Administer take-home exams in Moodle: Quiz or assignment?
Last updated: December 13, 2023, 9:28 p.m.
Summary
Moodle has two activities you can use to administer a take-home exam: Assignment and Quiz. Generally speaking, Assignment is appropriate for written assessment such as essays, learning journals, final papers etc., which requires manual grading and a longer time frame (days or even weeks) for completion. Quiz is better suited for closed-book tests, supports a variety of question types, and grades automatically, with the exception of the Essay question type, which needs to be graded by human markers.
Assignment and Quiz can both be set up for administering take-home exams. This quick guide will help you determine which one is a better fit and give you a general idea of how to set it up.
Glossary
Window of time: The time frame during which the exam is available to all students (from hours to days). In Quiz settings, this means the time between Open and Close date. In Assignment, this refers to the Available from and the cut-of date.
Timed exam: Students have a certain amount of time to complete the exam, usually a window of few hours.
Untimed exam: Students are given a window of time to complete the exam and can start and complete any time within the window.
Time limit: The time between when a student starts and finishes the exam. In Quiz settings, it is called Time limit. In Assignment, it is equivalent to the time between when the Assignment is made available and the Cutoff date. Assignment settings do not distinguish between time limit and a window of time.
Due date and Cutoff date in Assignment: The due date (date and time) is when students are expected to submit their assignment. After the due date, students are still able to submit, but it will be marked late. The cut off date (and time), if defined, will prevent students from submitting after the designated time. For exams, you may want to skip the due date buffer, and only set the cutoff date as the close time. However, if you want to allow an extra few minutes in the instance of technical glitches, you may consider making using a due date and a cut off date (at 15 minutes after the due date).
Comparison of Assignment and Quiz for take-home exams
Following is a summary table of key differences between Assignment and Quiz for the administration of take-home exams.
Feature |
Assignment |
Quiz |
|---|---|---|
Exam distribution |
Option1: Write all questions in one Word processing document and attach the file in Assignment for students to download when the exam starts Option 2: Write all your questions in the Description box in Assignment settings (Good for exams with fewer questions) |
Option 1: Enter questions in Moodle Question bank (one by one or section by section) and then add to Quiz Option 2: Import questions (from a specially formatted document) into Moodle Question bank and then add to Quiz |
Answering questions |
For option 1: Students download the exam paper, enter responses and upload to Moodle For option 2: Students enter responses to all questions in a text editor in Moodle (no download or upload required) |
Type and edit answers in text boxes in Moodle |
Timing set up |
Allow submission start time, due date and cutoff date. Cutoff date can be used to set exam close time after which no submission will be accepted. |
Set time limit within a window of time (students can start the exam any time within the open/close time frame but have to submit within the time limit) |
Exam security for students |
If a student fails to submit the completed exam paper before the exam closes (the cutoff date), there is no way to determine whether and how much he or she has completed. The exam will not count for that student. |
Instructor can set up Quiz to auto submit for students once time runs out. So even if they do not click the “Submit all and finish” button, responses completed will be captured by the system. |
Collection and grading of exams |
Instructor can bulk download completed exam papers, grade off line and bulk upload corrected exams to return to individual students |
Student responses are entered in Moodle and instructor will assess student work in Moodle (You can download all student responses in a spreadsheet, but need to reformat to make them easily readable) |
Grading method |
Manual grading; Semi auto-grading if you created rubrics or marking guide (suitable for a single essay assessment) |
Manual grading for essay questions and auto grading for other question types |
Rubrics and marking guide |
Built-in rubrics and marking guide template for ease of grading and feedback |
No built-in rubrics or marking guide template
|
Group submissions |
Allow group submissions |
No group submission feature |
Scenarios
Timed, inflexible start time: Quiz
If your exam is timed (e.g. 3 hours) and starts at the same time for all students, theoretically both Assignment and Quiz can work for you. However, for timed exams, it is safer to use Quiz in case students are not able to submit on time due to technical glitches. Quiz can automatically submit what students have completed before time expires. With Assignment, the system cannot prove whether a student completed the exam within the time limit, neither with the file upload option nor the online text option. Students are not able to submit after the exam closes (Cutoff date) unless you accept late submissions by setting up a Due date.
In addition, if your exam contains a mixture of essay questions and other question types that can be computer graded, using Quiz will save you some grading time.
For timed online exams, it is recommended that you give students at least 15 minutes’ buffer to start the exam. That is to say, although all students are given the same amount of time to complete the exam, those who are late for no more than 15 minutes will have an equal chance to finish the exam on time. With Quiz, this can be easily set up using the timing settings.
