Matching Questions

Matching Questions in Moodle

The Matching question type presents students with a list of sub-questions (stems) alongside a list of answers. Students must correctly match each sub-question to its corresponding answer. This question type is effective for testing the ability to associate related concepts, terms, definitions, events, or categories.

Creating a Matching Question

1. Open the Question bank and click Create a new question.
2. Select Matching from the question type list.
3. Configure the settings as described below.
4. Click Save changes.

General Settings

• Category: The question bank category for storage.
• Question name: Internal name for the question.
• Question text: Instructions or context for the matching exercise. For example: "Match each country with its capital city."
• Default mark: The maximum marks for the question. Marks are distributed equally among the sub-questions.
• General feedback: Shown after the question is answered.

Creating Matching Pairs

Each matching pair consists of a Question (stem) and an Answer:

• Question: The text of the sub-question or prompt. This appears on the left side. Supports HTML formatting.
• Answer: The correct match for this question. This appears in the dropdown menu on the right side.

You must create at least two matching pairs, but you can add as many as needed by clicking the Blanks for 3 more questions button.

Example Configuration

Question text: Match each country with its capital city.

Question 1: France        Answer: Paris
Question 2: Germany       Answer: Berlin
Question 3: Spain         Answer: Madrid
Question 4: Italy         Answer: Rome
Question 5: Portugal      Answer: Lisbon

Extra Wrong Answers (Distractors)

You can add extra wrong answers that do not match any sub-question. These distractors appear in the dropdown menus alongside the correct answers, making the question more challenging by preventing elimination strategies.

To add extra wrong answers, leave the Question field blank and only fill in the Answer field. For example:

Question 6: (blank)       Answer: Vienna
Question 7: (blank)       Answer: Brussels

Now students see 7 possible answers in the dropdown but only 5 sub-questions to match, making guessing more difficult.

Shuffle

When the Shuffle option is enabled (which it is by default), the order of the sub-questions is randomised each time the question is displayed. The answer options in the dropdown menus are always shuffled. This helps prevent students from memorising the order of matches.

Grading

Matching questions use a straightforward grading method:

• Each correct match earns an equal fraction of the total marks.
• Each incorrect match earns 0 marks for that sub-question.
• The total grade is the sum of correct matches divided by the total number of sub-questions.

Example: 5 sub-questions, default mark = 10
Each correct match = 10/5 = 2 marks
Student gets 3 correct: 3 x 2 = 6 marks (60%)

There are no negative marks for incorrect matches in the standard matching question type.

Combined Feedback

You can provide combined feedback for different levels of correctness:

• For any correct response: Shown when all matches are correct.
• For any partially correct response: Shown when some but not all matches are correct.
• For any incorrect response: Shown when no matches are correct.

Multiple Tries (Penalty and Hints)

When the quiz allows multiple tries:

• Penalty for each incorrect try: A fraction of the marks deducted per wrong attempt. A typical value is 0.3333333 (one-third).
• Hints: Hints shown on subsequent tries. You can configure hints to:
  • Clear incorrect responses (reset wrongly matched pairs)
  • Show the number of correct responses

Random Short-Answer Matching

Moodle also offers a Random short-answer matching question type that automatically generates matching questions from existing short answer questions in the same category. This combines the short answer and matching formats into a dynamically generated question.

GIFT Format for Matching

::Country Capitals::Match the country with its capital.{
=France -> Paris
=Germany -> Berlin
=Spain -> Madrid
=Italy -> Rome
}

Best Practices

• Include at least 4-5 matching pairs for a meaningful question.
• Add 2-3 extra wrong answers to increase difficulty and reduce guessing.
• Keep answer text short and consistent in length and format.
• Ensure that each answer is distinctly different to avoid ambiguity.
• Use matching questions for clearly defined associations rather than complex relationships.
• Group related content together — all items should belong to the same category or topic.
• Preview the question to verify that dropdowns display correctly and all answers are distinct.