1. Home
  2. Quick Answers
  3. Teaching with the VLE
  4. How do I set up different rules for specific students in a Quiz?

How do I set up different rules for specific students in a Quiz?

With a Moodle Quiz, you may need to set up different quiz settings for specific students. For example:

  • For timed quizzes, you may want to allow a student more time to complete a quiz attempt;
  • You may want to extend the deadline for attempting the quiz for a specific student;
  • You may want to allow a specific student an additional attempt at the quiz.

If you wish to set up exceptions, there are two ways of doing this: one is by adding the student(s) to a group in the course and setting up a Group override; the other way is by adding a User override for each student. The configuration options are the same for each method but this article will focus on the User override option.

Having already created your Quiz …

  1. From your course page, click on the Quiz activity.
  2. Click on the ‘gear’ icon on the right-hand side and select User overrides.
Screenshot showing the User overrides option in a pop-up menu in Moodle.
  1. On the User overrides page, click on the Add user override button.
  2. Firstly, select the user for which you need to create the override. Click on the down arrow (1, below) to the right of the search box for the ‘Override user’ field. This will present a list of students – if there are too many to display, start to type in the box to filter the list. Click on the student entry in the list (2) to select that student:
Screenshot showing how to select a user for a specific User override in a Moodle quiz.

When defining a User override you can only do this for one student at a time. If you need to create the same override for a number of students, then consider using Group overrides or you can duplicate a user override once it’s been defined (see Duplicating an override below).

  1. Next select the elements you would like to override. Unless changed, the elements will inherit from settings of the current Quiz. There are several elements available for you to modify:
Screenshot showing the elements for which overrides can be defined when adding a User or Group override in a Moodle quiz.
  • (1) – You can define a specific password for this student to enter in order to attempt the quiz.
  • (2) – You can define a specific date and time from which the student can attempt the quiz (Open the quiz) and a specific deadline by which the student has to complete the quiz (Close the quiz).
  • (3) – You can define a specific time limit for how long the student has to complete a quiz attempt once they have started the attempt. If not enabled then there is no time limit.
  • (4) – You can specify how many attempts the student is allowed for this quiz.
  1. Once you have modified the settings for this particular student, click on Save (or Save and enter another override if you want to set overrides for another student).

Duplicating an override

Having defined an override for one student, you may wish to set the same override conditions for another student for the same quiz. To do this, from the main ‘User overrides’ screen, click on the Duplicate icon next to the user override that you wish to copy:

Screenshot of the main User overrides page for a Moodle Quiz. The 'duplicate' icon is highlighted.

On the next page, simply select a different user (as in step 4 above), then click on Save.

Updated on November 23, 2020

Was this article helpful?

Back to top