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Please note if you have enabled Activity completion, then the 'Require view' field MUST be unselected. Otherwise, this can slow down student access during their attempt. Please refer to the Recommended Moodle Quiz Settings checklist.
You must complete the Exam Notification Form
At least four weeks before the exam, complete the Exam Notification Form so that the Digital Education team and ISD can complete any necessary checks on your Moodle quiz settings and/or virtual lab rooms.
If this is the first time you are running an online exam please state this in the Exam Notification Form in "Additional Info" and a member of our team MAY be able to assist you on the day (given enough notice). Please note: These members of staff are not a replacement for invigilators.
Check Moodle maintenance window
AVOID scheduling your exam during a planned Moodle outage or maintenance window. Currently, the window for Moodle maintenance is 1am – 2am GMT / 2am – 3am BST every Thursday morning. Exact maintenance days will be communicated on the News ticker of the Moodle homepage and ISD news. You can also check the Moodle news ticker on the Moodle home page for any planned outages. If you schedule a 24-hour exam which overlaps with a maintenance window, notify your students to avoid attempting the quiz during the maintenance window.
Schedule your Moodle Quiz after transition
AVOID scheduling your exam within the UCL transition window of 10mins to the hour. Where possible, we recommend to adjust the start time of timed quizzes to start 5 or 10 mins past the hour ( e.g. 11:05am, 12:10pm etc.) especially where the quiz is being taken by a large number of students.
Avoid Editing a Course while a quiz is under way
Av oid editing the settings of the Moodle course or its activities while students are actively undertaking a quiz on the same Moodle course. Editing course content while a quiz is underway (specifically instances where there are a large number of participants) may impact the performance of your Moodle course and its activities.
Moodle Course Access: Please be aware that all tutors and course administrators that have access to the course will be able to see the quiz questions and answers. If this is a problem, you can request a new Moodle course be set up for the exam that provides only those who need it with access to the exam questions.
Description: This functions as an introduction and should include the scoring rules, number and types of questions and the time limit. If some students will receive extra time, this should also be mentioned. If using numeric questions, it should be clear whether students need to enter the unit as well as the number. This should ideally be mentioned in every question it applies to as well.
You may add some additional standard text such as the statements below, that explain to students how their Moodle exam will work. You can copy and paste them into the Description text box as appropriate:
Open the quiz and Close the quiz: Ensure that the quiz availability times are accurate, and that enough time has been provided to accommodate students in different time zones. A count-down timer will automatically appear for the last hour the quiz is open.
Time limit: Allows you to set a timer for the quiz e.g. 60 minutes. Ensure the time length is accurate.
When time expires: Ensure this is set to, Open attempts are submitted automatically. This setting will prevent questions entering the Never Submitted state which can occur if, Attempts must be submitted before time expires, or they are not counted is selected. If an attempt becomes Never Submitted then it cannot be graded.
Attempts: If this is set to more than 1, students will be able to attempt the exam more than once. The usual setting is 1.
New page: We recommend you set this to Every question.
Double-check questions per page by doing a quiz preview. If it still shows more than 1 question per page you will need to repaginate your quiz. To do this:
Shuffle within questions (shuffle answers): We recommend you change this to Yes to minimise the chance of students cheating. Please make sure that you have the questions to suit this option e.g. If an answer is None of the above, a subtle change would be None applies.
Shuffle questions: Every time the quiz is attempted, the order of the questions in this section will be shuffled into a different random order. This can make it harder for students to share answers, but it also makes it harder for students to discuss a particular question with you. - This option is found in edit quiz,
How questions behave: This should be set to Deferred feedback. This means that students do not get to see when they have answered a question incorrectly. All feedback is deferred until after the quiz has been submitted and graded (and only available then based on the Review Options).
Review Options: All review options should be unticked so students do not see feedback until marking is finalised. If you choose to allow students to see their exam attempts later, you can change these after the exam has concluded and the results analysed by the teaching staff.
Untick Review Options: Review Options once saved:
Password (Optional): Add a password ensures only students that you share the password with can complete the exam.
Use a password that is easy to enter, but hard to guess. E.g. "purple".
Only use lowercase letters.
Avoid special characters.
Activity completion setting 'Require view': Student must view this activity to complete it. Ensure this is not selected.
Practice material & briefing students: Familiarise your students with the Moodle assessment tools before they sit the exam, e.g. ask them to complete a trial quiz or upload a test assignment.
example quiz. Prepare a practice quiz for your students, or use Digital Education's
Let them know the scoring rules, number and types of questions, any navigation constraints and the time limit.
Include an informative introduction (in the description of the quiz or assignment settings).
Remind students to ensure they are able to log into Moodle at least 2 working days before the exam. If they are unable to log in, please ask them to contact the ISD Service Desk. If on the day a student cannot log in, please contact the Digital Education team, who will be able to set a temporary password for the length of the exam.
Remind students of the exam conditions, and how they can ask for assistance if something goes wrong.
Periodically monitor the exam, and use the Announcement or a Discussion Forum to communicate any updates to the quiz, or answer any common queries, so that all students on the course can see the answer.
Moodle provides statistics on your results and quiz questions, including a calculation of the discrimination efficiency of each question. You can access the report from in the quiz ( Results > Statistics ). For further information see the Moodle documents page .