Writing Moodle Questions

Moodle is the Learning Management System used on the CNT CLASS server. If you are asked to write Moodle compatible questions the preferred format for doing so is the GIFT format which can be directly imported by Moodle. The complete GIFT format documentationcan be found on The Moodle GIFT site but this should give you enough information to get started with the most popular types of questions.

Moodle Question Types

Multiple Choice Questions

A basic multiple choice question is easy to write in the GIFT format. Multiple choice questions should usually have four choices, one which is correct and three which are incorrect. The incorrect answers should be believable but definitely wrong.

A basic multiple choice example:

The text of your question goes here? {
=The correct answer
~An incorrect answer
~Another incorrect answer
~A third incorrect answer
}

How this might look with a real question:

What is a layer three network address most commonly called? {
=An IP Address
~A MAC Address
~A NetBIOS Address
~A Sector Address
}

It is better if you can provide feedback about why answers are correct or incorrect (or at least cite a book page number where the correct answer can be found. Here's an example:

What is a layer three network address most commonly called? {
=An IP Address#According to the OSI model IP Addresses are the type of address most commonly used at layer three. (p. 42)
~A MAC Address#MAC Addresses are layer two addresses (p. 42)
~A NetBIOS Address#NetBIOS addresses are not as common as IP Addresses (p. 41)
~A Sector Address#Sector addresses are used for locating data on disks, not for networking.
}

Matching Questions

With a matching question you are given the first part of a pair and asked to select the second part from a list of possible choices. For formatting purposes it is better if you put longer parts of the matched pair first and shorter parts second. Matching questions can contain any number of matched pairs, but it is generally best to have 4-6 pairs.

Example:

Match the following filesystems with their features. {
=A non-journaling popular Linux filesystem -> ext2
=A journaling popular Linux filesystem  -> ext3
=The default Windows 2000 filesystem -> NTFS
=A widely implement filesystem used in MS-DOS -> FAT
}

True/False Questions

True/False questions are easily created but should be used sparingly as they are much easier to guess the answer to.

True Statement Example:

Apple sold personal computers before IBM did.{TRUE}

False Statement Exmaple:

Al Gore invented the Internet.{FALSE}