Use Quiz for summative assessment

This is a time-constrained summative assessment, which contributes to the student credit rating for a particular module and is conducted within the university campus.

• Book the computer lab: It is recommended that you book a computer lab with 5-10% more computers than you need, this will ensure that there will be spare computers in the room in case of a computer failure. 
• Scheduling: For a large quiz during term-time, don't schedule your quiz at the top of the hour to avoid performance issues with huge numbers of students recording their attendance in Moodle.
  • Avoid scheduling quizzes on Tuesday mornings as Moodle may be unavailable each Tuesday morning between 7-9am GMT/BST for maintenance.
• Notify IT: Please make sure you inform IT as soon as you start planning the class test to:
  • discuss Exam Profile,
  • ensure that no maintenance work is scheduled for the computer labs, or near, the exam date,
  • ensure all PCs are in working order.

• Hide the Quiz: Ensure you hide the Quiz activity or set an open date while you are adding questions to it so that the questions are not presented to students in advance of the assessment.
• Get your settings right: Review the recommended settings for summative quizzes document.
• Build in extra time: Examinations of a quantitative nature should take place at a scheduled time on Moodle and have an additional half hour allowed over and above the indicative length to support technological access.
• Timing: Time the exam with the clock on the wall. Invigilator should announce the exam start and end time to students. Don't rely on the Moodle clock alone to time exams - if there is a network problem during the exam students will lose time.
• Extra time: Use the User overrides feature to grant additional time to students where required.
• Password: To avoid students being able to access your exam outside the examination cluster, you should set a password for the quiz which is only revealed to students at the start of the exam.
• Randomisation: Consider randomising the order in which questions are presented, and randomising the presented order of the answers to minimise the chance of students cheating by copying the answers of the people around them.
• New page: If you present questions in a series of pages or screens students' responses will automatically be saved at the end of each page, ensuring that their responses are not inadvertently lost. 

Contact Digital Education team via IT Self Service portal if you want your Quiz activity settings checked.

Related guidance

• Make sure your module team who are acting as invigilators are familiar with Moodle quizzes.
• Invigilators must know what the candidates are expected to do during the test so that they can spot any attempts to cheat.
• Invigilators should be active - making unannounced movements throughout the lab to check computer screens and general candidate behaviour.

• Provide practice Quiz & brief students: Provide a practice Quiz to students to familiarise them with the Quiz activity before they use a Quiz for summative assessment. Inform students of the scoring criteria, number and types of questions, any navigation constraints and the time limit.
• Logging in: Ensure that all students are enrolled on the module where the Quiz is displayed. Remind students to log into Moodle at least 2 working days before the assessment. If they are unable to log in, ask them to contact their course officer immediately.
• Test your Quiz: Before releasing the Quiz to students you should check it thoroughly and ask someone from your discipline to run through it and provide feedback. If using multiple choice questions, double-check the answers. Ensure that distractors (wrong answers) are not too obvious.
• Brief your invigilators: it is essential that you have enough invigilators to ensure that candidates are not cheating. Invigilators will need to be familiar with the Moodle environment and with your test. Use the Invigilators Checklist document as needed.
• Create a custom link: If you have large numbers of students undertaking the test, create a bit.ly custom link to the module to reduce load of students navigating the My Moodle page and selecting the module.
• Confirm with IT: Confirm date and venue and Exam Profile with IT.

Related guidance

• Do not make any changes to the Quiz activity or module in the hour before the exam begins to minimise performance issues.
• School contacts: School programme administrative support must be available to students for the duration of the window of all online examinations.
• Use Firefox: It is essential that students use Firefox for quizzes.

• Logging in: To avoid possible performance issues when large groups of students are logging into Moodle, we advise that you allow 5-10 minutes before the test for large groups to log in and ask them to stagger the logins where possible. If any students experience problems, please call IT Service Centre at  020 7040 8181 for assistance.