself is displayed in three separate columns: Action, Question name, and Type.

Action

This bar has five icons and a checkbox. These symbols are, in fact, buttons. You can use them to perform a variety of functions with the question they are associated with.

Add to quiz

This function will move your question into the quiz list.

Preview

This button will show you the question as it will look in your browser. It is useful, in that it gives you a way to check the question quickly to make sure everything is as it should be.

Edit

This button serves as an edit question button. It allows you to go in and make changes to the question if there are any problems.

Move

This button allows you to move the question to a different category. For example, if the question was in Course, but you wanted it to be in System, you could move it there.

Delete

This button is dangerous! It can completely delete any question you have entered. If you really want to get rid of the question, this is the button to use. Don't worry, if you make a mistake and click on it accidently, you will be prompted to confirm that you really want to erase it. Once you have deleted a question, you can't get it back.

Select

This button is useful in several ways. It allows you to select multiple questions to delete, move, or add to the test. Additionally, the check in the box makes it easy to see which questions you are working with.

Select all/Deselect all options are just below the single button actions. This feature allows you to choose all the questions in your Question bank to work with, as well as giving you the option to clear all the questions you selected and start over.

Below the Select all/Deselect all feature, there are three buttons that allow you to manipulate multiple questions. These buttons function just like the single button features mentioned previously, but they will allow you to add all the selected questions to the test, delete all the selected questions, or move them all to a different area. The Move to button has a drop-down menu alongside it, making it easy to select where you want to move the questions to. First select the destination, then click on the Move to button.

Just like the title implies, this entry shows you what the question is called. A good naming scheme will save you hours in the long run, so start out with one.

This part displays the type of question you are working with. Some of the icons are not immediately recognizable, but moving your pointer over them will show you what kind they are. Once you have used this module enough, these little icons will help you determine quickly what you are working with and help you discriminate between questions with similar names, but of different types. This is something you will encounter often.

While you can see nothing here now, this is because there is only one question in the quiz. Once we add more questions, you will see up and down arrows. These arrows allow you to move the question position to a higher or lower place in the quiz.

This option shows the numeric order of the item in the test. The first item under '#' shows that this is the first item in the test.

Here, we are able to see the question name, which allows us to confirm whether we moved the correct question to the test.

We are also able to see the type of question it is, which helps us quickly determine the type of question and keep things organized. Also, placing your mouse over the icon will show its function, in case you have forgotten.

This entry allows us to set the number of points each question will be worth. The number entered into the textbox is how much this particular question is worth in terms of points in the test. By default, this number is the same as the question grade defined in the question. You can change this number simply by typing a new number into the textbox. This is an important feature to use, especially for tests containing items that are more complex or important than other items. We will look at grades more closely later in the book.

This number shows the total possible points from questions in the test. You are not able to directly manipulate this number. If you want this number to change, you will need to look at the questions and make a change in the points assigned to each of them. Do not forget to click on Save changes after doing so!

This text box contains is the maximum possible points a student will be able to get in the test. This feature helps in grade scaling. You are able to adjust this value simply by typing a new number in the box. For example, if you give a weekly vocabulary quiz, and each quiz needs to be worth 5 percent of the student's grade, you might want to put a "5" in the box. Even if you have ten questions in the test, this option will scale the score to a maximum five-point total, so each question would be worth 0.5 points.

There are three buttons here, each of which is the same as explained previously. There is a Preview, Edit, and Move.

This function allows you to put pages into the quiz. If this option is selected, the Questions in this quiz pane will be divided. Once you select the Show Page Breaks, you will see a drop-down menu that allows you to set the number of questions that will be added to each page. Select the number you want and click on the Go button. You will now see that the quiz has been divided into a number of pages with each having the selected number of items. You are free to adjust the number of items per page later by using the Move icon located next to the Page Break line. You also have the option to delete the page breaks if you want.

Since we only have one question right now, we'll get back to that function when we have a few more entries.

