Digital Education Wiki Spaces
Accessibility — Assessment — CampusPress Guides — Digital Education — Gradescope Guides — Learning Technology Good Practice — Lecture Recording — Moodle for Learning — Moodle Baseline — Moodle How-Tos — Multimedia — Student Online Learning — Zoom
General guidance for online assessments delivered using the Quiz activity
- Eoin Meade
- Athina Chatzigavriil (Unlicensed)
IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS GUIDANCE PLEASE EMAIL Eden.Digital@lse.ac.uk
- 1 Introduction
- 2 A. Ensure students have access (are enrolled) on the Moodle course
- 3 B. Communicate to your students the requirements of their assessment
- 4 C. Create and set-up a Quiz activity (for time limited assessment to be taken at any time within a 24-hour period)
- 4.1 1. Set up the Quiz
- 4.1.1 1.1. General
- 4.1.2 1.2. Timing
- 4.1.3 1.3. Grade
- 4.1.4 1.4. Layout
- 4.1.5 1.5. Question behaviour
- 4.1.6 1.6. Common module settings
- 4.1.7 1.7. Restrict access - Date
- 4.1.8 1.8 Restrict Access - Group
- 4.2 2. Add an Essay question to the quiz, and attach the Assessment paper and instructions to candidates and the Coversheet for submission
- 4.3 3. Make the Quiz activity visible to students
- 4.4 4. Set up a Quiz for previous year students (i.e. if they are examined in a different paper)
- 4.5 5. Providing for students with Central Exam Adjustments (CEAs)
- 4.6 6. Set up a dummy/practice Quiz
- 4.1 1. Set up the Quiz
- 5 D. Student guides
Introduction
The aim of this guide is to provide you with all the information required to prepare for:
Time limited assessment to be taken at any time within a 24-hour window
If you need to set up a 24-hour assessments, 48-hour assessments, 72-hour assessments, One-week assessments, Two-week assessments, Three-week assessment, Longer coursework pieces or Time limited assessments with a common start/finish time for all students, please visit General guidance for online assessments delivered using the Assignment activity.
Note
The Moodle Assignment activity is not equipped to support time limited assessment to be taken at any time within a 24-hour window, (i.e. the clock starts ticking once students access the assessment questions and they must submit their answer within 3 hours).
This functionality is only available in Moodle Quizzes. Therefore, you must use the Quiz activity to support time limited assessment to be taken within a 24-hour period.
For more information on using the Quiz activity, including how to bulk download essay questions, please see our Quiz guidance.
Important note
Departmental staff setting up online assessments on Moodle course(s), must ensure that the Assignment submission link appears in an appropriate place on the Moodle page (where the students can easily locate and identify it).
Departmental staff are required to configure settings, check that all students are enrolled, apply restrictions etc. and upload all the relevant information (i.e. Assessment paper, instructions to candidates etc.)
Please read the instructions below carefully, regardless of your familiarity with Moodle. Some settings are designed to increase the security of the uploaded ‘Assessment paper’, and ensure the smooth running of the online assessment.
Assessment readiness checklist
About this checklist
This checklist is a quick reference of important actions.
By going through this checklist, you should feel reassured that you have taken all the right steps to prepare your assessment submission links in Moodle and to support your students taking online assessments.
Revisit the checklist once you have prepared your assessment links, for a final check-up.
Quick checklist:
Have you checked that all students (registered, deferred, resit etc.) who should take the assessment are enrolled into the Moodle course and have the correct role (i.e. Student or Auditing Student)?
Have you communicated to your students the assessment guidance (including details of the support available during the assessment period)?
Have you uploaded the ‘Assessment paper and instructions to candidates' and the 'Coversheet for submission’ to the Moodle Quiz(zes)?
Have you included the Academic Integrity Statement to the Essay type question?
Have you updated the Moodle Quiz settings ('Open the quiz from' date and time/ & ‘Close the quiz' date and time) with the time set to the relevant time (UK time)?
Have you added the ‘Restrict access’ criterion based on the ‘Open the quiz from’ date and time?
Have you created the Groups to restrict access?
Have you added the ‘Restrict access criterion’ based on Groups?
Where required, have you created separate Moodle Quizzes, for deferred, resit etc students (i.e. students who are required to answer different assessment questions)?
Have you created a dummy/practice Quiz for your students to practice submitting, reduce anxiety and identify any technical/other problems?
