e-Learning: How To Guides

Ideally, when creating quizzes and quiz questions in Moodle you will pre-plan the structure and naming of the elements in your questionbank so that your questions are easy to identify and your quizzes simple to update.

However, the reality is that a questionbank often evolves over a period of time and questions end up falling into the default category for that unit (see Image 1). Tidying up the questionbank in your Moodle unit is fairly straightforward, just take a look at the tips below for advice on:

• creating new question categories
• moving questions to new categories
• renaming questions
• deleting questions and categories

Bear in mind that you can’t add or remove questions to a quiz once students have taken it, but you can rename the questions or alter their question category while they are still in use.

Creating new question categories

Newly created questions will have automatically been added to the ‘Default’ question category for that unit on Moodle.  As the number of quizzes and questions in your Moodle unit increases, it may be wise to manage the structure of your questionbank.  Creating a new question category is simple.

• Click on Questions (in the Administration Block) and then the Categories tab
• You will see all existing question categories and the number of questions currently in that category (see Image 2).
• Click on the ‘Parent‘ dropdown menu and choose ‘Top‘
• Name the question category
• Click on Add Category to save

• It is possible to add sub-categories once you have created Top level categories for the unit (see Image 3)
• Use the delete, edit and move icons to rearrange your question categories

Moving questions to new categories

1. To move individual questions from within the quiz itself.

• Go to the quiz in your Moodle unit
• Click on the Edit tab at the top
• For the question you want to move, click on the Edit icon (pen and paper) in the Action column
• Untick ‘Use this category‘
• Choose the new category from the dropdown list
• Click on the ‘Save changes‘ button at the bottom

2. To move individual or groups of questions from within the question bank

• Click on Questions (in the Administration Block)
• In the Action column, tick the questions to be moved
• In the ‘With selected‘ section at the bottom, use the dropdown menu to choose the new category
• Click on the ‘Move to >>‘ button

Renaming questions

If you decide to rename the quiz questions (see Image 4), your naming convention may want to include:

• author
• question type (eg multiple choice, true/false, cloze)
• topic or other identifying text
• date created

Deleting questions or categories

When you come to delete questions that are no longer needed, remember that you will not be able to do this if students have already attempted the quiz.  You will need to remove all quiz attempts before deleting.

A question category can be deleted from the Categories tab (Administration block, Questions) by clicking on the delete icon (red cross).  You will not be able to delete unless the category is empty of questions and sometimes hidden questions will prevent deletion.  To view hidden questions, click on the Questions tab, tick the checkbox for ‘Also show old questions‘ and then delete from here.