CCLE - Quizzes

This documentation describes how to create a question bank for quizzes, how to create a quiz in CCLE, how to populate a quiz with questions, and how to provide the best practices when giving quiz support to students.

Creating Questions in a Question Bank

 

A course’s Question Bank stores every possible quiz question that might be presented to a student. It divides questions into categories that are useful not only for organizational purposes but also for assembling randomized quizzes that test each student on the same concepts.

 

Although it is possible to create new questions while making a quiz (as described below), it may sometimes be preferable to populate a Question Bank with questions first.

 

To access and edit your course’s Question Bank:

  1. Under the Administration block on the side of your screen, click on “Admin panel” and then click “Question Bank.” 

     

  2. You can select a category where your questions will be stored. 

  3. To create a new category, click on “Categories” under “Question Bank” and select “Add Category.”

    1. You can use questions from different categories in the same quiz if you want.

  4. Click on “Create a new question…”

  5. A pop-up window with different question type options (described below) will appear.

    1. Select the type of question you wish to add to the bank, then click “Next.” (See the different question types on CCLE.)

    2. You will be taken to a new screen where you can add details for each question. The types of details depend on the type of question you are attempting to create. 

    3. Click “Save Changes” when you are done editing the question content.

  6. When you have created all of the questions that you want in your question bank, you can create a quiz out of these questions. 

    1. If you have already created the quiz, you can now move the questions into the empty quiz (see “Adding Questions to Quizzes” below).

  7. You can import existing question banks from other courses by following these instructions.

  8. You can also import quiz questions from an existing Word document by following these instructions.

  9. You may also import quiz questions from a Google spreadsheet using our custom add-on.

Note: You should avoid deleting questions from a Question Bank if they are used in an active or completed quiz. This will result in numerous errors and may make it impossible to grade students’ work on these quizzes accurately.

Common question types

There are a lot of question types available for your use. We’ve listed the most appropriate ones for our uses below. The descriptions are provided by the Moodle documentation site.

Description

Grading Type: None

Description: This is not a real question. It simply prints some text (and possibly graphics) without requiring an answer. This can be used to provide information to be used by a subsequent group of questions.

Documentation: https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Description_question_type

Drag and drop into text

Grading Type: Machine

Description: A drag-and-drop question type where missing words, provided by the quiz maker, have to be dragged into gaps in a paragraph of text.

Documentation: https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Drag_and_drop_into_text_question_type

Drag and drop markers

Grading Type: Machine

Description: This question type allows students to drop markers onto an area on a background image. 

Documentation: https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Drag_and_drop_markers_question_type

Drag and drop onto image

Grading Type: Machine

Description: This question type allows students to drag words, images, or both from a list and drop them into pre-defined gaps on a base image.

Documentation: https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Drag_and_drop_onto_image_question_type

Embedded answers (Cloze)

Grading Type: Machine

Description: Embedded answers (Cloze) questions consist of a passage of text (in Moodle format) that has various answers embedded within it, including multiple choice, short answers, and numerical answers.

Documentation: https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Embedded_Answers_(Cloze)_question_type

Essay

Grading Type: Manual

Description: The essay question type is intended for short answers of a paragraph or two. For longer essays, text or file uploads in an Assignment is usually the better choice.

Documentation: https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Essay_question_type

Matching

Grading Type: Machine

Description: Matching questions have a content area and a list of names or statements that must be correctly matched against another list of names or statements.

Documentation: https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Matching_question_type

Multiple choice

Grading Type: Machine

Description: Moodle provides teachers with a lot of flexibility when creating this common question type. You can create single-answer and multiple-answer questions.

Documentation: https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Multiple_Choice_question_type

Ordering

Grading Type: Machine

Description: The ordering question type displays several short sentences in a random order which are to be dragged into the correct sequential order.

Documentation: https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Ordering_question_type

Poodle (Voice) recording

Grading Type: Manual

Description: An audio/video recording question type uses a standalone MP3 recorder for audio and a cloud-based recording server for video. It is also possible to "draw pictures" as responses to questions, using the PoodLL whiteboard feature.

Documentation: https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/PoodLL_recording_question_type

Select missing words

Grading Type: Machine

Description: This is very similar to the Drag and drop into text question type but uses drop-down menus in the text instead of drag-boxes. This works well when the question text is very long, and the quiz taker has to scroll a lot to do drag and drop.

