The Moodle summer update on June 29, 2022, includes new question types to the Quiz

Moodle will be updated on June 29th, 2022, from 8 AM to 5 PM. During this time, Moodle is closed and cannot be logged into. The update may not take the whole day, but the time is reserved as a precaution to prepare for potential update issues and fixes.

New question types to the quiz

In the summer update, two new question types will be added to the quiz activity: All or nothing and Gapfill. Moodle users have requested both question types.

All or nothing

All or nothing question type is a multiple choice question in which the respondent must select all the correct options to get a full score. If the respondent chooses one of the wrong options or don’t choose all correct answers, the score is 0. It is not possible to give minus points in all or nothing questions.

Read more about all or nothing question type

Gapfill

The Gapfill question type allows creating embedded questions (both writing, drop-down, and drag-and-drop) where you can put one or more correct words per gap. For example, in the sentence “Cats and dogs are typical pets.” you also get full points by writing “ Dogs and cats are typical pets.” In the other embedded question types, this is not possible. In addition to the Gapfill, Moodle still has other types of embedded question types (cloze).

Read more about Gapfill question type.

Setting changes

Quiz: Review options

With the “Review options” in the quiz activity, the teacher decides what students see after the quiz, e.g. if the student sees the correct answers to the multiple-choice questions immediately after the quiz is returned or only after the quiz is completed.

The default settings for “Review Options” will change during the summer update. After the update, nothing will be displayed for students who have taken the quiz. The new settings only affect the new quiz activities, the settings made before the update remain unchanged.

For example, the teacher can show the score after checking the entire quiz. If the quiz is a self-study quiz where the student should receive immediate feedback on their learning, the teacher can add the necessary alternatives to “Immediately after the attempt” and “Later, while the quiz is still open” before the quiz begins.

Notifications: Notification for teachers of students’ quiz submissions

The teacher can choose in the notification settings to receive a message when students have returned their quiz submission. This can be good, for example, for essay questions, when students can take the quiz at any time throughout the year. By default, notification preference is such that teachers do not receive these notifications.

The default maximum grade for activities

After the upgrade, the default maximum grade for some activities will be five. This applies to the following activities: Assignment, Lesson, Attendance, and External tool. Other activities or existing implementations of the above are not affected by this setting.

Per-group grade export to Sisu now possible

After the update, it is possible to export grades from Moodle to Sisu one group at a time. The group selection dropdown menu is only visible, if a group mode has been selected from the course settings. After exporting the grades of a single group, in Sisu one can adjust the assessment properties for the whole group using the bulk edit functionality.

Read more about exporting grades from Moodle to Sisu.

Preliminary information: Moodle 4.0 in the summer 2023

Moodle gets a new look! Moodle 4.0 brings a modern interface, an intuitive tabbed navigation, and it will be easier for teachers to edit courses. At the University of Helsinki, we will be launching the new Moodle in the summer 2023. You can already get a taste of the new user interface in the video.

Read more about Moodle 4.0

Training and support

Why don’t I see all my courses in Course overview?

The Moodle update on 10th June 2013 brought new features to Course overview. It is now possible for each user to edit the course list and thus personalize their view based on needs! Note that no course areas have been disappeared in the update.

The default setting for Course overview is to show 10 course areas in the list. If you have more than 10 course areas in Moodle and want them all to be shown in the list, edit the page:

  • On My home page, click on the Customise this page button
  • Select Always Show all in the drop-down menu
  • Edit the order of course areas in the list by dragging-and-dropping the corresponding arrow icons.
  • Click on the Stop customising this page button.

There are more thorough instructions in Finnish in the Opettajan opas at https://wiki.helsinki.fi/x/8A_jBQ.

Hiding your email address in Moodle may have unwanted consequences

Moodle users have the opportunity to edit their profile setting on to whom the email address will be displayed. The default and recommended value for the setting Email display is Allow only other course members to see my email address. Users may also change the value to Hide my email address from everyone.

If you have hidden your email address from everyone, please note that the address is not used even in the email messages sent from Moodle, where the most typical case is subscription of discussion forum messages. Instead, Moodle displays a noreply email address with reminder “Do not reply to this email” as the from and reply-to address in all your messages. This means that no-one can reply by email to you to any message you have written; instead the replies end up in an administrative trash folder.

Instructions for checking your profile settings can be found in English at http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Update_profile and Student guide, Chapter 6, and in Finnish in the Teacher guide at Omat asetukset (My settings).

Is your Moodle in Finnish?

Do you have to change the language in Moodle from Finnish to English every time you have logged in?

Instead, change the language setting in your profile; then you can use Moodle in English as default!

To change your language settings:

  • Log in.
  • Change the language to English from the drop-down menu at the upper right corner.
  • Click on the text link Your Name at the upper right corner.
  • The block Settings at the left side includes the item Edit profile. Click on it.
  • Select English in the drop-down menu for the setting Preferred language.
  • Scroll down and click on Update profile.
  • Return to My home from the text link at the upper left corner.