moodle essay question grading

Grading Essay Questions in Moodle Quizzes

• Publication date April 22, 2020

If you choose to add essay questions to your Moodle quiz, you will need to manually grade those items before Moodle can assign a grade to students’ quiz attempts. This guide will show you how to access students’ essay answers for grading.

From your course page, locate and open your quiz.

When the quiz page opens, locate the gear shaped icon for the Quiz Administration options .

When the Quiz Administration menu drops down, click the Results tab.

On the Results tab, click Manual Grading .

On the next screen, you will see a listing by question indicating how many student responses require grading (1), how many attempts you have already graded (2), and how many attempts there are total (3).

• You can access ungraded answers using the links in either the To Grade (1) or Total Answer columns (3)
•  If you need to go back to a previously graded response to change your entry, you can do so by clicking the links in either the Already Graded (2) or Total Answers column (3).

After selecting one of the 3 grading options, you will be taken to a page listing student responses. Enter the number of points earned for each response ( important: if a student earns no points on an attempt, you must enter 0 to allow grade computation ) and any desired comments .

Be sure to click save to commit your entries before navigating out of the grading screen.

Grade Computation

Once all questions requiring manual grading have been graded and saved for a student, their grade will automatically populate into the Moodle gradebook.

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Grading an Essay Question in a Moodle Quiz

Most of the quiz question options in Moodle are automatically graded, and the point options are set when the question is graded. However, for essay questions, the instructor will need to manually grade the submitted answers by following these instructions.

After you have navigated to the quiz, click “Results” on the vertical navigation menu and click on the drop-down menu where you will see the word Results with four options beneath it.

You want to click on the last option called Manual Grading. If you click Grades you will see the results of the questions Moodle has already graded, but it will not let you grade an essay or other open response answer. After clicking on Manual grading, you will be taken to a page where the questions Moodle hasn’t automatically graded will appear in a list.

In this sample quiz there was only one essay question so it is only displaying that one question, but if you had multiple essay questions they would each be listed in an individual row. In this example,  two students have taken the quiz and one is already graded. This is why it says there are 2 total, one that needs to be graded, and one already graded. To grade the one remaining question, the instructor would click on the word grade under the column “To grade”. This is highlighted below.

This will take you to a new page that looks as follows:

The two important things here are the Comment box and the Mark. In the Comment box you can provide feedback to your students about their response and you can even upload a file here, such as an answer key or rubric. In the Mark box you will give the amount of points for the question score. It is possible to enter fractions for a score, such as 0.8 out of 1. You must enter a mark but you do not have to enter comments to finalize the score.

After you are finished grading one student’s question, click  the “Save and go to next page” button at the bottom of the page. This will take you to the next student’s answer until you have completed all the grading. In order for a quiz to show a total score in the Moodle Gradebook for your students, all the essay or open response questions must be manually graded.

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• The Quiz Tool

Grading Essay Questions in Moodle

Essay questions in Moodle quizzes are not automatically graded. There are several ways to grade these questions once students have completed the quizzes, including reviewing students attempts via the Results menu and using Moodle’s Manual Grading option.

Grading the Question by Student

• Open the Quiz.
• Click either the Result tab or the Attempts link.

• Scroll down and find the student’s attempt that you wish to grade.
• To view only the questions that needs grading, locate it in the student’s row and click the Requires grading link.

• To view all of the student’s quiz questions and answers click the Review attempt link in the student’s row.

• Click the Make comment or override mark for the quiz question.

• Make a Comment and enter a grade in the Mark box.
• Click the Save button.

Grading One Question for all Students at a Time (Manual Grading)

• Choose Manual grading from the drop-down menu.

• Click either the To grade or the Total links for the question you wish to grade.

Grading Essay Questions When Using Moodle’s Classic Theme

This video was recorded using Moodle 3 and the Classic theme. The default theme in Moodle 4 as of the Fall 2023 is Boost.

Learn different ways to grade essay and short answer questions manually in Moodle.

Grading Essays

Moodle will auto-grade Multiple Choice, True/False, Multiple Select, and Short Answer questions; but Essay questions will require manual grading. Whether you have 1 essay question in a quiz, or an entire exam comprised of essays, here is how you will grade them.

The grader overlay will take over your screen. There are several key features to the overlay:

• Quiz Essay Questions
• Question Prompt
• Now Grading

Quiz Essay Questions:

The Quiz Essay Questions section lists all essay questions being used within the current quiz. The question "names" are listed down the left side. The category of each question is also displayed on top. In this case, all questions on screen belong to the same category.

The icons in the Quiz Essay Question will help you determine what action should be taken.

In your course, roll your mouse over the icons to display what the icon means, and to list which students received the question. The Quiz Essay Questions portion may also be shrunk by pressing the < button.

Question info:

Now Grading:

In the Now Grading section, you will find:

• the student's name
• the student's response
• a text box for a grade value, and the total of points available
• date the grade was last updated (displays N/A if no grade has been entered)
• a text editor where you can enter feedback for the student
• and a "Save" and "Save & Next" button.

By clicking "Save & Next" the grader will automatically advance to the next student.

Once you have completed all grading, and have saved all responses, you may click the X in the upper right corner of the grader to close. The grades will now be entered in the gradebook.

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Documentation

Note: You are currently viewing documentation for Moodle 3.11. Up-to-date documentation for the latest stable version of Moodle may be available here: Essay (auto-grade) question type .

Essay (auto-grade) question type

This is the documentation for the awesome Essay (auto-grade) additional plugin by Gordon Bateson currently available from the Moodle plugins database .

• 2 Supported Moodle branches
• 3.1 Several response formats to choose
• 3.2 Minimum and maximum number of words
• 3.3 Sample response
• 3.4 Glossary of common errors
• 4 Target phrase syntax
• 5 Suggested use
• 6 Languages available
• 9.1 Demo question
• 10.1 Example medical question
• 11 Example 3: Another example medical question
• 13.1 Download all submitted files from Auto Grade Essay
• 14 Sharing is caring
• 15 See also

The essay (autograde) question type allows an essay question response to be given a preliminary grade that is generated automatically based on one or more of the following characteristics of the response.

• the number of words in the response
• the number of characters in the response
• the presence of one or more target phrases in the response
• the presence of one or more common errors in the response

The automatic grade can be overridden by the teacher later.

Additionally, the teacher can set up grading bands that offer a non-linear grading scheme. In such a scheme, the grade awarded is that of the grading band in which the word/character count falls.

The teacher can choose to provide a sample response and/or a glossary of common errors (typos or plagiarized sentences).

Supported Moodle branches

3.0 and later

Unique user-friendly features

Several response formats to choose.

The teacher may choose to request a plain text or an HTML-formated text answer box. Or a no-online-text answer, with a choice of number of file attachments allowed.

Minimum and maximum number of words

If you want, you can specify a minimun and a maximum number of words. If the student's response does not comply, the student will get a warning message.

Sample response

A 'sample response' allows the teacher to provide an example answer with the desired qualities, so that the students can click on the (Show sample) text and read what is expected from them. Clicking on the (Hide sample) will remove the sample text and allows the student to write his essay. This student-friendly feature is highly recommended for formative asssessment , but rarely used in summative assessment .

