Daniel Paul O'Donnell

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How to "clone" a test in Moodle 2.0

tags: backups, computers, digital humanities, digital pedagogy, learning management systems, lms, moodle, tips

Here’s how to clone a test in Moodle 2.0 (i.e. make an exact copy so that both appear in the course; this is useful for making practice tests or copying a basic test format so that it can be reused later in the course):

1. Backup the test. Exclude all user data but include activities, blocks, and filters.
2. Select “Restore.” Your backup should be listed under user private backups. Simply restore the file to create a second instance.
3. Treat one of the instances as your clone: move it, edit it, change its titles and questions. It is a completely independent version of the original file.

Posted: Sunday March 27, 2011. 20:23.

Last modified: Wednesday May 23, 2012. 19:27.

Organising Quizzes in Moodle 2.0

tags: computers, digital humanities, digital pedagogy, learning management systems, lms, moodle, testing, tips

Moodle 2.0 allows designers to divide questions into pages. But while this introduces great flexibility, it can be quite a cumbersome system to use at first. Here’s a method for making it more efficient:

1. When you first build a test, put all questions on one page.
2. Once you have the questions in the order you want, divide the test into different pages by selecting the last question for each page and selecting the “Begin new page after selected question.

This will cut down on your server calls (and hence time) immensely.

Posted: Sunday March 27, 2011. 20:08.

Last modified: Wednesday May 23, 2012. 19:28.

Differences between Moodle and Blackboard/WebCT short answer questions

tags: blackboard, computers, digital humanities, digital pedagogy, formats, learning management systems, lms, moodle, testing, tips, webct

There is an important difference between Moodle and Blackboard (WebCT) short answer questions that instructors should be aware of, namely that Moodle short answer questions allow only one answer field.

This means, for example, that you can’t easily import blackboard questions of the type “Supply the part of speech, person, tense, and number for the following form.” In Blackboard, you can present the student with four blanks for them to fill in, each with a different answer. When these are imported into Moodle, the question is converted into a form in which there is a single blank that has four possible correct answers.

There are various ways of asking the same kinds of questions in Moodle. The easiest when you are dealing with imported questions is to ask for a single quality in each answer. So instead of one question asking for part of speech, person, tense, and number, you might have four different questions, one for part of speech, another, for person, a third for tense, and a fourth for number.

A second way of asking this kind of question in Moodle is to use the embedded answer type. These are harder to write, but are arguably closer to the paper equivalent of the same type of question:

For the following Old English word supply the requested information:

clipode

Part of Speech: ____________
Tense: ____________
Number: ____________

Posted: Sunday March 27, 2011. 19:39.

Last modified: Wednesday May 23, 2012. 19:29.

Multiple Choice Questions in Moodle

tags: computers, digital humanities, digital pedagogy, learning management systems, lms, moodle, testing, tips

Here are some tips for the composition of Multiple Choice Questions in Moodle.

1. If students are allowed to mark more than one option correct and you intend to include at least one question where none of the offered options are correct, include as a possible answer “None of the listed options.”
   1. Do not call it “none of the above” since if (as you normally should) you have selected “shuffle answers,” you have no guarantee that it will be the final answer in the sequence.
   2. You should include this option in all questions in the set (including those for which some of the options are correct) to avoid giving the answer away when it appears.
   3. When “none of the listed options” is not the right answer, it should be scored at -100%, to avoid a student hedging his or her bets by selecting it and all the other answers.
2. If you anticipate having a question for which all the answers are correct, you do not need a “All of the listed answers,” since selecting all will give students 100%.
3. The correct options should be scored so they add up to 100%, of course!
4. Incorrect options (exclusive of other than “None of the listed forms”) can be scored in a number of different ways:
   1. So that the total for all incorrect options (except “none of the listed forms”) is -100% (this stops a student hedging his or her bets by selecting all options); if you do not have a “none of the listed options” answer, you almost certainly should score this way.
   2. So that each negative is the reciprocal of a correct answer, regardless of whether all the incorrect answers add up to -100%. Use this if you don’t mind that a student selecting everything except a “None of the listed options” might end up with part marks.

Posted: Sunday March 27, 2011. 17:15.

Last modified: Wednesday May 23, 2012. 19:32.

How to setup a signup sheet in Moodle

tags: computers, digital humanities, digital pedagogy, learning management systems, lms, moodle, tips, tutorials

You can create a signup sheet for Moodle using the “Choice” activity.

A video showing how to do this can be found here: https://ctl.furman.edu/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=78&Itemid=90

In brief, however, here’s how to do it:

1. Go to the section of your course in which you want the signup sheet to appear.
2. With editing on, select the “Choice” activity.
3. Fill in the title and description information.
4. If you are restricting attendance, set the “Limit the number of responses allowed” option under “Limit” to “enabled.” Setting this allowed you to set how many people are allowed to choice any one option. If it is disabled, any number of participants may sign up for any particular session.
5. Each “Option” represents an entry on the signup sheet. Write in the date and time (or anything else you require) in the “Option” field and, if you have enabled limits, the maximum number of participants for the entry in the “limit” field. If you need more than the standard five options, select “Add three more options” after you’ve filled in the first five.

Posted: Tuesday March 15, 2011. 13:44.

Last modified: Wednesday May 23, 2012. 19:35.