Creating a feedback activity is similar to adding a quiz. First, you add the activity, and then you add the questions. We'll cover each in the following sections separately.
To add a feedback activity, do the following:
- From the Add an activity... menu, select Feedback.
- Moodle displays the Settings page for the activity.
- In the Name, enter the name of the feedback. Your students will see this on the course home page.
- Text and graphics that are entered into the Description field are displayed to students before they begin the activity. Use this to explain the activity. Remember that this is a full-featured HTML editor, so you can put text, graphics, and media into the description.
- Under Availability, you can enter a time to open and close the activity. If you don't enter a time to open the activity, it is available immediately. If you don't enter a time to close the activity, it will remain open indefinitely.
- The option to Record user names affects only what the teacher sees. Students do not see each others' responses. If Record user names is set to User's names will be logged and shown with answers, the teacher will be able to see a list of users who completed the feedback and their answers.
- The setting for Allow multiple submissions affects the activity, only if you have allowed anonymous responses. If so, any user can submit the feedback survey as many times as they want.
- If Enable notification of submissions is set to Yes, course administrators are emailed whenever someone submits this feedback. This includes teachers and course managers.
- If you want Moodle to number the questions in your feedback activity, select Yes for Autonumber questions.
- If Show analysis page after submit is set to Yes, a summary of the results so far is shown to the user after they submit their feedback.
Get this setting right the first time
Moodle doesn't allow you to change the multiple submissions setting after someone has answered the feedback activity, without losing the previous responses. So get this setting right before people start answering. If you do need to change this setting, you must first Reset feedback responses under the Course administration menu.
Moodle doesn't allow you to change the multiple submissions setting after someone has answered the feedback activity, without losing the previous responses. So get this setting right before people start answering. If you do need to change this setting, you must first Reset feedback responses under the Course administration menu.
- If you enter a Link to next activity, that page is displayed immediately after the users submit their answers. You can use this page to explain what happens after the activity. If you leave this blank, Moodle displays a simple message telling the user that their answers have been saved. At the bottom of this page, Moodle displays a Continue button.
Careful with the URL for link to next activity
You might be tempted to use the URL to send the user to another page in your site. Remember that if you move this activity to another course, or another Moodle site, that URL might change.
You might be tempted to use the URL to send the user to another page in your site. Remember that if you move this activity to another course, or another Moodle site, that URL might change.
- Common module settings and restrict availability work as they do for other activities. These are covered in a separate section of the book.
- Click on the Save and display button to save the settings. It is time to start adding questions.
To add questions to a feedback activity, carry out these steps:
- Select the feedback activity.
- From the left menu, select Settings | Feedback administration | Questions | Edit questions. If you just created and saved the activity, click on the Edit questions tab.
- From the drop-down list that is labeled Content, select the type of question to add.
Specific types of questions are described in the next section. The rest of this procedure covers settings that are common to almost all question types. For settings that are specific to a question type, refer to the next section.
- If you mark a question as Required, the user must answer it to submit the feedback. The question will have a red asterisk next to it.
- The Question field contains the text of the question. Unlike a quiz question,
a feedback question can only consist of text. - The Label field contains a label that only teachers will see, when viewing the results of the feedback. The most important reason for the Label field is when you plan to export the results of the feedback to an Excel worksheet. The label is exported with the results. This enables you to match the feedback results with a short label in your database.
- The Position field determines the order of the question, when you first add it to the feedback page. After the question has been added, you can override this number and move the question to any position on the page.
- Depend item and Depend value can be used to make the appearance of a question dependent on the answer to a previous question. For example, you might first ask someone, Do you have a Twitter account? If they answer with a Yes, you might display a question like How often do you tweet? If they answer with a No, you would hide that question. From the Dependence item drop-down list, select the question whose answer will determine whether this question appears. Then, in the Dependence value field, enter the answer that is needed to make this question appear.
- For a discussion of the fields that apply only to one type of question, check out the following section.
- Save the question.