Glossary of common errors

A 'Glossary of common errors' allows the teacher to use a Glossary activity to document the commonly made errors that students have made in the past, so that they can check their essay and avoid/fix these common mistakes. You can use such a glossary for:

• One word common typographical errors in common English words (e.g. temperatour, temperatoor, themperature, ...)
• One word common typographical errors in specialized vocabulary (e.g. medical vocabulary: hemorrage, torax, ...)
• Two word grammatical errors (e.g. "he are", "they is", "people is",
• Statements copied exactly from sources (e.g. Wikipedia) that the students sometimes use to find information (which may be allowed), but that the students copied and then they pasted verbatim and submitted without properly indicating the quote (which deserves a minor penalty; e.g. penalty per error=10%), or that they submitted as their own words (when this is specifically forbidden). Cheating (plagiarism) is usually severely punished by most teachers (e.g. penalty per error=90%), as it promotes misappropiation of the works of others and it discourages true learning.
• In medicine, engineering and other science subjects, these glossaries of common errors can be used as a catch for misconceptions and counterindications that the students have wrongfully included in their essays, and that deserve to be penalized.
• When using statements in the glossary of common errors, you must choose carefully the number of words: too many words might not detect all infractors, while too few words might flag a simple coincidence in the choice of words. It is always advisable to check your glossary as a student; copy something from the Wikipedia and check if it is correctly detected.
• You may have this glossary of common errors visible for the students if it contains common spelling English typos.
• But you would probably have a glossary of phrases copied from the Internet (frequently plagiarized text) not visible for students.

Target phrase syntax

You can use "AND", "OR", "(" and ")". For example ...

• Note that "AND" and "OR" must appear in capital letters.
• The spaces before and after these keywords is optional, but usually they improve readability.
• The word "ANY" may be used instead of "AND". i.e. "ANY" is a synonym for "AND"
• Also, you can use the following characters to create regular expressions :
• For example ...
• Note that there are no optional spaces in regular expressions .

Suggested use

You can use this question type for summative assessment instead of the standard Moodle Essay question type , but it also works wonderfully with formative assessment ; just change the options to show the target phrases and allow quiz re-takes..

Languages available

English, French, Greek, International Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Dutch, Romanian, Afrikaans and Portuguese were available in June 2021. More languages can be easily added through AMOS .

• from the Moodle plugins database
• From GitHub .
• directly from the Moodle plugins database
• Download from GitHub and install the ZIP file ,
• Now you can easily choose an Essay (auto-grade) question type to add to your Question bank

Example 1: An example English language question

• Write a reasonable question name (e.g. "Summer vacation essay writing")
• For a simple question, in the question text write the following:
• Type the following General feedback:
• Type the following combined feedback for any correct response:
• Type the following combined feedback for any partially correct response:
• Type the following combined feedback for any incorrect response:
• Type the following Response Options:
• Type the following Response Template:
• Type the following Sample response:
• For Auto.grading:
• Do not show grade bands
• Do allow partial grades
• Grade band [1] For 0 items award 0%
• Grade band [2] For 50 or more items award 60%
• Do NOT show target phrases
• Target phrase [1] : If [First] is used, award [10% of the question grade.]
• Target phrase [2] : If [Next OR Then] is used, award [10% of the question grade.]
• Target phrase [3] : If [Finally OR In the end] is used, award [10% of the question grade.]
• Target phrase [4] : If [First AND (Next OR Then) AND Finally] is used, award [10% of the question grade.]
• If you choose "Match full or partial words", 'Firstly' would also get a 10% bonus score, as 'First' is actually part of 'Firstly'. Also, beware that nonsensical words such as 'Firstraordinarily' would also get an automatic 10% bonus score.
• If you choose "Match is case-sensitive", a student who writes 'First' will get a 10% bonus score, but 'first' would get 0% bonus score.
• Decide if yoou want to recognize or ignore line breaks in the student's response.
• When the teacher manually checks all the student responses later, the teacher must identify if these questions behaviours were indeed correctly set, and if they were not, change them and regrade the quiz.}}
• If you have previously written a Glossary of common errors, choose that glossary and choose a reasonable penalty per error
• Save changes
• Try it :)

Demo question

• This is how your question looks initially:

• If you click on the red coloured 'Show sample' text, you will then see the sample text you entered:

• If you click on the purple coloured 'Hide sample' text, you will return to the previous screen. Delete the instructions and type an imaginary student essay, but make a few intentional mistakes (e.g. write too few words and misspell one word):

