Moodle III Quizzes and Gradebook

version 1.9

Online quizzes can be used to reiterate complex ideas in the reading, as a web-quest to make certain that online students read your syllabus, as open-book quizzes, to give student feedback, or simply as practice or study questions. Because Moodle grades the quizzes and deposits those grades in a gradebook, it becomes practical to offer more frequent quizzes or practice tests than in the traditional classroom.

There are three steps to creating a quiz.

  1. Create the quiz title and accessibility settings.
  2. Create questions, organized into categories.
  3. Put the questions into the quizzes and assign points.

I. Create Quiz and Adjust Settings

1. From the homepage, click Turn Editing On.

2. Click on the dropdown menu, Add an Activity and choose Quiz.

3. Fill out the form with a descriptive title. Also put in an introduction for the quiz, including any special instructions you might have.

4. Select the date and times for the quiz to make it accessible by the students.

5. Choose among various options, clicking on the question marks to help you understand the choices. Then click Continue or Save Changes.

quizsettings

 

II. Create Questions

Click on Edit and make certain that the Quiz tab is chosen. You are given a default category to store questions in for the course and for this specific quiz. Choose which one you want in the category dropdown menu. If you want to add categories, you can do so through the Category tab.

edit

Choose a type of new question, such as Multiple Choice, from the drop down menu called Create New Question. This will take you to the question form.

question

Fill out a question name or title that will make sense to you when viewing it in a list. Type in your question and some answers. The correct answer will need to have the drop down Grade chosen, which will normally be 100%, if only one answer gets full credit. Also fill out feedback, if you want the student to have some additional information after they pick a right or wrong answer.

 Click on Save Changes. If you want to change these settings later, click on Update this Quiz from the Edit Quiz screen.

Creating questions on one form at a time is quite slow. A faster way to create quiz questions is to type all the questions in a txt file and import them all at once. From the Edit Quiz screen, click on the Import tab. Choose a file format. Click on the question mark to see the various types of formats. The Aiken format is simplest for multiple choice questions, but every detail, such as spacing, capitalization, etc. must be exact. Then Import from File Upload... Browse your computer for the question file and then click Upload this File.

importfile

III. Put Questions into Quiz and Assign Points

1. Return to the Edit Quiz screen. Check the boxes next to the question names or choose Select All.

2. Choose Add to Quiz and the questions will move to the left, so that you know they are now included in the quiz.

quizquestions

3. Reorder the questions if you'd like with the up/down arrows to the left of the questions. Change the points in the grading boxes if you want them to be worth more than one point and then click Save Grades.

 

IV. Reset Quiz

Often students will need a quiz reset if their technology fails and there is only one attempt allowed, you will need to go in and delete that individual botched attempt, so only that particular student may try again.


V. Gradebook

Grades for Activities

Click on Grades from the Homepage and under Administration. You should be in the View, as shown in the upper left hand corner, called Grader Report. There are other views available in the drop down menu. The columns in the gradebook are created automatically from Moodle activities like gradeable Forums or the Assignment tool. You enter the grade from the activity tool and it will appear in the gradebook.

The easiest system for grading at Oakland University is to create a gradebook with a final total of 400 points (which would be equivalent to a 4.00 grade in SAIL).

grades1

Editing Grades and Adjusting Settings

Change a grade--click on Turn Editing On in the upper right hand corner to access the cells in the gradebook and change any grade manually. The top box is for the grade and the bottom box is for textual comments or feedback for the student.

editgrades

Adjust Setting--Click on My Report Preferences in the top tab. Click on Show Advanced. Use settings as below or click on the question marks to learn about and make changes.

Settings

Add New Grade Columns

Click on the View dropdown menu in the upper left hand corner of the screen and drag down to Categories and items. If you want a new grade column for a traditional paper assignment in your class, choose Add Grade item.

gradeitem

Fill out the item (grade column) name. Make a short name for the ID number. If you want to assign a number grade, leave the grade type at value. Change the max grade as needed and click Save Changes.

gradeitem

Total Grade Column

Click on Turn Editing On in the upper right hand corner. Click on the editing hand icon by the name of the course.

editformula

Choose one of the calculations. Sum of Grades is the simplest way to add all your points together.

formula

Total Grade Column with Formula

Go to the final grade column, called Course Total. You will need to put a formula into this column. Click on the calculator icon (between the editing hand and the eye icons at the top of the Course Total Column).

Step 1: In the bottom half of the page, Create Item IDs for any columns that don't have them. You can type in the box by the graded activity, item1, item2, etc. or make up your own short ID names. Click Add ID numbers.

Step 2: In the top half of the page, create your formula as below if you are simply adding all the columns to a fixed point system, like 400 points. Start with an = sign, put the entire formula into parentheses and then surround each ID name with double brackets, separated by commas. Don't use spaces. Then click Save Changes.

If you want a different type of formula rather than simple addition, click on the question mark beside Calculation for more ideas and instructions.

calculation

Export and Import Grades

Export grades to Excel: Click on Excel spreadsheet in the View dropdown menu in the upper left hand corner.  Fill out the options and choose which grades to export and click Submit. Then click Download.

import

Import grades from Excel: In Excel, save grades to a cvs file type. Click on CVS file in the View dropdown menu in the upper left hand corner. Browse your computer for the file and then click Upload Grades. If you have problems, you'll probably need to adjust your column and row heading so that the spreadsheet matches the Moodle spreadsheet.

import

Adding Scales

If you need a new scale, other than the 100 point scale provided, you can create a new scale in the gradebook. 

by ccheal © 2006, rev. 2008