
different tests. Presenting different tests to adjacent 
students is important, since it is much easier for 
students to cheat with MCQ tests. 
The tests, implemented with Moodle, were 
answered by the students as homeworks. This e-
assessment component was both of a formative 
nature and of a summative nature. The summative 
nature is present because the tests have a weight in 
the final grades obtained by the students. The 
formative nature is present because the tests were to 
be answered by the students 7 to 10 days before the 
formal tests, to help them ascertain their awareness. 
These formal tests were the other component of the 
assessment. It consisted of 3 MCQ tests answered by 
the students in written format, at the same time for 
all the students, in a date previously scheduled by 
the school. It is relevant to say that these tests can 
also be considered as a type of e-assessment, since 
the marks were obtained and stored with electronic 
support. The electronic support consisted of an excel 
file with adequate formulas. The students answers 
were converted to electronic format, grades were 
automatically generated and stored in this format, 
and statistics were calculated. It is important to say 
that presenting the students different tests is a 
problem also in these MCQ tests in written format. 
At least 8 different versions were   necessary for 
each test. 
The implementation was gradually done, in order 
to carefully test the system. The first step consisted 
in the development of a bank of MCQ. This bank of 
MCQ was carefully planned and implemented to 
allow that the tests were randomly generated by 
Moodle, allowing that each student is presented with 
a different test maintaining, even so, uniformity. The 
construction of the MCQ bank is discussed in the 
next section. 
Next, it was decided to implement 3 tests as 
homeworks, during specified periods previously 
defined and communicated to the students. It was 
intended to do the tests during the lessons, but there 
were no technical conditions to do it. Due to these 
circumstances, these MCQ tests implemented with 
Moodle had initially a weight of 10%, being that the 
3 tests MCQ tests in written format had the 
remaining 90%. The decision for the weights was 
considered good, since this was the first time that the 
bank of MCQ was used and some uncontrollable 
situations could happen. In addition, the tests were 
optional to the students, and answered out of the 
lessons environment. As stated before, its purpose 
was mainly to serve as formative assessment.  
This format was maintained during 3 academic 
years, but with slight changes in format and in the 
MCQ tests’ weights. 
4 CONSTRUCTING THE 
MULTIPLE-CHOICE 
QUESTIONS BANK  
The most important task of the e-assessment was the 
construction of the MCQ bank. Three aspects were 
considered namely, defining categories for the 
questions, building the questions and the tests, and 
the revision process. These aspects are explained 
following. 
4.1  Defining Categories for the 
Questions 
Moodle can generate tests randomly by selecting a 
fixed number of questions from selected categories, 
which render a different test for each student. This 
poses two important questions: 
  how to guarantee that the tests assess the same 
topics? 
  how to guarantee that the tests are uniform in 
difficulty for all the students? 
It was defined that the guarantee that the same 
topics are assessed could be achieved with the 
definition of categories in which to classify each of 
the elaborated questions, each category 
corresponding to a learning outcome. The learning 
outcomes were carefully defined by the group of 
teachers based in the learning outcomes of the 
courses being taught. These were defined at the 
beginning of each semester by the group of teachers, 
based on the students’ necessities, but are somehow 
uniform along the years. It was detected that if the 
tests include more than one question from a 
category, Moodle can select the same question two 
times (at least), which is somehow common in 
Moodle randomly generated tests.  Thus, to avoid 
this issue, the tests randomly generated by Moodle 
presented to each student, includes only one 
question per category, in order to avoid that the 
same may question appear more than once in the 
test. The categories to include in each test, and 
consequently the learning outcomes that are meant 
to be assessed, are defined by the teachers for each 
test. 
As for the guarantee that the tests are uniform in 
difficulty for all the students, it was decided that the 
teachers should develop questions with low to 
medium difficulty level. The questions should also 
be uniform in format: for instance it is not 
acceptable to have a question with 3 options, and 
another question with 7 options, since it is more 
difficult for the students to analyze the late case. 
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