• Submit and finish. See the auto-grade magic:

• Notice that two targets phrases were correctly identified, but two were missed by the student:

• See how the glossary of common errors correctly recognized a mis-typed 'Finaly' word

• See the feedback. Check that it is a good feedback for the question, according to your students' level of knowledge. In this case, the student was penalized for one (common) typographical error :

• Click on the 'Finaly' error and see corresponding entry of the glossary of common errors you selected:

• You can browse all your glossay entries and add/remove/change as necessary:

• If your glossary of common errors includes sentences that are used for copy-paste cheating by the students, you may discover a student that copied and pasted text illegally:

• If you click on the blue-coloured link of the common error text, you will see your glossary entrance for that common error text:

• Make any necessary changes to your question and try it again.
• When you are happy with the question, quiz the students.
• Make sure to check the students' responses and make comments or change grades if needed:
• When the students have taken the quiz, look at the 'Attempts' link and check them one student at a time, one question at a time, by clicking on the 'Review attempt' link.

• If you notice one answer that deserves a comment or a change in the grade, click on the 'Make comment or override mark' link.

• Make sure that you click on the 'Save' button when you have finished making comments or changing a grade.
• Make any necessary changes to your questions and to your glossary of common errors in preparation for the following term.
• Regrade all quiz attempts and inform your students about their changed grades and the feedback comments. Verify that your overrriden marks have remained as you set them (they should).
• Keep on the good teaching work :)

Example 2: An example medical question

• We will be making a question for a formative quiz for an undergraduate general pathology course for a medical degree course.
• Write a reasonable question name (e.g. "Types of circulatory shock")
• For this question, in the question text write the following:
• Type the following Grader information:
• Target phrase [1] : If [low volume OR hypovolemic] is used, award [10% of the question grade.]
• Target phrase [2] : If [cardiogenic OR heart OR cardiac OR pump] is used, award [10% of the question grade.]
• Target phrase [3] : If [obstructive] is used, award [10% of the question grade.]
• Target phrase [4] : If [distributive OR isovolemic] is used, award [10% of the question grade.]
• If you have previously written a Glossary of common errors, choose that glossary and choose a reasonable penalty per error. In this example we will use a glossary of untrustworty sources, that has several sources of information that are notoriously biased and should not have been used for this activity. Any student that used one or several untrustworthy sources of information will be severely penalyzed and the student may fail this activity (as stated in the question instructions and the course outline), because medical students should use good, trustworthy, updated lecture notes and medical books and journals, and never rely on gossip, Facebook or Tweeter for their medical knowledge. The use of Wikipedia here will be considered a gray area, and the teacher will have to read carefully what the student wrote in order to mark the essay.

Example medical question

• If you click on the purple coloured 'Hide sample' text, you will return to the previous screen. Delete the instructions and type an imaginary student essay, but make a few intentional mistakes (e.g. write too few words and quote some untrustworthy sources of information):

• Notice that three targets phrases were correctly identified, but one was missed by the student:

• In this case the errors were untrustworthy sources of information for this course.
• If this was a pharmacology question we could have used a glossary of counterindications or antagonists.

• See the feedback. Check that it is a good feedback for the question, according to your students' level of knowledge:

• Click on all of the Common errors and see their corresponding entries in the glossary of common errors you selected:

• When you are happy with the question, quiz the students

Example 3: Another example medical question

• The teacher wants to ask the student to name two common presenting conditions where an exposure history is useful to assist in diagnosis.
• Possible Answers: pre-conception exposures, prenatal exposures, rash, new onset asthma, exacerbation asthma, exacerbation COPD, new or worsening arrythmia, worsening angina, eye irritation, throat irritation, allergic rhinitis, unexplained worsening symptoms, non-specific symptoms such as fatigue, headache
• If the student writes any two answers above then they will score 100%.
• As requested in this forum thread
• You will need to set many target phrases.