As seen previously, we can change the order of questions by clicking on the Move icon. However, if we enable the Show Reordering Tool option, we will see a new textbox under the Order column, on the left-hand side of the Move icons. Each of the boxes will contain a number ending in a "0", for example: 40, 100, 250. You can move items around quickly by placing the numbers in the boxes into an order you want. So, if you wanted to move a question with the number 50 to a spot between 20 and 30, you would simply need to enter some number between 20 and 30. Once you move the items, the numbers will automatically reset. You can move the items around this way as often as necessary.

If you decide to change any of the information, make sure you click on the Save changes button. If you don't, any work you did will be gone!

At the very top of the pop-up window, you can see the question name.

Just below the question name, you can see the quiz that the question is associated with.

The question is displayed next. It includes the number of the question, the question text, the possible responses, and the point value assigned to the question.

This button allows the student to submit each answer as he/she finishes the question. It allows the student to immediately know if he/she got the answer correct or not. This feedback can be a useful feature, especially in tests that are completed over a period of time. However, in longer or timed tests, these buttons may be a problem because students might spend valuable test time reviewing their choices and not moving forward in the quiz. These buttons can be removed by going to the Attempts section in Update Quiz and selecting No in Adaptive mode.

If you have multiple questions, and you have decided to use the Show Page Breaks option, this button will allow you to complete the questions and see the results for the page you are working on.

This button will allow you to submit all the questions in the quiz at once and close the test.

This function will mark all the correct answer choices in the quiz. This is a useful function for teachers, because it helps make sure that the answers are correct without having to work through, or read, the items.

This feature will allow you to begin again. It will erase all selections made and move you to the beginning of the test.

This option will close the Preview panel and you will return to the Edit page for the Quiz.

Now, let's attempt the question in Preview mode. I'll move my mouse over the checkboxes and choose the correct answer by clicking on them. How much do you remember about the Quiz? Look at the question, There are 8 item types in Moodle's Quiz Module. Is the Answer True or False?

I'll make my selection, and let's see the results.

Now, we can see here that we have selected True, which is the wrong answer. The answer choice is highlighted, and there is a red X next to it. The correct answer has a green check beside it. This is what the students will see if the Adaptive mode is enabled.

Under the True and False radio buttons, , you can see that the feedback entered for an incorrect response has appeared. There button is another Submit button. This allows the student to change his/her answer if multiple attempts with a True/False test is allowed. This means that they only have to click on the other choice to get a correct response.

You can also see under the Submit button a message telling me the response was incorrect and the marks I received for this remained zero. The penalties applied note simply means that I will lose one point from the total possible in the test.

You also notice a new function has appeared at the bottom of the page, a button called Previous state. This functions as a Back button, allowing you to move back one step. This is useful if you are working through a set of questions and want to see how feedback is displayed, based on the response. This button is obviously only available in the teacher-preview mode.

Now, I'm going to select the correct response, so you can see how it would look.

As you can see, I received both the correct answer and general feedback, and I was given one point for the answer. Note that the Marks in the preview under the question number didn't change. This is because we are in our second attempt. If we wanted the mark to be shown correctly, we would need to click on the Previous state button, which would mark this question correctly.

Now that we have confirmed that the question is correct, we repeat the process. You can add as many questions as you like to the test, but for now, we're going to make four more. Here is how the entire test looks from the Editing tab with the new questions added.

Take a quick look at Order in the Questions in this Quiz section. See the Up and Down arrows? These are the Move icons mentioned earlier.

Now that we have all the questions we want in place, we are ready to move on.

Now, I know that we have already gone through each question, but just to make sure everything is just the way we want it to look, it is a good idea to sit down and take the test. Here you might find one or two hopefully minor errors that you overlooked earlier. We need to click on the Preview tab at the top of the page and we will see how the test looks from a student's point of view.

I have decided that I want to get rid of the small Submit buttons next to the questions. I'm going to go back to Update this Quiz button and find the Attempts section. Then, I'm going to turn off Adaptive mode by moving the choice to No. This means that whoever takes this test will need to answer all the questions and they will get their results at the end when they click on Submit all and finish.