Have you informed your students about an alternative submission method (e.g. programme email address) in case of technical difficulties? (See sample template for wording below).
Have you built in additional time for preparing the files for upload where appropriate? (See sample template for wording).
Have you informed your students of the relevant guides for this assessment? We have produced the following student guides:
A. Ensure students have access (are enrolled) on the Moodle course
Important: Students must be enrolled in the relevant Moodle course to be able to access and submit their assessments.
Note
Moodle automatically enrols students to their relevant Moodle courses (i.e. from the information in LSE For You).
However, you may have students who are not enrolled in LSE for You for the current year, for example, deferred, resit students etc.
These students must either be manually enrolled in Moodle courses by departmental staff or allowed to self enrol.
Manage enrolments
Important:
It is important that students are enrolled into the correct Moodle course(s) to allow them to submit their assessments. Students who are not enrolled in the correct Moodle course(s) will not be able to submit assessments.
This is particularly critical for the Quizzes because we recommend that you add an access restrictions based on Groups to preserve the integrity of the assessment.
You must also check that students only have either the Student or Auditing Student role. If they have any other role, it may compromise the integrity of the assessment.
To check students are enrolled on the Moodle course, follow the steps below.
Log into Moodle and go to the course you want to check.
On the Administration block, at the left hand side of the screen, use the arrow icon in front of Users to expand and see the available options. Click Enrolled users.
You will now see all the enrolled Participants. Ensure all the students who will take the assessment are listed on this screen.
Important
Students who self enrol to courses are listed with the role Auditing student.
Both the Student and Auditing student roles have the same permissions. The difference in titles refers only to the method by which they were enrolled on the course.
Any student can self enrol to any course, when self enrolment is enabled (see below)
If you need to manually enrol a student, click on the Enrol users button, and search for the student you want to add, assigning them the role Student.
If you need to manually remove any student(s), use the bin icon, next to a student's name as shown below.
If you have a very high number of students, you may want to download a spreadsheet to check out the enrolled students
If you notice that a student has a role that they shouldn’t have (e.g. Teacher or Teacher (Editor) you should remove this role (see below).
To remove a role from a student, click on the pencil icon next to the role.
Click the 'x' in the blue box of the role you wish to remove and then click on the disc icon to save your changes.
B. Communicate to your students the requirements of their assessment
Important
It is very important that you clearly communicate with your students the requirements of each of their assessments.
If you intend to communicate these through Moodle Announcements, it is vital that the right students are enrolled on the relevant Moodle course (see section above). All Moodle courses come with anAnnouncements forum which you can use to notify students of important information. Messages posted to this forum are also sent as emails to each enrolled student.
Recommendation
Important information to communicate includes:
what support is available, including departmental contact details
what to do in the event of being unable to upload to Moodle
anything else you think necessary
It is important that you communicate any information to your students as soon as possible, to minimise anxiety and confusion during their online assessment.
C. Create and set-up a Quiz activity (for time limited assessment to be taken at any time within a 24-hour period)
In this section you will find detailed information on creating and setting up the Quiz activity for your assessment. Please read it carefully. If you are unable to find the information you need please email Eden.Digital@lse.ac.uk.
Important
The Moodle Quiz activity, rather than the more commonly used Assignment activity, supports time limited assessment to be taken at any time within a 24-hour window, (i.e. the clock starts ticking once students access the assessment questions and they must submit their answer within 3 hours).
However, there are some limitations to this solution. Please read the table below to ensure that you are familiar with these limitations.
Criteria | Quiz activity |
|---|---|
Anonymous marking (hides the identity of students) | Not Possible |
Use of Turnitin | Not Possible
|
Submission Statement (the School’s Academic integrity statement) | Not Possible |
Information
You will create a Quiz, with one Essay type question within it.
The Assessment paper and instructions to candidates and the Coversheet for submission must be attached in the description of the Essay question.
Both files will be available for download after students start their Quiz attempt (at which point the clock starts ticking and students must submit their response within the specified time limit).
Below you will find step-by-step instructions on how to set up the Quiz.
1. Set up the Quiz
Log into Moodle and navigate to the course where you want to create the Quiz (e.g. XX100).
Turn editing on
Go to the section where you want to add the Quiz, and click Add an activity or resource. Make sure both the Section and the Quiz are easy for students to locate within the course.
