FAQ

Is there an alternative to the Embedded answers (Cloze) and Combined question types?


Ganged questions are an experimental feature of HUJI moodle.
They are intended as an alternative to the Embedded answers (Cloze) and Combined question types because of their many limitations.
A gang of questions is a linked list of questions. The questions can be of any type.

When generating a student's quiz, Moodle in effect chooses a linked list of questions, aka a gang,, at random from all available gangs.

It works as follows:
Both a category and a question can have a gangname. (There is no relationship between the gangname of a category and the gangname of a question).
A gang consists of a fixed number of questions, say N.
N categories are created (aka a gang of categories).
The categories are all given the same gangname.
(Each gang of categories must have a different gangname.)
For each gang, one question is created in each of the categories:
first question in first category, second question in second category, etc.
The questions in the gang are all given the same gangname (unrelated to the gangname of the category).
(Each gang in the gang of categories must have a different gangname.)

A random gang can be added to a quiz is as follows:
Add a random question from the first category in a gang of categories,
add a random question from the second category in the same gang of categories, etc.

Currently Moodle does not do any sanity checking on gangs.
It is the teacher's responsibility to set up the questions, categories and quiz correctly.
URL https://moodle2.cs.huji.ac.il/nu18/sbin/gangs.php?id=<id> (where <id> is the course id) lists the ganged questions in the course category.

Note: It can occasionally be useful to give a gangname to categories and

  • Not to give a gangname to questions (to ensure that a group of random questions is not shuffled), or
  • To give more than one question the same gangname (to ensure that a group of random questions are related and not shuffled).