Online Exam settings checklist (Quiz)

Owned by Michael Hughes
Last updated: Nov 23, 2020
5 min read

This check list runs through the most common settings and their recommended values, relating to the Quiz activity for online exams.We will go through the quiz settings initially, and then other settings found elsewhere in the quiz Module


Checklist

  • Open the quiz is set appropriately.
  • Close the quiz is set appropriately.
  • Time limit is set appropriately.

  • When time expires set to Open attempts are submitted automatically.

  • Question behaviour set to Deferred feedback
  • Review options all unchecked.
  • <5 MCQ questions per page
  • 1 non-MGC question per page
  • Maximum grade set

Quiz Settings

Timing

(Found in Activity's Edit menu > Edit Settings or Quiz Administration > Edit Settings)

Time Window

Open the quiz and Close the quiz control the window that students may undertake the quiz. 

Students must complete the quiz by the Close the quiz time.

Students can see the quiz activity prior to the Open the quiz date but cannot start the quiz until this elapses. (They cannot see the actual questions until they start their attempt).

Time Limit

The quiz is only activity that offers a time limit for the completion of the activity

The Time Limit sets the default amount of time for students to complete the quiz activity.

The students must complete the quiz within the time limit and the before Close the quiz elapses.

In the above example, a student starting the quiz on 10 December 2020 09:30, must complete by 10 December 2020 10:00, 30 minutes not the 90 minutes set by the Time Limit.


When time expires

This should always be set to Open attempts are submitted automatically.

Layout

New page

The Layout of the quiz can affect the amount of work lost by students in case of a browser crash, or an issue with their internet connection.

The students' answers are only saved against their attempt when they:

  • Move between pages of the quiz
  • Move to the Quiz Attempt Summary page (prior to submitting)


We generally recommend that for any essay type questions or questions that require the students to submit a significant amount of work, these questions are 1 per page.

Multiple choice questions may be grouped together, depending on how much work is required to answer each one.

We would not recommend that there is more than 5 MCQs per page.

Navigation method

This should be set to Free, unless you want to restrict the students' ability to return to previous questions. 

The Sequential option severely limits the students' ability to correct any answers they have given. If you do want to prevent a student from returning from previous answers for a section of your examination you may wish to consider splitting the examination into 2 separate activities.

Question Behaviour

Shuffle within questions

This can be set as you wish, it will randomise the order of answers within each question (if supported by the question type).

How questions behave

This should be set to Deferred feedback.

Review Options

The Review Options section governs what feedback is given to students and when. For examination quizzes most areas will not disclose any feedback or grade information until an specific date & time (embargo).

All options should be unchecked.

Releasing Grades after the examination process has finished

Once the examination process has completed, and grades for the quiz are to be released, you must access the Quiz Settings. 

Providing a Close the quiz date has been set (as should be for examination quizzes), to release the feedback & grades to the students to see enable the options under the After the quiz is closed section:

Activity Completion

You may wish to use activity completion.

Activity completion for examination activities should never be set to Student can manually mark the activity as completed.


Edit Quiz

The Edit Quiz page is access view the Administration block:

It shows the questions in the quiz and a number of relevant configuration settings.

This page shows the questions in the quiz and how they will be separated into pages.

See the Layout section above to guidance on the number of questions per page.

Maximum Grade

This is the maximum grade that the quiz will be awarded out of.

Maximum grade should almost always be 100.

Total of marks

The Total of marks shows the total of the number of marks available from all of the questions.

The total of marks does not have to match the maximum grade. Myplace will convert the the student's score in marks into the appropriate value out of the maximum grade.


Repaginate

This button will re-layout the questions based on the layout settings (see above).

Shuffle

The Shuffle option will cause the questions in the quiz to be presented in a random order for each student.

The Shuffle option above will shuffle all of the questions.

This shuffles the questions irrespective of paging, unless you have added section headings. (See Shuffle within pages below)

Shuffling within pages

 Click here to expand...

You can add a section heading to pages:

If a section heading is added (in this case Essay Questions below) you can shuffle the questions that precede/follow the heading:

In the example above, only the questions before the Essay Questions section will be shuffled. The remaining essay questions would be presented in the order listed.