In the Add an activity or resources pop-up window, select Quiz and click Add.
The Quiz activity should appear in an appropriate place on the Moodle page (where the students can easily locate and identify it).
The instructions below take you through all the Quiz settings available and the changes required.
1.1. General
In General, provide a meaningful Name for the quiz.
Note: Provide a descriptive Quiz name especially if you need to create a second Quiz link for a different group of students (i.e. deferred, resit students etc.). The Quiz names should clearly signpost to students the assessment(s) relevant to them, i.e.
Timed Assessment ZZ100 - 2019/20 Students
Timed Assessment ZZ100 - 2018/19 Deferred students
Add a Description to provide students with the required information.
VERY IMPORTANT GUIDANCE FOR STUDENTS TAKING THIS TYPE OF ASSESSMENT
Students must be clearly informed of the time limit they have to complete their assessment (e.g. 3.5 hours within the 24-hour window), and the fact that they must submit within the allotted time limit.
For time limited assessments with a duration of less than 24 hours, you should clearly indicate the time allocated for the assessment and the additional time granted to accommodate preparation of the submitted file(s) where required (i.e. scanned images of handwritten answers combined in a single file etc.).
For example, for an assessment of 3 hours time limit and 30mins preparation time we recommend the following sample text in the Quiz Description.
SAMPLE TEXT – Please adapt as necessary
“This assessment is open for 24-hours and you will have 3.5 hours to complete and submit it from the moment you start.
You are advised to spend no more than 3 h 0 min completing this assessment.
You have been granted an additional 30 min to prepare and upload your work on Moodle. Please use your time as instructed to avoid a late submission.
Note: Starting an attempt with less than 3.5 hours remaining in the 24-hour window will reduce the time you have available (i.e. accessing the assessment questions 2 hours before the 24hour deadline, gives you only 2 hours to complete the assessment).
You will be able to access the Assessment paper and instructions to candidates and the Coversheet for submission when you start your timer by clicking 'Attempt quiz now'.
From the point you click 'Attempt quiz now' you start your 3.5 hour time limit! Your answers must be uploaded and submitted within the 3.5 hours.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Make sure you DO NOT exceed your time limit. The Quiz activity in Moodle DOES NOT accept late submissions, therefore it is important that you upload your answers before the time expires. Because internet connectivity can be unreliable, you should not wait until the last minute to begin uploading your answer.
If you experience any problems uploading on Moodle, OR you are unsure you submitted successfully through the Quiz, OR you are concerned you may have missed the deadline please email your file (answers) to Joe Bloggs at J.Bloggs@lse.ac.uk as soon as possible.
Please note that you are subject to incurring late penalties if you submit your assessment late.
DTS Tech Support is available for general technology issues (i.e. browser issues etc), and general technical queries.
See the student guide on how to Submit/upload your assessment on Moodle (for time limited assessments to be taken within a 24-hour window).
When you are ready click Attempt quiz now. Remember your timer will start and will be displayed as soon as you click on this button.“
1.2. Timing
In Timing, make sure you set up the correct Open the quiz date and time, and the correct Close the quiz date and time.
Time limit - set this as appropriate. The time limit is the total time allowed (e.g. 3.5 hours), including both the time allowed for complete the assessment (e.g. 3 hours) and the the time allowed to prepare and upload submissions (e.g. 30 minutes).
When time expires - set this to “Attempts must be submitted before time expires, or they are not counted.”
IMPORTANT: It is NOT possible to enable a grace period when using a single Essay question. in the way we use the Quiz for assessment periods (i.e. a single Essay question). It is only applicable if there are multiple questions, in particular non essay type ones.
STUDENTS MUST SUBMIT WITHIN THE TIME LIMIT! To allow for cases where a student fails to upload their file (answers) within the quiz’s allotted time limit, they MUST be advised to email their file to a departmental email address as soon as possible. See Description in General above.
1.3. Grade
In Grade, set the number of Attempts allowed to '1'.
1.4. Layout
New page - set to 'Never, all questions on one page'
Navigation method - set to 'Sequential'.
1.5. Question behaviour
In Question behaviour, set Shuffle within questions to ‘No’.
Leave Review options, Appearance, Safe Exam Browser, Extra restrictions on attempts, and Overall feedback all to their default settings.
1.6. Common module settings
Important
Until you have completed the Restrict access settings below, you need to keep the Availability setting below to Hide from students
This hides the Quiz link from the course’s homepage and students cannot access it.
