---
title: "Quiz Setup and Overrides"
canonical: "https://helpcentre.macewan.ca/space/ETS/2632122394/Quiz%20Setup%20and%20Overrides"
format: markdown
---
**AUDIENCE: ****FACULTY**** | ****STAFF**
## Introduction
Quizzes in mêskanâs are highly customizable. If correctly configured, they can be used to evaluate student learning in several ways, and you can record the grades directly into the gradebook and provide feedback effectively.
The first step is to create a quiz. Once a quiz exists, questions are added. These two processes are *entirely separate and distinct*.
## Creating a Quiz – Beginning of Process
To create a Quiz, first, turn **Edit mode** on. This toggle is in the upper-right corner of the main course page.
Next, choose which section or topic you want to create your quiz in. In this example, a quiz will be added to **Topic 7**. (Hopefully, your sections have more descriptive names!)
Click on **+ Activity or resource**.
On the screen that appears, find the **Quiz** icon and click on it.
## General
On the screen that opens, give your quiz a **Name**. You have the option to add a **Description** as well. This can be used to share information about the quiz with students, either in the days leading up to the quiz or on the quiz itself. If you want to share information before the day of the quiz, be sure you select the **Display description on course page** option.
You can set the time that a quiz opens, when it closes, and how long students have to complete the quiz. For example, you may open the quiz for a five-hour window, but you may only allow students 45 minutes within that window to complete the quiz. In the same menu, you can choose what happens if time expires before the student is finished writing the quiz. The default setting (Open attempts are submitted automatically) is the most forgiving option.
> ℹ️ **NOTE**: The **Close the quiz** setting overrides **Time limit** setting. For example, a student who begins a quiz with a 1-hour time limit 5 minutes before the **Close the quiz** time expires will only have 5 minutes to complete the quiz.
## Grade
Choose which **Grade category** in the gradebook you want the grade from this quiz to be added to. (See the **Gradebook Setup** tutorial for help on how to insert grade categories into the gradebook.) It is unnecessary to set a **Grade to pass** unless you need it as a completion setting for another reason. You can also choose the number of **Attempts allowed **and, if you choose more than one attempt, which grade to report to the gradebook (highest, average, first, or last attempt) under **Grading method**.
## Layout
The **New page** menu determines how many questions appear on each page. Ignore it. This is best done on the quiz editing page after composing the quiz. Click **Show more…** to open a setting in the **Navigation method** menu that allows you to limit the student’s ability to move back and forth in a quiz. **Free** will enable students to navigate forward and backward through the quiz. **Sequential** means that once students leave a page, they cannot return to it. Recommend not using **Sequential** unless there is a specific need. If you do use it, make it abundantly clear to students that you have chosen this setting and why.
## Question behaviour
**Shuffle within questions **– This does not turn the “shuffle” feature on but allows you to turn this option on later, on a question-by-question basis, as you compose questions.
**How questions behave** – Leave at **Deferred feedback** unless you want to provide feedback immediately after each question is answered (i.e., while students are still writing the quiz).
**Show more… Each attempt builds on the last** – If selected, each time a student writes the quiz, the correct answers will be left as correct, and the student will be given another chance to answer the incorrect questions. Best for use in mastery learning situations.
## Review options
These options dictate if, when, and what information is released to students regarding their quizzes. Please note that a variety of options are available within each broad setting.
**During the attempt** – This is only relevant if the quiz allows multiple attempts, and students are shown feedback to inform their later attempts. For this to be possible, you must also set and enable a time to **Open the quiz**, which is set in the **Timing** section, near the top of the quiz settings page.
**Immediately after the attempt** – It is possible for students to review their attempt only for the first two minutes after they submit their quiz attempt. Classmates may still be writing their quizzes, which is a quiz security concern.
**Later, while the quiz is still open** – Students can review the quiz after submitting it, but the quiz is still available to their classmates, which is a quiz security concern.
**After the quiz is closed** – This is probably the most common setting. For this to be possible, you must set and enable a time to **Close the quiz**, which is set in the **Timing** section, near the top of the quiz settings page.
Recommended settings for **Review options **are shown below. Note that only **Marks** and **Overall feedback** are selected.
> ℹ️ **NOTE**: If you leave **The attempt** selected in **After the quiz is closed**, students will have access all parts of all questions in the quiz including the answers. Don’t check **The attempt** if you want the option of reusing any part of the quiz in the future!
## Appearance
The options here are self-explanatory, but not all options are immediately visible. Click **Show more...** to open the option to display blocks (the frames normally on the right side of the mêskanâs screen) during the quiz. You may want to display the blocks if there are resources that you want available to students during the quiz. Otherwise, leave at the default setting of **No**.
