The Moodle quiz module can be a powerful tool for providing students with fast formative feedback. Did you know however that questions don’t have to be created in Moodle? You can import directly from your favorite text editor. For example, the text:

can be imported directly into Moodle as an “Aiken” file to become:

I’ve recorded a two part tutorial on how to do it. Here are the links:
Screencasts
Now I’m going to throw a question out to the community. Moodle has a very powerful internal format (Moodle XML) that will allow you to create quizzes that include images, formatting, etc. Does anyone know of a good tool that will allow you to create these offline? Once upon a time there was a MS Word template that could do this. Thoughts?
October 12, 2011 at 3:35 pm
This is such a helpful video! Thanks for posting. One troubleshooting question for you: I’m a Spanish teacher, and so making quizzes in Spanish. I’m having problems with the accent marks, as they show up as errors (same goes for the upside-down question marks). Any suggestions on how to make this work?
Thanks again!
December 2, 2010 at 6:46 am
I created a Windows forms-driven application using Visual Basic that allows the user to input the question name, stem, and distractors offline and then paste them to a text editor in Moodle GIFT format.
I have no way to distribute the application, but I’d be happy to e-mail it to anyone that wanted to post it for online distribution (I don’t have a web space to offer an FTP or something like it).
January 16, 2012 at 9:01 pm
Hi Brook,
Can you share the application with me? mripir at gmail.com
thanks.
August 9, 2010 at 7:01 am
Hello!
I’d like to inform about Moodle XML Converter – http://moodle.heroku.com
It’s an open free service for educators which allows them easily create online glossaries and quizzes for Moodle from existing files.
If you find our service useful, please, share the link with anyone that you feel may be interested.
Thanks
Best regards, Yulia
April 27, 2010 at 8:20 pm
[...] Here’s a link to the great post: http://distlearn.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/creating-moodle-quizes-in-you-favorite-text-editor/ [...]