Availability - keep this set to ‘Hide from students.’
Group mode - keep this set to ‘No groups.’
1.7. Restrict access - Date
IMPORTANT: To ensure that the Assessment paper file is not accidentally released to students prior to the release time, and that it remains hidden from the students up until then, we highly recommend that you add the additional security criterion (i.e. restrict access until that date and time).
In Restrict access, set up an access restriction to ensure the Quiz link is not accessible from course’s homepage up until the set Open the quiz date and time.
Click Add restriction…
Click Date from the pop-up window that appears.
Set the Date criterion. You must select the same Date and time as the Open the quiz date and time you entered in the Timing section above.
Note:
The eye icon to the left of the Date information is a toggle with two states: the eye is either open (as above) or appears with a strikethrough.
With the eye open (recommended), the Quiz activity will be shown as greyed out on the course’s home page but students will not be able to access the activity until the date restrictions allow. It may be reassuring to students to be able to locate their assessments within Moodle courses in advance (similar to how students might locate an exam hall in advance of an exam).
If you toggle the eye icon so it appears with a strikethrough (not recommended), it will completely hide the Quiz activity from the course’s homepage until the date restrictions allow.
Whichever option you choose, the activity will become fully visible and accessible as soon as the date restriction criterion is met.
1.8 Restrict Access - Group
Important
Because some students may be enrolled on the course but not be due to sit the assessment (e.g. students who self-enrolled), we recommend that you also restrict access to the Quiz to only those students due to sit the assessment.
This helps to preserve the integrity of the assessment by preventing any other students accessing the paper early in the 24 hour window and sharing it with students due to sit the assessment later in the window.
This section provides guidance on how to set up a Group in Moodle, and restrict access to the Quiz to the specific students entitled to take the quiz only. If you have a Quiz for deferred, resit etc students (see Section 4 below, you will also have to create a Group for them, and apply the restriction to any of their Quizzes.
Step 1. Create a Group (e.g. a group that contains all the current year students)
In the Administration block, on the left hand side of the screen, use the arrow icon 'v' in front of Users to expand and see the available options. Click Groups.
Click Create group.
In Group name provide a meaningful name for your group (e.g. Group - All current year students), and click Save changes.
Once the group is created, click Add/remove users
Select the users from the potential users list and click Add. Then click Back to Groups.
You will see the number of members of the group you created, within the brackets.
Step 2. Apply the Group restriction to the Quiz
Go back to the Quiz to edit its setting, and scroll down to the Restrict Access section, where you previously added the Date restriction.
In the same way, you previously added the Date restriction, click on Add restriction… and this time select Group.
Select the group you created (e.g. Group - All current year students).
Scroll down and click Save and return to course.
Note: The Quiz activity will not be accessible but it will be shown as greyed out on the course’s home page. This may help to reassure students who wish to know in advance where they will find their assessment once the assessment opens - in the same way that students often wish to locate an exam hall in advance of an exam. The link will become fully visible and accessible as soon as both the date and group criteria are met.
2. Add an Essay question to the quiz, and attach the Assessment paper and instructions to candidates and the Coversheet for submission
From the course homepage, click on the Quiz activity
The Quiz activity is empty until you add a question. Click Edit quiz.
Expand the ‘Add v’ menu and select + a new question
From the question type pop-up window, choose Essay and click Add.
The Editing an Essay question form appears.
Under General:
Add a Question name
In the Questions text box, provide students with the necessary instructions for their assessment and link to the .
IMPORTANT: You must add instructions and link the Assessment paper and instructions to candidates, the Coversheet for submission and the School’s Academic Integrity statement in the Question text box.
It is not possible to have a tick box for the School’s Academic integrity statement in the Quiz activity. Considering students are required to accept the statement, please include it within the Questions text. You can copy/paste the text below, with the note that students, by submitting their work, accept the statement.
To link the Assessment paper and instructions to candidates, and the Coversheet for submission, highlight the sentence you want to make a link, as shown below and click on the link icon of the HTML editor.
In the pop-up window, tick the box next to Open in new window. This will open the linked documents in a new browser window/tab. This allows students to have both the Assessment paper and instructions to candidates and the quiz timer open at the same time.
