Moodle in English

In the past, Moodle was like what you suggested: if the quiz contained no questions, then the teacher was taken directly to the "Edit quiz" screen.

This lead to a different usability problem. Teachers would complain "I can only add and remove questions from my quiz when I first create it. Once the questions have been added, there is no way to go back and change it. Therefore, I swtiched to the current UI, where you always start on the quiz view.php screen, and you have to click "Edit quiz" to add/remove questions. Juding from the questions people ask in the quiz forum, this seems to have worked, even though it is one more click once you know what you are doing.

In terms of the particular issue I want to talk about here. Can I just make it clear that if you want to suggest something that has a chance of being implemented in the near future, it needs to be a small incremental change that just makes the current UI a bit better. If you want to think about radical overhauls, ... well, you can. But I don't know anyone with that much spare development resource at the moment. (But, it might make a good MUA project, I suppose.)

My experience comes from working with the other three "big" LMSs (BCD.) Moodle is the only LMS that provides this centralized "quiz question database" perspective. So I think that Benjamin is thinking correctly, that perhaps to effectively use a "database" of questions one has to think a little differently. In the other LMSs, it is more common to create quiz questions from within a course. BB did (I am unsure about Ultra) provide "pools," but they were a bit awkwardly implemented. In none of these other LMSs could you change (improve) a question in a central location and have it immediately be correct in every course using it!

So, not everyone understands this. Even my "Business Analytics" department chair doesn't understand that Moodle's question database is conceptually quite different than C's quiz engine.

Tim, the problem that we might be facing is that Moodle allows questions to be created in either the database or at the quiz level. If one is doing this from a quiz, it is hard to think about how to add 20 questions to a quiz, and then have only 10 of them randomly show. In fact, I don't know how to do this, which is why I tell folks to add the 20 questions to the database first, and then in the quiz pick 10 of these randomly. This could be one source of confusion. Some instructors just want to quickly go into a quiz and do everything. Learning how to add questions to the question bank takes time. Additionally, question categories have to be properly used.

So, we are back into the general concern of how to make Moodle "simple" for "simple-minded" instructors (and administrators) versus how to make Moodle powerful enough for tasks that more powerful folks want. (Oh, maybe powerful is not the correct word, but you understand.)  One might suggest removing the ability to add new questions in a quiz, forcing new questions to be added in the question database, but others might disagree.   Maybe when someone adds a new question in a quiz, some kind of dialog box would pop up prompting the person to properly add this new question into the question bank?

Tim, you have made great improvements to the quiz UI, and I really like what you have done. I also appreciate you continuing to ask for ideas to make it better. Maybe a few more "?" icons scattered around could help. Maybe a simple video?

What I have come to realize is that I have better luck (i.e., management) using the question bank if I first create course categories. I have had more trouble trying to create the quiz question categories first, then the course categories.

Thanks for asking the question Tim, and for others contributing ideas.

Just to be clear, and helpful, the first screen that I see when I click on a newly created quiz is shown below.

Hugo, I believe that what you are saying is that you change the "Edit quiz" button to "Manage questions." This is one screen where perhaps some simple changes can be made. The message "No questions have been added yet" is correct. However, clicking on "Edit quiz" does more. It not only allows one to edit or manage questions, it also allows one to set up "overall quiz points," it provides a way to page-break questions with headings, change points for each question, and shuffle questions. So, maybe "Edit quiz" is better than "Manage questions."  I kind of like "Edit quiz," and like that this exact same wording is what appears on the "gear" icon dropdown.

Maybe a better button wording should be "Edit quiz and manage questions." But this becomes a long button.

Instead of the current wording "No questions have been added yet," maybe this can be improved.  For example:

"By clicking on the Edit quiz button below, you will be able to manage questions (create new, add from the question bank, pick questions randomly from the question bank, remove, and order), change their points, shuffle questions, and add pagination and section headings.  For more information, see the "Moodle Docs for this page.  Although you can create new questions in Edit quiz mode, a better-recommended approach is to first add questions in the question bank, which provides better question organization, and then add them to your quiz. When on the "Edit Quiz" page, use the "gear" icon to quickly get to the question bank."  

There seems to be space for a long paragraph like this one, and in my Boost theme, it shows in a "red" box.

Well, you get the idea.  This paragraph needs some wordsmithing.  Sometimes people don't see the "Moodle Docs for this page" link at the bottom, so maybe having redundant links to the Moodle Docs in the above paragraph would be helpful.  Also, a link to some videos, in this paragraph, could be helpful since creating quizzes is a bit technical.

For reference, I will include a screenshot of this quiz containing a few questions.  One point of confusion could be that "Total of points" shows 2.00, yet Maximum grade shows 10.  I don't know if this is a source of confusion.  I think what this is really showing that the questions, as created, were established to be 1 point each.  There are two questions, each worth 1 point, which totals to 2 points.  However, this "2 points" will be converted to a scale of 0 to 10 for this grade book item."  In other words "Maximum grade" really means "Maximum grade book item grade."