Online Quizzes, Midterms, & Exams

Important:

We ask all faculty administering online assessments (Quizzes, Midterms, Exams, etc.) through Moodle to complete the examination information form. This form includes an option for you to request assistance from the LTID team in setting up your assessment. This information will allow us to monitor our systems with our colleagues and provide support for you and your students. When submitting multiple-choice questions, please use the AIKEN format.

  • We require a minimum of five business days prior to the date of the Quiz/Midterm/Exam if you are requesting assistance in setting it up.

 

Planning Your Assessment

Logistics Planning and Important Supports

  • If you’ve set up your own online quiz or final exam in Moodle, we recommend that you either review the quiz or attempt the exam yourself to ensure there are no issues.

  • Be sure to review your quiz settings before administering:

    • Open and close times (when the quiz becomes available and when it is no longer available)

    • Time limits

    • User overrides (for students with specific accommodations)

    • If quiz questions are randomly pulled from the question bank, or if the order of questions is shuffled differently for each student

    • Navigation options for quizzes (whether all questions are on one page, or whether students can move back and forth between pages)

  • Please provide your students with sufficient information on the assessment’s criteria ahead of time, and ensure they know how to communicate with you during the exam period if they have any issues. Let them know what your expected response time is based on your workload/other exams.

  • ALL times in Moodle are presented in the ADT time zone. If you have ANY assignments, quizzes, or other activities that are time-sensitive, please make your students aware that Moodle does not adjust its times to their location.

How do I choose the right assessment tools?

Assignment Online Text: Moodle is useful for conducting short, informal activities/participation questions/informal discussion questions etc. You give students a question/problem to consider, and it provides them with a textbox and the full text editing toolbar to record an answer. You can then review these responses and provide feedback, all in Moodle.

Assignment Dropbox: This Moodle application creates secure file-exchange dropboxes between you and every student in your course. This is a great way to receive assignments of all types from students and provide them with a grade and written feedback.

Quiz: The Moodle quiz tool has numerous question types which can be customized according to the type of assessment faculty are trying to administer. It is a powerful assessment tool above and beyond what its name suggests. Many of the quiz question types are automatically graded, while some (including the essay question) must be graded manually by the instructor.

How do I create and issue quizzes in ACORN?

Detailed information about how to populate your course’s question bank, create different question types, and set your quiz’s parameters, settings and individual user overrides can be found at the Moodle Help website

If you’ve never created a Moodle quiz before, contact ltid@acadiau.ca for support.

How do I evaluate and provide feedback to students online?

Feedback from instructors to their students is one of the most important components of education. You can provide meaningful feedback to conversations happening in discussion forums or chatrooms, or on student assignments, quizzes, tests, etc.

Moodle will prompt you to provide written feedback on any assignments uploaded via the Assignment application, and any manually marked questions in Quizzes.

Using Turnitin on your assignments will allow you to annotate student work, create custom quickmark comments and record up to 3 minutes of audio feedback on student assessments.

 

During the final exam period, we extend our support coverage. LTID team members monitor the Exam Support Team in Microsoft Teams during the exam period from 9:00 am until 10:00 pm. Quiz pointers for faculty can be found at this location. There are also pointers for students.

Mixed Delivery Final Exam Considerations

  • We strongly urge faculty to be available and provide a communication protocol for students who might experience problems during their timed assessment period. For those instructors that have chosen to have an online exam during the examination period you will need to respect the exam timetable. This is necessary to avoid time conflicts for students who may be writing exams for other courses that might overlap.
  • If you have students who are entitled to extra time or are writing in a distant time zone, you can add User Overrides. Instructions can be found here.
  • Take-home examinations may be used for any course, providing the student is allowed the entire examination period to complete them, and that the completed examination is submitted to the instructor on or before the last day of the regularly scheduled examination period.