Looks Itamar covered your question but I thought it worth noting that entering a zero may not matter depending on the aggregation method you have set and if you have it set to aggregate only non-empty grades. With certain aggregation types, an empty-cell is the same as a zero. You don't get the visual of a zero but it has same effect towards grade calculation.
Happy 
oodling!
Instead of a fix to Moodle's code, why not just use one of the features of Excel to do so? You can use Excel's Text to columns feature to parse data. In this case, you would be parsing by the space that is between the first and last name in column A. Just make sure you enter a blank column before parsing so that when you separate it into two cells, it goes into a blank column instead of overriding other data.
Happy oodling!
I would agree with that statement. A couple of my faculty do change the name of it on a course by course basis.
Happy oodling!
See the documentation on the News Forum. It is a special type of forum. By default teacher and admins can only post to it. Think of it as a place to make announcements to the class; not have discussions. If you want the students to start up a discussion, you should just make a different forum for that.
Happy oodling!
The Essay question type would work for this. It is designed more for longer responses but would fit your needs as well.
If you were looking for something to automatically grade their response, the Short-Answer may be more appropriate. For Short-Answer though, you must enter an accepatable answer that they must match.
Example Short Answer
Q. What is the capital of California
A. Student must enter "Sacramento" in order to get correct points (without the quotes though)
You can see all the quiz question types here.
Happy oodling!