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MoodleUtils

MoodleUtils is a simple conversion utility to facilitate generating Moodle quizzes.

The input is a CSV (comma separated value) file in either of the following formats:

Glossary format

Files in glossary format have two columns. The first column contains a term, or multiple terms separated by commas or semicolons. The second column contains the corresponding definition. In the example below, the term being defined is a word in Norwegian, and the definition is the corresponding English translation.

Question format

Files in question format have up to four columns. The first column contains a question, the second column contains the corresponding answer. Multiple answers can be separated by the separator character '|'; alternatively they can be specified on subsequent lines with a blank entry in the question column, as in the example below.

By default, answers are presumed to be correct; however for multiple choice type questions, incorrect answers can be indicated by placing an X in the third column. Answer-specific feedback can be specified if desired in the fourth column.

Importing data

The Import dialog (File... Import) allows you to browse to the location of the CSV file containing your data. You need to specify whether the data you are importing contains term/definition pairs (the Glossary format) or question/answer pairs (the Question format). Multiple terms with the same definition (perhaps accommodating spelling or hyphenation differences) can be accommodated by separating them using commas. Press the Import... button to import the data into the application.

(If you are using Excel, you can also copy and paste the data directly into MoodleUtils directly using the File... Paste... Glossary or File... Paste... Questions menu options).

Exporting data

The Export dialog (File... Export) allows you to set the format in which you wish to export the data, then export the data from MoodleUtils in the selected format to an XML file, which you can then import into Moodle.

If your data was a glossary, the output formats available are Moodle Glossary format, Moodle Short Answer format (where the student has to supply the answer by typing it), or Moodle Matching Answer format (where the student has to match a set of definitions to the corresponding terms, selected via dropdowns).

If your data was a set of questions and corresponding answers, the output formats available are Moodle Short Answer format (where the student must supply one of the correct answers), Moodle Matching Answer format (where a the student has to match a set of questions to the corresponding correct answer selected via a dropdown) or Moodle Multiple Choice format (where the student has to select the correct answer or answers to a question from a list of alternatives).

For the quiz output formats, the set of questions generated will span the set of input data (i.e. every entry will appear in at least one question), with the data being resampled if necessary for the multiple-choice format in order to ensure that all questions have the specified number of sub-questions.

Note that when defining the question text, you can refer to the quiz title or the question number via the template fields {QuizTitle} and {QuestionNumber} respectively.

Results

Below is a screenshot of a simple matching quiz within Moodle, generated using this data: