Updating a Moodle Quiz After Student Attempts

Instructors may need to update a Moodle Quiz activity after students have completed it. These updates could range from fixing a question that previously had an incorrectly marked correct answer, or adding in more relevant feedback for students based on their responses.

The instructions below will provide guidance on how to make changes to Quiz questions after students initiated and completed their attempts, as well as how to run a regrade on the quiz itself so these changes are retroactively applied to Quiz attempts. 

Updating a Moodle Quiz after Attempts are Submitted

First, follow these steps to update the Quiz question.

Update Quiz Question

To update a question:

1. In the main Moodle course page, open the Quiz activity.
2. In the Quiz menu at top the page, select the "Questions" tab.
3. Find the specific question that needs to be updated, and select the gear icon to the left of the question title.
4. Make the necessary changes to the question, as if this were the first time creating the question.
5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Save changes" button.

Repeat these steps in the "Questions" page to modify other questions in this Quiz.

These changes are, at this point, only changed for future attempts of the Quiz. All Quiz attempts started and submitted before these changes were made will still refer to the previous version of those questions.  If attempts need to be updated to reference the current version of those questions, regrade the quiz attempts.

Regrade the Quiz Attempts

In order to retroactively update existing Quiz attempts based on a new question version, follow the steps below to complete a "Dry run regrade" of the quizzes.

1. Open the Quiz activity.
2. In the Quiz menu at top the page, select the "Results" tab.
3. Above the table of attempts, find and click the "Dry run a full regrade" button.
4. In the confirmation page that appears, click the continue button to return to the "Results" page. 
5. Review the scores to ensure that the changes made are accurate to how the Quiz should function.

The "Dry run a full regrade" option enables a preview of what changes to scores will be made based on new question updates.  The "Dry run" score is not displayed to students.  If, at this point, the "Dry run" score is not accurate to how the Quiz should be functioning, return to the previous section and make edits to the questions again as needed.

It is possible to regrade without making a dry run first, but making changes to student scores without previewing the changes is not recommended at all.

To follow through with the regrade:

1. Open the Quiz activity.
2. In the Quiz menu at top the page, select the "Results" tab.
3. Above the table of attempts, find and click the "Regrade all" button.
4. A confirmation page will load to verify the regrade has completed. Click the continue button on this page to return to the "Results" page. 

The student scores will now be updated to reflect newly-set correct answers in questions updated prior to the regrade. Any new feedback added to questions will be visible to students when reviewing their prior quiz attempt.

Additional Resources

Quiz grades report (Moodle Docs)

Quiz reports (Moodle Docs)

Overview of Moodle Quizzes (DELTA Knowledge Base)

For additional assistance, please contact the LearnTech Help Desk at learntech@ncsu.edu or (919) 513-7094, or via the Get Help form on the DELTA Knowledge Base.