Multiple Choice Questions

Multiple Choice Questions in Moodle

Multiple choice is one of the most widely used question types in Moodle. It allows teachers to create questions where students select one or more correct answers from a list of options. Moodle provides extensive configuration options for multiple choice questions, including combined feedback, hints, penalty settings, and multimedia support.

Creating a Multiple Choice Question

1. Open the Question bank in your course.
2. Click Create a new question.
3. Select Multiple choice from the question type list.
4. Fill in the required fields as described below.

General Settings

• Question name: An internal identifier for the question (not shown to students in the quiz).
• Question text: The actual question displayed to students. Supports HTML, images, audio, and video.
• Default mark: The maximum number of marks for this question. Default is 1.
• General feedback: Feedback shown to all students after they answer, regardless of their response.
• ID number: An optional unique identifier used for gradebook calculations.

Single Answer vs Multiple Answers

Moodle supports two modes for multiple choice questions:

• One answer only: Students select one answer from the choices. Radio buttons are displayed. Exactly one answer should have a grade of 100%.
• Multiple answers allowed: Students can select more than one answer. Checkboxes are displayed. Multiple answers can have positive grades, and incorrect answers should have negative grades to prevent students from selecting all options.

Answer Configuration

For each answer choice:

• Answer text: The text of the choice. Supports HTML formatting and embedded media.
• Grade: The percentage of the total mark awarded for selecting this answer. For single-answer questions, one answer should be 100% and the rest 0% (or negative). For multiple-answer questions, correct answers should have positive values that sum to 100%, and wrong answers should have negative values.
• Feedback: Specific feedback shown when this particular answer is selected.

Grading for Multiple Answers

When multiple answers are allowed, the grading works as follows:

Example: A question with two correct answers and two wrong answers
Correct Answer A: +50%
Correct Answer B: +50%
Wrong Answer C: -50%
Wrong Answer D: -50%

Student selects A and B: 50% + 50% = 100%
Student selects A and C: 50% + (-50%) = 0%
Student selects A only: 50%
Student selects all: 50% + 50% + (-50%) + (-50%) = 0%

The minimum score for a question is always 0 (negative totals are clamped to zero).

Shuffle Answers

When enabled, the order of answer choices is randomised each time the question is displayed. This helps prevent students from sharing answer positions (e.g., "the answer is B"). Note that the shuffle setting in the quiz activity must also be enabled for this to take effect.

Number the Choices

Choose how answer options are labelled:

• a., b., c., d. (lowercase)
• A., B., C., D. (uppercase)
• 1., 2., 3., 4. (numbers)
• i., ii., iii., iv. (Roman numerals)
• No numbering

Combined Feedback

Combined feedback provides additional feedback based on the overall correctness of the response:

• For any correct response: Shown when the student gets the question completely right.
• For any partially correct response: Shown when the student gets partial marks (multiple-answer mode only).
• For any incorrect response: Shown when the student gets the question completely wrong.

You can also enable Show the number of correct responses to tell students how many correct answers exist.

Multiple Tries (Penalty and Hints)

When the quiz behaviour allows multiple tries (e.g., Interactive with multiple tries or Adaptive mode):

• Penalty for each incorrect try: A fraction of the total mark deducted for each wrong attempt. For example, a penalty of 33.33333% means the student loses one-third of the marks for each incorrect try.
• Hints: You can add one or more hints that are shown sequentially on each retry. Each hint can optionally:
  • Clear incorrect responses (remove wrong selections)
  • Show the number of correct responses

Tags

Tags can be added to categorise questions for filtering in the Question Bank and for use with random question selection in quizzes. For example, you might tag questions by topic, difficulty level, or learning objective.

Best Practices

• Write clear, unambiguous question stems.
• Make all distractors (wrong answers) plausible.
• Avoid using "all of the above" or "none of the above" options.
• Use negative grading for wrong answers in multi-answer questions to discourage guessing.
• Provide specific feedback for each answer to help students understand their mistakes.
• Use shuffling to reduce the effectiveness of answer sharing.
• Test your questions using the preview feature before deploying them in a quiz.