• Because for this example we included two concepts in the Sample response: "pre-conception exposures" and "prenatal exposures", we will use a Glossary of errors named "Examples that should not be repeated", with a 10% Penalty per error.
• As usual, the teacher should try the newly created question with some correct and some incorrect tries, and verify that the question works as expected.
• A very important issue in this particular example question is the Grader information:

You can use Tags to organize your questions and make later searching for them easier.

Question export and import

You can Export questions and import them into a different course or server. The author recommends using the Moodle XML format because it captures more information about the question than the GIFT format .

Download all submitted files from Auto Grade Essay

• You need to change this file called "report.php" under Moodle/mod/quiz/report/downloadsubmissions
• The lines 56, 167, 270 where
• Must be changed into lines 56, 167, 270 where
• And you will be able to download all submission from Auto Grade Essay questions if there is any submission

Sharing is caring

When you have made a sizable number of working questions (and/or common errors glossaries), you have tried them with real students and you think that they might be useful for other teachers of the same subject (e.g., English language, medicine, engineering), you can upload them to Moodle.net , where they can be curated and made available for the world to use.

• Marcus Green's automatic assessment presentation at the Glasgow Moot 2018.
• The Essay module for H5P - A free HTML5-based content type that allows students to receive instant feedback to a text that they have composed. Authors can define a set of keywords that will trigger individual responses if they are found or missing in the text. Let students become creative with H5P and Essay in Moodle.
• These very powerful, but more complicated to use additional plugins:
• Preg question type - uses regular expressions (regexes) to check student's responses (though you can use it without regexes for its hinting features).
• Regular Expression Short-Answer question type - expects the respondent to answer an "open" question with a word or a short phrase. However, the RegExp system system gives you access to a more powerful system for analyzing the student's answers with the aim of providing more relevant immediate feedback.
• Pattern-match question type - allow the student to give an answer of up to about 20 words, which can then be automatically graded by matching the students response against a number of different patterns expressed in the PMatch syntax. The first matching pattern determines the score and the feedback.
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• Plagiarism prevention

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About Essay (auto-grade) question

Select question type, write question statement, combined feedback settings, response options, response template, grader information, auto-grading, grade bands, target phrases, commons errors, save & preview.

• Review Essay (auto grade responses)
• All-or-Nothing Multiple Choice question
• Edit quiz layout
• Update Quiz activity
• Provide extra time or additional attempts
• Recommendations to improve Moodle performance for a concurrent Quiz
• Quiz Go-live Checklist
• Grade Essay questions & override marks
• Release Quiz grades
• Moodle Quiz FAQ
• Related guidance

The essay (auto-grade) question type allows an essay question response to be given a preliminary grade that is generated automatically based on one or more of the following characteristics of the response.

• The number of words in the response
• The number of characters in the response
• The presence of one or more target phrases in the response
• The presence of one or more common errors in the response

The automatic grade can be overridden by the lecturer later.

Additionally, the lecturer can set up grading bands that offer a non-linear grading scheme. In such a scheme, the grade awarded is that of the grading band in which the word/character count falls.

The lecturer can choose to provide a sample response and/or a glossary of common errors (typos or plagiarised sentences).

This question type is a great fit for formative assessment as it can provide quick feedback on essay questions. A sample response allows the lecturer to provide an example answer with the desired qualities. It can also be used for summative assessment where the lecturer reviews the essays and overrides the final mark and where a sample response is not provided.

• Open the module.
• Select  More on the contextual navigation menu, then Question bank .
• Select the relevant category to organise your question. Select  Create a new question .
• Scroll down and select the radio button next to  Essay (auto-grade) .
• Select  Add .
• Add a  Question name . The name is not displayed to students. The example below displays  Types of circulatory shock .
• Enter the full question  Question text  field, including anything that is expected in the answer. For example:

Write a short paragraph of 50 words or more about the different types of circulatory shock. You must also write your source for this information.  Try to include the following phrases:

• Low volume OR hypovolemic
• Cardiogenic OR heart
• Distributive OR isovolemic

You will get special bonus points if you use ALL of the above phrases. You may fail this activity if you get your information from an unreliable source (as described in the module outline).

