In Moodle, you will find two types of multiple-choice questions within the 'Test' activity. To avoid any confusion, we would like to explain the differences between the two question types here, so that you can quickly make the right choice for your needs.

To add a Multiple Choice / Multiple Choice (OU) question type to a test, you must first have created the Test activity within the course and be in edit mode.

Open the test and select Add question (Fig. 1). On the page that appears, select Add and New question (Fig. 2). You can now select a specific question type from the list. Here, select the question type Multiple Choice or Multiple Choice (OU). Confirm your selection by clicking the Add button (Fig. 3).

On the page that now appears, start by filling in the mandatory fields under the ‘General’ menu item. These are marked with a white exclamation mark inside a red circle.

Under ‘Question title’, give the question a name under which it will be listed in your question catalogue. Under ‘Question text’, enter the question for which you would like to receive a multiple-choice answer from the students (Fig. 4).

You then set the number of marks to be awarded for this task.

If you scroll further down, you will find the option ‘Shuffle answers’ in the ‘General’ category, which you can enable.

Next, we come to the ‘Answers’ category. Here, you can enter your answer options and the corresponding feedback in the relevant fields.

If you wish students to receive points on a pro rata basis for two possible correct answers, you must set the corresponding percentages for the correct answers yourself.

In our example in the figure below, there are two correct answers, which is why each correct answer is worth 50% of the total marks for this task (Fig. 5).

For the multiple-choice question type (OU), you also enter the possible answers and the corresponding feedback in the ‘Answers’ category. Directly below each answer, you can tick the box next to the correct one (Fig. 6). For incorrect answers, simply leave the box unticked.

For this question type, the system automatically awards the student 1/n points for each correct answer out of n possible correct answers.

In summary, it can be said that the multiple-choice (OU) question type is generally the easier to create. However, in this case, correct answers are always weighted equally.

With the multiple-choice question type, on the other hand, you are free to set the weighting. This means you can specify that some of the correct answers should be worth more points than others. For example, you could assign a ratio of 80% to 20%. This makes it easier to reflect more complex requirements.

You can see the final result for both question types in the figure below.