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Quiz: Prepare a Word Quiz for Import into the Moodle Question Bank

Moodle has an excellent quiz tool with plenty of options that make it very efficient for both you and your students. But if your questions/test are located in a Word document, you will need to spend quite a bit of time reformatting them for import into the Moodle Question Bank. 


Note: you might save yourself a ton of work by requesting the Moodle Question Bank cartridge from your textbook publisher as these tests are already formatted for import into Moodle (about 3 minutes!)
Moodle has an excellent quiz tool with plenty of options that make it very efficient for both you and your students. But if your questions/test are located in a Word document, you will need to spend quite a bit of time reformatting them for import into the Moodle Question Bank. 


Note: you might save yourself a ton of work by requesting the Moodle Question Bank cartridge from your textbook publisher as these tests are already formatted for import into Moodle (about 3 minutes!)

The first step to using the tool is to format  in EXACTLY the manner described below. You can attempt to skip these rules but you can expect missing parts or an error message and then you will have to redo it all again. 

Step 1: Correct Formatting

Below is a screenshot of exactly what your quiz file will look like when it is ready for importing into the Moodle Question Bank (QB). Below the screen shot is a tutorial of how to format your quiz. If you have a quiz that is already created as a Word document, you will need to remove formatting and save your file as a text file instead of a Word file.

Here is a Quiz Template you may use-replace the questions with your questions or revise your current Word quiz exactly as shown. The template was developed following the rules below:

  1. Rules

    1. NO numbered questions - Moodle numbers your questions upon import

    2. Questions have no formatting (you can add bold, etc. after you have imported the quiz into the Moodle QB

    3. No images-save your images as separate files and insert/copy and paste into the question after the quiz has been imported to the Moodle QB.

      image2017-2-6 11_43_20.png

  2. Example Question 1

    image2017-2-6 11_50_0.png

  3. Example Question 2

    image2017-2-6 11_52_53.png

  4. Example Question 3

    image2017-2-6 11_54_38.png

Step 2: Save Quiz as Text File for Importing into Moodle

  1. When you have removed most of the formatting as shown above, close Word saving your edited file.
  2. Open the application Notepad (you can do a search of your computer to find this standard application.
  3. Open the edited quiz file in Notepad.
  4. Save the quiz as a text file:
  5. Click on File-Save As-Save as Text-Other-Unicode 8-(or UTF 8)
  6. Save 

image2022-7-12_13-20-41.png

Step 3: Import a Quiz into Moodle

Once you have prepared your quiz properly as described above,

  1. Navigate to the course in Moodle-Administrative Block-Question Bank
  2. Organize categories with the current course so that you can import quiz questions into the correct categories.
  3. Click on Categories-Create Category (ex. Chapter 1). Create all of the categories or create a category and then import the questions for that category.
  4. In the Question Bank, click Import
    1. Choose Aiken format- General
    2. Choose Import category –ex. Chapter 1
    3. Drag and drop the quiz file into the text box to Import all of the questions in the file at once.
  5. Review for errors and hopefully you can click Continue because all questions have been 'parsed' from your text file. (Or start over-review your text file to make corrections and save changes-try again)
  6. Once imported, edit questions as needed in the Question Bank (bold, italics, etc.) Click on the tiny edit icon to the right of the question.
  7. This is also where you can add back the images before adding questions to the quiz shell

Step 4: Create Quiz Shell in Moodle

Quick Steps

  1. Go to the Topic area where you want to place the quiz
  2. Click on Add an activity or resource and scroll down in the drop down menu to Quiz- add
  3. Click on Edit Settings for the quiz and choose quiz options-save the quiz
  4. Click the link to the new quiz-Edit Quiz-**Add-**Add questions from question bank (or random)-done!

Detailed Steps and Video Tutorial

View more information about the Quiz Activity on Moodle Docs


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