• General feedback  is optional, it is not dependent on whether the answer is right or wrong. It could be used to provide an example of the answer, links to further information or an explanation of how the question will be graded.
• ID number,  usually left blank, is another way of identifying questions. It must be unique with each question category.

Combined feedback is optional.

Examples could include:

• For any correct responses:  Your essay has been marked as correct. Your lecturer will review this mark later.
• For any partially correct responses:  Good try. Please check to see if you have written enough words. Please include all the target phrases.
• incorrect responses:  No essay was received. Please ask your lecturer about how to input and submit an essay.

Set how you want students to respond to the question.

• HTML editor:  text that can be formatted e.g. titles in bold
• HTML with file picker:  to accept attachments
• Plain text:  text without formatting
• Plain text, monospaced font:  characters in font occupy the same amount of horizontal space e.g., Courier.
• No online text
• Require text:  text input can be mandatory or optional 
• Input box size:  the number of lines, from 5 to 40, which determines the size of the text box where answers are typed in.
• Require attachments:  If Allow attachments  is enabled a minimum number can be stipulated for the response to be graded.
• Accepted file types : Restrict the type of file e.g. Audio - mp3,  Document - doc, Spreadsheet - .xls

The Response Template settings are optional.

• Response template:  Any text entered here will be displayed in the response input box when a new attempt at the question starts. 
• Sample response:  A sample response allows the lecturer to provide an example answer with the desired qualities, so that the students can select the (Show sample) text and read what is expected from them. Selecting the (Hide sample) will remove the sample text and allows the student to write his essay. This student-friendly feature is highly recommended for formative assessment. 

Grader Information is optional and only visible to lecturers. It may be important to include anything that impacts on the question's grading. Below is text that is an example of what could be added to the Information for graders field.

As there may be many acceptable answers here, be sure to check carefully all answers, as it is very likely that many students will include valid answers that are not yet included in the target phrases. If so, please add the new valid answers. After all the new valid answers have been incorporated in the question target phrases, re-grade all student's attempts and inform them about their new grades. Be sure to hear all student's complaints about their answers not considered as valid (even though they might have been actually wrong). You can (maybe you should) include the feedback for the wrong student's answers in your glossary of common errors for the question (so that the students will see why their answers were marked as wrong).

To enable auto grading:

• Set Enable automatic grading to Yes .
• Set Type of countable items to  Words .
• Set Expected number of items to  50.
• Set Show student feedback to Yes, show to teachers and students .
• Set Show grade calculation to No .
• Set Show text statistics to Yes, show to teachers and students .
• For Statistical items select Words , Unique words , Long words , Lexical density and Common errors .
• Show grade bands:  If enabled, details of the grade bands will be shown on the grading and review pages. In this example, this option has been disabled.
• Award partial grades:  If enabled, grades will be added for partially completed grade bands and two grade bands will appear by default. In this example, this option has been enabled.
• Grade band 1: For 0 or more items, award 0% of the question grade
• Grade band 2: For 50 or more items, award 60% of the question grade

• Show target phrases:  If enabled, details of the target phrases will be shown on the grading and review pages. In this example, this option has been disabled.
• Target phrase [1]: If [low volume OR hypovolemic] is used, award [10% of the question grade.]
• Target phrase [2]: If [cardiogenic OR heart OR cardiac OR pump] is used, award [10% of the question grade.]

If you have previously written a  Glossary  of common errors, choose that glossary and choose a reasonable penalty per error.

Save  changes and  Preview  the question to test that all the settings are working correctly. 

Make sure to check the students' responses and make comments or change grades if needed.

Guidance adapted from Essay (auto-grade) question type from Moodle.org.

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