Calculated simple

When you create a calculated question, you enter a formula that gets displayed in the text of the question. The formula can contain one or more wildcards. These wildcards are replaced with numbers when the quiz is run. Wildcards are enclosed in curly brackets.

For example, if you type the question What is 3 * {a}?, Moodle will replace {a} with a random number. You can also enter wildcards into the answer field so that the correct answer is 3 * {a}. When the quiz is run, the question will display What is 3 * {a}?, and the correct answer will be the calculated value of 3 * {a}.

Calculated multichoice

Like the calculated simple question, this question consists of an equation that gets populated with a value(s) when the question is delivered. Then, the question displays several choices for the student, like a multiple choice question.

Description

This is not a question. It displays whatever web content you enter. When you add a description question, Moodle gives you the same editing screen that you get when you create a web page.

Recall that under the Quiz tab, you can set page breaks in a quiz. If you want to break your quiz into sections and fully explain each section before the student completes it, consider adding a description on the first page of the section. For example, the description can say, The following three questions are based on this chart and show the chart just once.

Essay

When the student is given an essay question, they use Moodle's online rich-text editor to answer the question.

Also, you might want to instruct your students to save their essay every few minutes.

Matching

After you create a matching question, you create a list of subquestions and enter the correct answer for each subquestion. The student must match the correct answer with each subquestion. Each subquestion receives equal weight for scoring the question.

Embedded answers
(Cloze)

An embedded answers question consists of a passage of text, with answers inserted into the text. Multiple choice, fill in the blank, and numeric answers can be inserted into the question. Moodle's help file gives the following example:

Note that the question presents a drop-down list first, which is essentially a multiple choice question. Then, it presents a short answer (fill in the blank) question, followed by a numeric question. Finally, there's another multiple choice question (the Yes/No dropdown) and another numeric question.

There is no graphical interface to create embedded answers' questions. You need to use a special format that is explained in the help files at https://docs.moodle.org/29/en/Embedded_Answers_%28Cloze%29_question_type.

Multiple-choice

Multiple choice questions can allow a student to select a single answer or multiple answers. Each answer can be a percentage of the question's total point value.

When you allow a student to select only a single answer, you usually assign a positive score to the correct answer and zero or negative points to all the other incorrect answers. When you allow the student to select multiple answers, you usually assign partial positive points to each correct answer. That's because you want all the correct answers to have a total of 100 percent. You also usually assign negative points to each incorrect answer. If you don't bring down the question's score for each wrong answer, the student can score 100 percent on the question just by selecting all the answers. The negative points should be equal to or greater than the positive points so that if a student just selects all the answers, they won't get a positive score for the question. Don't worry about the student getting a negative score for the question, because Moodle doesn't allow this to happen.

On the Editing quiz page, if you have chosen to shuffle answers, check all the multiple choice questions that you use in the quiz. If any of them have answers such as All of the above or Both A and C, shuffling answers will ruin these questions. Instead, change them to multiple answer questions and give partial credit for each correct answer; for example, instead of Both A and C, you would say Select all that apply and then give partial credit for A and for C.

Short answer

The student types a word or phrase into the answer field. This is checked against the correct answer or answers. There may be several correct answers with different grades.

Your answers can use the asterisk as a wildcard. Also, they can be case sensitive. Moreover, accents are counted as characters, so resume and resumé are two separate answers.

Numerical

Just as in a short answer question, the student enters an answer into the answer field. However, the answer to a numerical question can have an acceptable error, which you set when creating the question. For example, you can designate that the correct answer is 5, plus or minus 1. Then, any number from 4 to 6 will be marked correct.

True/False

The student selects from two options: True or False.