Click on Browse repositories…
On the File picker pop-up window, ensure Upload a file is selected, then click Browse…, to browse the file you want to Open from your computer. Then click Upload this file.
The linked text is highlighted in red, as shown below.
In the same way, you can link the Coversheet for submission.
Recommendation: We recommend that you upload the Assessment paper and instructions to candidates in PDF format, to maintain accurate formatting of the original paper, and the Coversheet for submission in MS Word format, to make it easier for students to edit this file as required.
Under Response Options:
Response format - set to ‘No online text’.
Allow attachments - set to ‘Unlimited’ (to account for the fact that students are expected to submit the Coversheet for submission with their answers and any other files as may be required, e.g. scanned images, photographed diagrams, Letter of Notification (LoN) etc.)
Require attachments - set this to at least ‘1'.
Leave all other settings at their defaults settings, and click Save changes.
On the screen that appears, set both the grade of the question and the Maximum grade to 100. This is not necessary, but considering you have to enter a grade you can enter 100.
Go back to the homepage and the link appears as below (hidden):
3. Make the Quiz activity visible to students
Note: Now that you have completed the Restrict Access section it is safe to make the Quiz visible to students. While visible, it will remain unavailable to students (i.e. they cannot access it until the release date).
From the course homepage, use the Quiz’s Edit drop-down menu, and click Show.
The Quiz activity on the course homepage appears as below. As you can see it will remain greyed out for students (i.e. not available) because of the restrict access date criterion added.
4. Set up a Quiz for previous year students (i.e. if they are examined in a different paper)
Note: If you have students who have deferred, or are resitting and who are required to answer a different paper than current year students, you must create a different Quiz link for these student.
Create the second Quiz and apply the same settings as the ones you applied above.
IMPORTANT: For the second and/or any additional Quizzes you have to create, you MUST create a new Essay type question from scratch and attach the alternative Assessment paper and instructions to candidates file, and the Coversheet for submission. DO NOT reuse and update the Essay type question you created for your first Quiz. Doing this will result in both (or all) Quizzes having the same Assessment paper and instructions to candidates.
The Issue: If you need to provide two quizzes with different papers (e.g. Paper A for current students and Paper B for deferred students), it is vitally important that if you have duplicated the first Quiz activity, that you do not simply amend the Essay type question within the duplicate quiz, i.e. attach Paper B instead of Paper A. By doing so, you would, in effect, be setting Paper B as the paper for both Quizzes. Instead you need to delete the Essay Type Question in the duplicate quiz and create a new one with Paper B attached from scratch. Please email Eden.Digital@lse.ac.uk if you want further clarification.
You will need to name the Quizzes in a way that clearly signposts to students that the assessment is relevant to them and not other groups (e.g. Resit 2019/20 year students).
In addition, you need to add a date restriction (see 1.7 Restrict Access - Date above), create a Group for them and restrict access to the the quiz to this group (see 1.8 Restrict Access - Group above).
Some departments choose to to create Quiz activities for deferred students on separate Moodle courses (e.g. a dedicated Departmental page). If you choose to do this, DO NOT forget to enrol the deferred students. Automatic enrolments only apply to current year teaching courses.
5. Providing for students with Central Exam Adjustments (CEAs)
Note: Note: If you have students with CEAs taking 24-hour assessments, 48-hour assessments, 72-hour assessments, One-week assessments, Two-week assessments, Three-week assessment or Longer coursework pieces type of assessments, you don't have to do anything. The School has agreed that the above types of assessments already cover CEAs. Therefore, no adjustment will be necessary for these students.
For Time limited assessments with a common start/finish time for all students (using the Assignment activity) and Time limited assessments to be taken at any time within a 24-hour window (delivered using the Quiz activity) you need to apply additional time where required. Please email the Student Services team if you have queries in advance of any assessment.
6. Set up a dummy/practice Quiz
Recommendation:
We highly recommend that you set up a Quiz to replicate exactly how your students will access and take their assessment.
From the students' perspective this will give them the opportunity to practice taking the Quiz/assessment and follow the necessary steps (e.g. create and submit a requested file format, produce a single file in a specific format (if required), practice embedding images (if required)).
It will reduce anxiety and help students identify any problems/questions they may have prior to the real submission.
It may also help you identify any gaps in your instructions.
D. Student guides
Eden Digital has produced the following student guides:
Related content
These pages are created by the LSE Digital Education Team and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License CC BY-SA 4.0