A talk given to the 2022 UK and Ireland MoodleMoot about about how the Moodle quiz and question bank might continue to evolve in future.

1. What’s next for the Quiz and
Question bank
and for Moodle community collaborations
Tim Hunt
The Open University
Luca Bösch
Bern University of Applied Science

2. Agenda
Making changes in an open source project TH 5m
Plans for Moodle 4.1 TH 5m
Creating and running a community driven project LB 5m
The future TH 5m
Q & A 10m

3. Making changes
in an open source project

4. Open source – the theory
Code is available to everyone
Collaboration protected by
clever copyright licence
Anyone can propose a change
Changes should be judged on their inherent merit
⮚ Not who proposed them, …

5. Open source – meets reality
Changes to Moodle affect many people
Software development is a skill
⮚ Much Moodle-specific knowledge too
An activity undertaken by humans
Judgements of merit are tricky
⮚ Reputation becomes a useful proxy

6. The ethics of open source
“First do no harm”
~Hippocrates
~400 BCE
“Scratch your
own itch”
Eric S Raymond
1999

7. What to change and how?
Listen to
users
Find
strategic
solution
Make
changes
Il semble que la perfection
soit atteinte non quand il
n'y a plus rien à ajouter,
mais quand il n'y a plus
rien à retrancher.
Antoine de Saint Exupéry
It seems that perfection is
attained not when there is
nothing more to add, but
when there is nothing
more to remove.
Antoine de Saint Exupéry

8. Plans for Moodle 4.1

9. From the The Open University
Allow one quiz to generate multiple grades
⮚ For example, grade per section
⮚ Lots of details an implications to work out
Customise question numbers if desired
Force language per-activity, not just per-course

10. From the Moodle HQ
Better usability for teachers building quizzes
⮚ Details being worked on now
Also some tweaks for students attempting quizzes

11. From the Question bank ‘4.0’ project
Better searching in the question bank
⮚ Search on almost any information you can see on-screen
⮚ Selecting random questions for a quiz can use any search
⮚ Shared code with participants page, so that gets improved too
Question bank becomes an activity
⮚ Choose which question banks you need in your Moodle site
⮚ Control who can access each one
⮚ Fixes long-standing backup/restore issues
Manage categories screen usability improved
With more crowdfunding,
we might do more.
Talk to Luca!

12. Creating and running
a community driven project

13. How to create a community driven project?
Search for the broad need!
Use your connections (Moodle Users Association, conferences)
Take the responsible persons in
Take HQ onboard (LMS Team)
Inform broadly and repeatedly (attract and retain)
Word of mouth propaganda

14. Examples
“We pay this out of our budget as the department for Learning Platform
Management which is part of the bigger central service unit Center for
Learning and Teaching Services (CLS). In general, we have a lot of support in
Moodle issues from the CLS board, which wants the CLS as institution
(together with our IT Center which is responsible for technical questions on
Moodle) to contribute to the community (through plugin developments,
involvement in coalitions, etc.) and to be visible there. This fits into the
digitization strategy for teaching the university has been following for years.
Since we had enough money, this could be paid for out of the budget.”
„We pulled the funds from an initiative of the State Ministry of Science and
Arts dedicated to basic maintenance for Open Source Learning Management
Systems.“

15. Why do it this way, when there is the MUA?
Possibility for a shorter time line
Foregoing the (two) vote(s)
Able to going beyond the financial constraints of MUA projects
Believe in your dream and never give up!

16. The future

17. Moodle Quiz – a continuing story
2002 Quiz added to Moodle 1.1
2004 Question types become plugins in 1.4
2006 Question bank separated from quiz in 1.6
Lots more feedback added in 1.7
2008 New gradebook & improved question bank in 1.9
2009 Better quiz reports in 2.0
2011 New question engine & behaviour plugins in 2.1
Quiz access rule plugins in 2.2
2013 Improved usability for editing questions & auto-ave in 2.5
2014 Improved quiz building in 2.8
2015 Drag-drop question types added in 3.0
2016 Mobile app support in 3.1
2018 Use question tags in random quizzes in 3.6
2020 SEB integration in 3.9
2022 Enhance question bank & plugin type in 4.0
More and more community
plugins created
Many question types
StudentQuiz & other
activities
Embedded questions
…

18. Where might we go after 4.1?
Review the question types in core
⮚ Add Ordering?
⮚ Add Record audio/video?
⮚ Improve multi-choice – add features from plugins
Better manual grading
⮚ Including on-screen annotation like Assignment?
Improved question import/export?
Your idea here!

19. Questions?
Luca Bösch
luca.boesch@bfh.ch
Tim Hunt
tim.hunt@open.ac.uk
Moodle quiz forum
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=737