A talk given to the 2022 UK and Ireland MoodleMoot about a collaborative effort to improve the Question bank in Moodle 4.0 though a crowed-funded project developed by Catalyst IT AU.

1. Question bank improvements
in Moodle 4.0
A successful community collaboration
Tim Hunt
The Open University
Safat Shahin
Catalyst

2. Outline
The story so far TH 5m
Overview of the new features TH 3m
Moodle 4.0 Question Bank demo SS 15m
Summary TH 2m
Q & A
5m

3. The story so far

4. A long time ago...
In an open source community
really very close by…

5. Safe exam browser integration
SEB is an open source
lockdown browser
Started at ETH Zürich
now backed by a consortium
Moodle 3.9 included a crowd-funded project MDL-64934
to develop a better integration and add it to Moodle core
That worked!
Co-ordinated by
Luca Bösch,
Marco Lehre &
Thomas Korner

6. Moodle 4.0 appears on the horizon
In early 2020 Moodle HQ announced 4.0 would be a big thing
⮚ After 3.9 there would be 3.10 and 3.11
⮚ 18 months until 4.0
Thomas & Luca saw an opportunity to repeat the SEB integration
model, but on a bigger scale
⮚ Started talking to me
⮚ Found common requirements
⮚ Began crowd-funding
⮚ Refined requirements with
contributors
Luca Bösch
Bern University of
Applied Science
Thomas Korner
ETH Zürich
Tim Hunt
Open University UK

7. The people to thank
● ETH Zürich, Switzerland
● Bern University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland
● Open University of UK, UK
● Berlin Institute of Technology, Germany
● Dublin City University, Ireland
● University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hannover,
Germany
● Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
● University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern
Switzerland, Switzerland
● Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland
● Canton of Zurich Office for Middle and vocational
schools, Switzerland
● Berlin School of Economics and Law, Germany
● Neubrandenburg University of Applied Sciences,
Germany
● Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany
● University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Austria
● Catalyst Australia (Development)
and many more helping hands (testing, Wireframes,...)
TUB, GER
DCU, IRL
JKU, AUT
HSH, GER
FHNW, SUI
ZHAW, SUI
ETHZ, SUI
BFH, SUI
BSEL, GER
RUB, GER
HSNB, GER
FHOÖ, AUT
Catalyst, AUS
OU, GBR
CT ZH, SUI

8. A year of hard work
By late 2020 we have a proposal
⮚ Shared and discussed with the community in the quiz forum
Engaged Catalyst to do the development in early 2021
Development starts in April 2021
⮚ Continues to 4.0 development freeze in November … and beyond
⮚ weekly project meetings
⮚ Development (Catalyst), review (Tim), testing (Antonia & others)
integration (HQ integration team)
⮚ QA testing of the beta early 2022
⮚ Successful 4.0 release in April 2022

9. Overview of the new features

10. What’s in Moodle 4.0 MDL-70329
Question versions
⮚ Moodle tracks every change to questions
⮚ History can be reviewed
⮚ Quiz can select a fixed version, or always latest
⮚ Versions can be draft – so not used until ready
See in the question bank if and where a question is used
⮚ Including the statistics for how well it worked
Plugin structure – add question bank features
Comments – to help teachers work together creating questions
Custom fields – add your own metadata to questions
Many small improvements, especially to usability

11. Missed 4.0: coming in Moodle 4.1 MDL-72752
Better searching in the question bank
⮚ Search on almost any information you can see on-screen
⮚ Selecting random questions for a quiz can use any search
⮚ Shared code with participants page, so that gets improved too
Question bank becomes an activity
⮚ Choose which question banks you need in your Moodle site
⮚ Control who can access each one
In-place editing of question title
Manage categories screen usability improved

12. Moodle 4 Question bank demo

13. Summary

14. What’s in Moodle 4.0 MDL-70329
Question versions
⮚ Moodle tracks every change to questions
⮚ History can be reviewed
⮚ Quiz can select a fixed version, or always latest
⮚ Versions can be draft – so not used until ready
See in the question bank if and where a question is used
⮚ Including the statistics for how well it worked
Plugin structure – add question bank features
Comments – to help teachers work together creating questions
Custom fields – add your own metadata to questions
Many small improvements, especially to usability

15. Question Bank 4.x led by
Luca Bösch, Tim Hunt, Thomas Korner, Antonia Bonaccorso
up to now funded by
Berlin Institute of Technology (Technische Universität Berlin), Germany
Dublin City University, Ireland
Hochschule Hannover - University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Germany *
Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Switzerland
Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland *
overflow funds from the SEB deeper integration project
Berlin School of Economics and Law, Germany
Neubrandenburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany
University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Austria
* Institutions funding in both SEB deeper integration as well as Question bank
improvements for Moodle 4.0 project
wireframes
Luca Bösch, Yvonne Wolf, Antonia Bonaccorso
user stories
Luca Bösch, Antonia Bonaccorso
development
Catalyst IT Australia
Questions?
Safat Shahin
safatshahin@catalyst-au.net
Tim Hunt
tim.hunt@open.ac.uk
Moodle quiz forum
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=737