If you decide to use Assignment, keep in mind that Assignment cannot auto track the time between when a student starts and finishes the exam, so the 15 minutes extra time will actually be bonus time for students who start right on time, which is fine given the current circumstances.
Timed, flexible start time: Quiz
This scenario is the same as Scenario 1 except that you want to give students the flexibility to start the exam at any time within a longer time frame (e.g. 24-48 hours). For example, you want to open your exam at 9:00 AM, April 16th and close it at 9:00 AM April 17th, with a time constraint of 3 hours. In this case, Quiz is your only option. Assignment does not support such flexibility in timing.
Untimed: Assignment or Quiz
If your exam is untimed, both Assignment and Quiz can work for you. You can choose either based on your preferred features listed in the comparison table above. With Quiz, make sure you set the open and close time to reflect the duration you will grant students for completing your exam. There is no need to set a Time limit in Quiz as this will be the same as the duration between the open and close time. With Assignment, you will set the Cutoff date as the time for closing your exam (no submission will be accepted after this time). The moment you make the Assignment available to students will be the start of your exam. If you want to give a buffer time, use the Due date as your deadline and use the Cutoff date as the absolute deadline.
How-to
Note: these instructions are for Moodle 3.9.
1. Add an Assignment activity.
2. In the settings of the Assignment, set the Cutoff date to be your exam close time (no need to set submission start time; for Due date; set this only if you want to give a buffer and accept late submissions up to the cut off date).
3. In Submission types: check File if you want students to submit their responses in a file or Check Online text if you want them to submit via a text box in Moodle. If you would like to assess oral presentations, check Online Poodl to allow students to record audio submissions.
4. Select the appropriate Feedback types. If you intend to return corrected exam papers to students, select Feedback files. If you want to leave some general feedback, select Feedback comments. If no feedback is intended, leave all options unchecked.
Tip: If unsure at the time of setting up the assignment, check all feedback types, and you can decide when it comes time to mark.
5. In Submission settings: make sure "No" is selected for Require students to click the submit button. This way, students can delete and resubmit a new/revised version as long as the Assignment is still open for submission.
6. To set a time to make the assignment available to students, you can add a Date restriction under Restrict Access.
Alternatively, you can immediately hide the Assignment from students and manually make it available to students at the appropriate time. Do not add the questions until you have hidden the activity from students.
Note: The start time you set in the Availability section only constrains the time when students can submit their exams, not when they can access your attached file(s). This is why you need to either restrict access or hide the Assignment.
7. Write the Questions in the Assignment Description or write them in an attached document that they must download, complete and submit.
Students upload the completed exam paper by the exam close time via Assignment submission.
Note: If you want to release student grades all at the same time, you can hide the grades by going to the Actions menu in the top-hand-corner of your course page. From the Actions menu, select Gradebook setup. Click on Edit opposite to the assignment you want to hide. A drop-down menu will appear. From the drop-down menu, select Hide. The grade item's color will be dimmed to indicate the item is now hidden. When you are ready to release the grades, come back here and select Show.
1. Create a category in the Question bank to house your exam questions.
2. Add questions to the category one by one as separate questions, or enter two or three related essay questions as one Essay type question for students to answer in one entry box (or import all your questions into the Question bank from a specially formatted document).
3. Add a Quiz activity.
4. Set the Open and Close time.
Note: For timed exams, give at least 15 minutes extra time to allow late students enough time to complete the exam.
5. Set the time limit. For timed exams, this is the time between open and close time minus the extra 15 minute. No need to set this up for untimed exams as this will be the same time lapse as the time between the open and close times.
6. Select 'Open attempts are submitted automatically for When time expires'. This ensures student attempted responses will be submitted even if the student forgets or fails to submit the quiz manually.
7. Under Grade, set Attempts allowed to be One.
8. Under Review options, make sure all the active checkboxes next to The attempt are unchecked across the columns if you do not want students to see the questions again after they submit all and finish.
9. Under Review options, make sure all the active checkboxes next to Marks are unchecked across the columns if you have essay questions and do not want students to see their grades as you grade them. You can release all student grades simultaneously when you are done grading by coming back to tick the Marks checkbox under After the quiz is closed.
10. Save the settings and Add your questions from the Question bank (If you have set the Open time properly, you shouldn’t worry about students seeing the questions ahead of time; if you want to be absolutely sure, hide the Quiz before adding questions. You can also switch to the student role to check if they can see the questions if you do not hide the Quiz).
Note: that if you have students with disabilities in your class who need extended time to complete the exam, you can extend individual students' exam time by selecting the User overrides feature in the Actions menu on the Quiz summary page.