Documentation: https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Select_missing_words_question_type

Short answer

Grading Type: Machine

Description: In a short answer question, the student types in a word or phrase in response to a question (that may include an image). Answers may or may not be case-sensitive. The answer could be a word or a phrase, but it must match one of your acceptable answers exactly.

Documentation: https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Short-Answer_question_type

True/False

Grading Type: Machine

Description: A student is given only two choices for an answer in this kind of question: True or False. The question content can include an image or html code.

Documentation: https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/True/False_question_type

Creating a Quiz

  1. Click the orange “Turn editing on” button at the top right of the course site.

  2. Click “Add an activity or resource” and select Quiz. 

  3. Click Add.

  4. Change the Quiz Settings to the required parameters: 

    1. Give the quiz a name (required) and a description (optional). 

    2. Under Timing

      1. Set the day/time when the quiz will open and close (optional).

      2. Set the time limit students will have before the quiz closes (optional).

      3. Select what happens when time expires. 

        1. NOTE: Do not select “Attempts must be submitted before time expires, or they are not counted.” Currently there is no easy way for CCLE Support to retrieve attempts that were not submitted when time expires, and the attempts will essentially be lost!

    3. Under Grade:

      1. If you have created categories in Gradebook, select which category this quiz will count towards. 

      2. Set the number of attempts allowed; the default is unlimited (i.e. the students may open or close the quiz an unlimited number of times so long as the close date/time has not been reached). 

      3. Select a grading method. Default is “Highest grade,” but you can also use an average or first attempt/last attempt. 

    4. Under Question behavior:

      1. Choose whether questions will be shuffled or in the same order for all students.  

    5. Under Review options:

      1. Set the Feedback options under “Review options” dropdown menus and checkboxes. This is necessary to allow students to see their answers and scores when you want them to.

    6. Under Restrict Access:

      1. Decide whether or not you want to restrict access to the quiz; if restricted, the students will not be able to see the existence of this quiz until the access date/time has been reached.

  5. Click “Save and return to course.”

You can edit quiz settings after the fact by clicking the “Turn editing on” button and clicking the “Edit” link to the right of the quiz from its CCLE section. Then, select “Edit Settings” (“Edit Quiz” lets you change the questions in a quiz, not the settings).

NOTE: Keep in mind, however, that you cannot alter the quiz once attempts have been submitted.

Adding Questions to Quizzes

New quizzes do not have any questions in them at the start.  After creating a quiz in this way, you will need to add questions. To do so, click the “Turn editing on” button, click the “Edit” link to the right of the quiz from its CCLE section, and choose “Edit Quiz.”

In order to populate a quiz with questions:

  1. First, click on the name of the quiz. You will be taken to a new screen.

  2. Click “Edit Quiz”  under the Quiz Administration block to add questions.

  3. In the center of the screen you will see the questions that are currently in the quiz (if any). To the right, you will see “Add a question” under “Shuffle.”

  4. You have three options:

  5. A new question

    1. From question bank

    2. A random question

  6. If you pick a new question, pick from the question formats, as described above.

  7. Should you pick from a question bank:

    1. Select a category to pull questions from. You can include questions from several different categories, if you have more than one. 

    2. Click the checkbox next to the questions you want added to the quiz. 

    3. Click “Add to Quiz” to add the checked questions to the quiz. 

  8. If you pick a random question, you must first choose the category you want from your question bank, and then how many random questions to insert. You can also create a new category, if desired.

    1. Note: Be sure not to add more random questions than are in a category or the quiz will not work.  The random questions feature will never give one student the same question twice, provided that each question is present in a category only once.

  9. You may assign different numbers of points to each question, reorder the questions, and add page breaks if you would like.

  10. Make sure to click “Save” in the upper right corner if you have edited any of the default settings in the center of the screen.

  11. Your quiz is now available. You can Preview your quiz (under “Edit” options for the quiz). Previews will not save a grade.

Additional Comments

If you are having students record themselves (using PoodLL) as part of quiz, and you are requiring them to use the Respondus Lockdown browser, instructors may need to review their submissions using the Google Chrome browser.