Type of Questions in Moodle Quizzes

These question types are included in the default installation of Moodle.

Calculated simple

When you create a calculated question, you enter a formula that gets displayed in the text of the question. The formula can contain one or more wildcards. These wildcards are replaced with numbers when the quiz is run. Wildcards are enclosed in curly brackets.

For example, if you type the question What is 3 * {a}?, Moodle will replace {a} with a random number. You can also enter wildcards into the answer field so that the correct answer is 3 * {a}.

Calculated multi choice

Like the calculated simple question, this question consists of an equation that gets populated with a values when the question is delivered. Then, the question displays several choices for the student, like a multiple-choice question.

Description

This is not a question. It displays whatever web content you enter. When you add a description question, Moodle gives you the same editing screen that you get when you create a web page.

Under the Quiz tab, you can set page breaks in a quiz. If you want to break your quiz into sections and fully explain each section before the student completes it, you can add a description on the first page of the section.

Essay

When the student is given an essay question, they use Moodle's online rich-text editor to answer the question.

Matching

After you create a matching question, you create a list of sub questions and enter the correct answer for each sub question. The student must match the correct answer with each sub question. Each sub question receives equal weight for scoring the question.

Embedded answers (Cloze)

An embedded answers question consists of a passage of text, with answers inserted into the text. Multiple-choice, fill-in-the blank, and numeric answers can be inserted into the question.

There is no graphical interface to create embedded answers questions. You need to use a special format.

Multiple choice

Multiple-choice questions can allow a student to select a single answer or multiple answers. Each answer can be a percentage of the question's total point value.

When you allow a student to select only a single answer, you usually assign a positive score to the correct answer and zero or negative points to all the other incorrect answers. When you allow the student to select multiple answers, you usually assign partial positive points to each correct answer. That's because you want all the correct answers to have a total of 100 percent. You also usually assign negative points to each incorrect answer.

Short answer

The student types a word or phrase into the answer field. This is checked against the correct answer or answers. There may be several correct answers with different grades.

Numerical

Just as in a short-answer question, the student enters an answer into the answer field. However, the answer to a numerical question can have an acceptable error, which you set when creating the question. For example, you can designate that the correct answer is 5, plus or minus 1. Then, any number from 4 to 6 will be marked correct.

True / False

The student selects from two options: True or False.