We are only offering a single attempt at this quiz, but leaving on the Adaptive mode would allow the student to answer each question multiple times, even in a quiz with single attempt. This setting would also apply a penalty, if one were set, to the marks for each question incorrectly answered. Our updated test is shown in the following screenshot:

As you can see, changing the Adaptive mode option to No got rid of the Submit buttons and made the test look a little less cluttered compared to the earlier screenshot.

Everything looks good, but now we need to check the answers. We will select True/False for each of the items and instead of clicking on the Submit button next to each of the items, we will go to the bottom of the page and click on the Save all and finish button. This will close the test for us, and show us the results. This is the page we get after clicking on the button.

As you can see, all the answers are correct, and each received the proper number of points and feedback.

Also, look at the top left-hand side of the page. There is a small information section called Review of preview. This is a lot of very useful information. The information here tells us when the quiz was started, when it was completed, and the total time the person was taking the quiz. As the test developer, you are able to look at the time taken and possibly make decisions about how to time the test in the future. If the quiz time is simply too long, you might be able to cut some questions. If it is too short, you can create more. In addition, students will see this section once they finish the quiz.

You are also shown the number of points scored and the grade. These numbers are probably some of the most important pieces of information for most teachers, since we need this to ensure that all the correct responses are given the correct point value.

That is all there is to making a simple True/False test in Moodle Quiz. Now all that needs to be done is to make sure your students know where the test is and have them take it.

Go to the front page of your course and turn editing on by going to the upper right-hand side of the page. Make a new Quiz by going to the Add an activity drop-down in any of the topic sections and selecting Quiz.

Now you will need to name the quiz and give it an introduction. Please call the quiz My First Moodle Quiz and repeat the name in the Introduction textbox.

We are going to leave all the default settings as they are, except for one. We want to go down the page and locate the Attempts section. In this section, please find and turn off the Adaptive mode.

When you have done this, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the Save and Display button.

We should now be in our quiz question creation area. Go to the category and change it to Default for My First Moodle Quiz. This will help us keep all our questions organized.

Once you have done this, find the Create a new question drop-down and select True/False.

We will need to fill in all the required fields now. For Question name and Question text, enter Mice are smaller than cats. For correct answer, select True.

We will also include some feedback here. In the Feedback for Response True enter Yes, mice are smaller than cats. In the Feedback for Response False enter Sorry, but cats are bigger than mice.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Save changes.

Repeat the process for the remaining two questions, including appropriate feedback for each.

When you have all three questions created, move them to the quiz using the Add to quiz icon.

Go to the Preview tab and look over the questions to make sure there are no mistakes. Answer all the questions correctly and then click on Submit all and finish.

When you finish all these steps, you should see the following screenshot:

From here, you can see that I was able to put all the questions together into a quiz, the answers are all correct, and the score I received was a 100 %. You can also see the feedback each student receives from the correct answer.

I hope you were able to quickly and easily complete this little project. As I said before, if you were unsure of something, or got something other than I did, go back and review the chapter and make sure you followed all the steps outlined previously.

The math makes these types of items the least useful in some ways. Students have loved these questions for years, because regardless of whether or not they know the material, they have a 50 percent chance of guessing correctly. Because of this, these question types are probably not the best way to ask things in high-stakes types of tests. There are, however, ways to compensate for this problem, such as only awarding points for those reaching a minimum score.

On the other hand, these questions are simple to write. They only require, at minimum, a simple statement. Instructors wishing to simply see if a student is aware of a basic piece of information can create a list of them in just a few minutes.

Now, even though these types of items are not the best for summative assessment, they do hold some value for formative testing and self-assessment.

Even with the ability to compensate somewhat for guessing, with a 50 percent chance of guessing the correct answer at random, True/False itself is not the most effective item type available. In addition, students have no choice but to guess even if they don't know the answer. In fact, even if they don't want to answer because they know they don't know the answer, they are forced to either avoid clicking on either response option, or if they accidentally do click on an answer, make a guess. This situation is not all bad though, because there are some who argue that this process will force students to think carefully before selecting an answer. The problem is that there is no way to remove a response completely once one has been selected. An inclusion of a feature that would allow students to 'pass' if they didn't want to answer, I feel, would be a great addition. It could help in assessment and validity issues related to testing in Moodle.