Moodle quiz best practices

‘Best Practice’ suggestions for creating quizzes/exams in Moodle  

• Create and test a practice quiz/exam with students prior to exam day  
• If you are using Respondus provide instructions to students in advance and have them install it and test it prior to the quiz. 
• Provide a link to 24/7 Respondus LiveChat should there be issues 
• Make a plan and share it with students BEFORE the exam so they are aware of how to contact you should they have issues with it; e.g., if you cannot log into the quiz after 10 minutes, email me (or something similar) 
• Faculty and teaching staff should contact IT Services via phone or email if there are issues with Moodle so they’re able to connect with our hosting provider for assistance

When creating the exam (professors): 

• Consider extending timelines to compensate for lag time in page processing on slow networks 
• Consider randomizing questions and/or responses within questions within different sections of a quiz  
• Consider sequential questions if the desired approach is to prevent students from backtracking on a quiz 
• Use the upload functionality provided in Moodle when inserting images into a quiz, do not drag and drop or cut and paste as this causes the quiz to malfunction 
• Be aware of open and close times, especially when using a timer within, i.e., quiz is open for 2 hours and the time limit to do the quiz is 60 minutes. If the student starts the quiz at 1.5 hours of the 2-hour time slot, the quiz will close after 30 minutes – without submitting their open attempts. 
• Ensure that correct time allocations are given to students writing with the Centre for Accessible Learning 
• Consider adding a question that is not graded asking, ‘Did you complete this yourself” to promote academic integrity 
• In Review options do not make any selections in the first three columns, to be sure that students are not seeing which answers that they gave were correct and that they are not seeing the right answer after submitting their quiz.  Check “Marks” in the fourth column if you do want the students to only see the mark they got on the exam.   

When writing the exam (Students): 

• Students should hardwire to the network where possible 
• Students should turn off other devices connected to the internet 
• Students should close other applications that use the internet on the device they are  
• Students should have the battery charged on the device they are using for the exam AND have their charging cord plugged in and ready to use (if/when needed)  

During the exam (professors): 

• Professors should check the quiz to ensure students were able to access the quiz by clicking on the quiz activity and reviewing the attempts. 
• Check that only those supposed to write at a given time have access to the quiz 
• When giving an online exam to students, in person:
  • Confirm the students have submitted their exam upon completion - again looking at the quiz activity page in Moodle 
  • Have a plan 'b' should there be issues with access to the online exam
  • Print a couple of paper exams
  • Consider allowing students to have multiple attempts, should the quiz or Lockdown browser crash 
  • Consider a password and ONLY sharing it as you are about to start (ensures students are writing the exam in the classroom with you).