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 in this article will provide guidance on how to make changes to Quiz questions, as well as how to run a regrade so these changes are retroactively applied to Quiz attempts.

Updating a Moodle Quiz After Student Attempts

To update Quiz attempts:

1. Update the question or questions directly.
2. Regrade the existing attempts.

After this process is complete, each attempt will be updated to use the latest version of the updated questions, which can include changes to points earned by the student on their attempt.

Update the question

To update a question:

1. In the main Moodle course page, open the Quiz activity.
2. In the Quiz menu at the top of 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 attempts

Before updating attempts, it's recommended to dry run a regrade. This will preview any changes made to grades by the changes to this question, and ensure the changes 

1. Open the Quiz activity.
2. In the Quiz menu at top the page, select the Results tab.
3. Below the table of attempts, click the Regrade attempts... button.
4. In the Regrade menu that appears, enable All attempts and All questions using the radial buttons.
5. In the bottom-right corner of this pop-up menu, click the Dry run button.

This enables a preview of how scores will change with the newly-modified question. The Dry run score is not displayed to students. If, at this point, the Dry run score is not accurate, edit the question again using the instructions in the "Update the question" section of this article.

In the table of attempts, any scores that would be modified will be marked as Needed in the Regrade column of that attempt's row.

It is possible to regrade without making a dry run first, but making changes to grades without a preview of the changes is not recommended.

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. Below the table of attempts, click the Commit regrade button.

Scores will now be updated to reflect correct answers in updated questions 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 (MoodleDocs)

Quiz reports (MoodleDocs)

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.