If you go to the quiz edit page, to the far right of each question line there is a little box containing "maximum mark". What does it do?
From what I can see, nothing, but that can't be right. For example, a question with a single correct answer returns 0 or 1 regardless.
I my defence, I couldn't find any reference to this setting in the docs and it has no help.
Hi Howard,
Those 5's you have circled in green represents the maximum score you can get for answer those questions correctly. And, since in this case you have at least six questions with five, that adds up to at least 30, which will case the contribution of each question to be scaled.
Simple demo...got to https://qa.moodledemo.net/my/ and log in as teacher using password of test. Once logged in go to the Miscellaneous > Activity examples course. Scroll down to the Quizzes topic and click on, A listening quiz and preview the quiz. Notice to the left in the details for question 1 that it is to be marked out of 1.00. Mark French as the answer and Check it. Finish the attempt. Notice Question 1 is receiving Marks = 1. Submit all and finish. On the review attempt notice Marks is 1 but the Grade is 10 out of 10.
Click on A listening quiz again, then the Edit cog and select Edit quiz. The place where you have 5 in your picture is currently showing a 1. Change the 1 to a 5, or 15, or 50, etc. Let's try 50. Take the quiz again, and make sure you still answer correctly. Watch the same places again. You will get the maximum marks, but the Grade will be scaled to 10.
Delete all the attempts and add a T/F question with maximum of 5, take the test twice again. Answer one correctly and the other incorrectly and notice how the grade is scaled to reflect the total of those maximums. The results with one 50 and one set to 5. i.e., with 50 correct and 5 incorrect gives a grade of 9.09. Vice versa 50 incorrect and 5 correct gives a Grade of 0.91.
Basically, the numbers you have circled in green allow you to make some questions affect the quiz final grade, more than others.
I have hunted info on this multiple times over the years. Currently, I find there is one reference in the Quiz Quick Guide, (Item 7 under Add your questions), and another ambiguous referral in the Embedded Answers (CLOZE) question type docs, item 5 in Question set-up. That is all I have ever been able to find, and words in the picture in the first one, does not match what is in the current Moodle language string. I know that on more than one occasion before I retired from teaching, I would just have play with a few questions in a quiz, and see what happened when I changed things, until I got the results I wanted.
Simple case for a math quiz: Answer the following, 2+2=?, I might set to a max of 1. But, Answer the following, 2+3x4=?, I might set to 2 or 3 because the student has to recognize and apply the correct order of operations, so the question should be worth more, if answer correctly.
It's brilliant purpose is allow you to essentially "weight" each question. You can have the sum of all the questions match the Maximum grade, or not - if they don't match, then the sum of the questions will be scaled up or down to match that Maximum grade. This is particularly useful if your course gradebook is set to Natural (Sum).
Example - each quiz in my course is set to a 25 pt max grade. If my co-teacher wants to adds or remove a question from the quiz, they don't have to change edit each different questions point value to add up to that 25 pt max- whatever the student earns for all the correctly answered questions in the quiz, their total will be scaled to be out of the 25 pts max. It makes adjusting quizzes so easy when attempting to maintain a specific point value for the overall assignment or for a non weighted gradebook.
Well, looking at this thread, wouldn't it be wonderful if you could just say "it's the weight of the question"?
If it's more complicated than that, why?