## Extra restrictions on attempts
**Require Password - **If you specify a password here, then participants must enter the same password before they are allowed to attempt the quiz. This is useful for giving only a selected group of students access to the quiz.
The **Require network** **address** and **Browser security** settings are mostly attempts at quiz security from older versions of Moodle; they are unlikely to be used.
** **If **Enforced delay between 1st and 2nd attempts** is enabled, a student must wait for the specified time to elapse before being able to attempt the quiz a second time.
## Overall feedback
This function allows you to provide global feedback to students based on their grades. For example, if students earn a grade of 90% to 100%, they get a particular feedback message; if they get a grade of 80% to 89%, they get a different feedback message, and so on. You can customize the number and values of the feedback ranges and the feedback messages. The upper and lower grade boundaries are set at 100% and 0%, respectively, but you can define a range(s) within those outer limits. Note that you must enter the percent sign after the number.
## Common module settings
The most likely option you will need here is **Availability**, which determines whether or not the quiz can be seen on the course page.
The **Availability** setting works with the **Timing** settings to control student access to the quiz. For a quiz to be visible, the **Availability** must be set to **Show on course page**. For a quiz to be attempted, the timing conditions must also be met (i.e., students must access the quiz between the quiz’s Open and Close times). Please note that if a quiz’s **Availability** is set to **Hide from students**, they will not be able to write the quiz, regardless of the **Timing** settings.
**Note:** The **Show** or **Hide** setting is also available on the main course page. After a quiz’s initial creation, the main page is the most common place to change a quiz’s availability setting. You should set **Availability** to *Hide from students* at least until you finish writing the quiz.
Those settings can be adjusted in the Group mode menu if you are using group evaluations.
## Restrict access
These settings allow you to limit students’ ability to access the quiz based on a variety of criteria:
- **Date** – This can be useful for giving daily or weekly quizzes. At the beginning of the term, a series of quizzes can be uploaded, access dates set, and the quizzes then make themselves available or unavailable according to your settings. This requires some front-end work from you, but the quizzes will essentially administer themselves through the rest of the term.
- **Grade** – This is similar to **Activity completion**, but a particular grade is required on other work before the quiz becomes available.
- **User profile** – This allows you to limit access to the quiz based on the characteristics of students’ user profiles, which can be helpful if the quiz is intended only for a subset of your students.
- **Restriction set** – allows you to combine the other restriction criteria to create complex restrictions.
- **Activity completion **– You can set what criteria (if any) will be used to determine if students have “completed” this quiz. You don't need to use this functionality unless there is a specific reason to do otherwise.
When you click the Add restriction button, you will see this menu:
From here, you can set restrictions on accessing the quiz.
## Tags
Instructors can create tags to allow searching and categorizing of course material.
## Creating the Quiz – End of Process
After you have made all of your choices for the options up to this point, click the **SAVE AND DISPLAY** button.
You will be brought to the screen shown below.
You now have a quiz with no questions. To begin adding questions, click on **Add question**.
Clicking **Add question** will bring you to the page below, where you can begin adding questions to your quiz. The process of adding questions to a quiz is detailed in the ***Quizzes: Question Bank Categories and Question Types*** document.
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# Quiz Appearance Settings
After you have added questions to your quiz, you can customize how the questions are presented to students. In some cases, a single, scrollable screen with many questions may be acceptable, but in other cases, you may want to limit the number of questions students see at one time so they don’t get overwhelmed or waste time scrolling up and down. In certain circumstances, you may want to limit students’ ability to navigate back to earlier parts of the quiz. You can do all of these things with these settings.
## Default quiz layout
The default layout will produce a quiz where each question appears on a separate screen. This is indicated on the quiz editing page by the wide white spaces between the questions.
The image below shows how the quiz will appear to students.
To navigate between questions, students can either click the **NEXT PAGE** button or click on the numbered questions in the **Quiz navigation** menu.
## Changing the quiz layout
Many instructors prefer the default quiz layout, but it is also possible to change it. The symbols between the questions are toggle switches. Clicking once will merge the questions that are immediately adjacent to that symbol onto the same page, and clicking again will separate the questions onto separate pages.
After merging the questions, several questions appear on the screen at the same time. Note that several questions are bolded in the **Quiz navigation** menu. Those are the questions currently being displayed on the screen. To revert to the previous setting—with each question on its own screen—return to the quiz editing page and click on the toggle switch again.
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# User Overrides – Making Exceptions to the Quiz Settings
Sometimes, there may be a need to change the quiz conditions for a student. This is done by clicking on **Overrides** in the **More** menu.
Click on **ADD USER OVERRIDE**
Click on **Search** to select the student whose settings you wish to override. Use the settings to customize the student’s access rules. Additional students must be added separately.
> Macro (details)
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> | Related Issues | quiz | quiz setup | exam | quiz setting | safe browser | assessment |
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