How to Create Quizzes in Moodle: Upload Play-Once Audio/Video

Kiran

Hey Moodlers, 

Want to upload an audio file to a quiz in Moodle?  It’s a piece of cake, isn’t it?! Under normal circumstances, audio files can easily be added to your Moodle quizzes. We all know that H5P does the trick here.

In case you aren’t aware, here’s how it can be done if there’s no constraint on listening attempts:

• Convert your MP3 file to MP4 using free online file converters on Google
• Use the “Media” option above the “Question” field to add the MP3 file to your quiz as a video
• Select whether the file should be played automatically or not

H5P is natively installed in Moodle 3.8. If you’re using Moodle versions lower than 3.8, you might want to consider installing and setting up the plugin from here. 

But the problem is the restriction with one time listening.

Do you want your students to take a test involving a strictly one-time-listen audio file? The aim is to restrict your students so that they are able to listen to the sound file ONLY ONCE and then proceed to answer questions related to that file.

No stress! We have compiled a solution for this. Follow this and 

There are two simple methods for resolving this issue. You could experiment with them and go for whatever works best for you.

A Guide To Upload an Audio or Video File – Moodle quiz tutorial

Here are step-by-step instructions to creating a play-once audio/video in your Moodle quiz

METHOD 1 – CREATE A RESTRICTED H5P FILE

• Make an H5Pactivity with the following restrictions

• Enable autoplay and disable controls in H5P

• The quiz is available but hidden so that the students can reach it via a link put on a label activity

• The label activity is set to be hidden after the quiz is passed so there’s no way your students could reach the quiz again, this step is however optional

• Embed the H5P voice into the question by the following code

{h5p:activityname}

And there you have it! You have successfully achieved the once-only-listen audio file upload to your Moodle quiz. This technique can be used to embed play-once videos too.

There’s another alternative method that you could try as well. Here you go!

METHOD 2 – EMBED A SEPARATE QUIZ

Another way is you could put the voice in a separate quiz using these 3 simple steps: 

• Make a hidden but available quiz
• Make one question with text saying – “do you hear the voice ?”
• Set the time to, exactly the voice time + few extra seconds
• get the link of this quiz and put it in the question you want and make it open in a new window
• Get the link of this quiz and insert it into the question of your choice and make it open in a new window

How to Stop Students from Cheating

Another question that can bug a lot of course creators in case you opt for method 1 or method 2 – Is it possible for your students to right-click and download the audio file or is it possible to block downloading?

The good news is – NO

A direct download is not possible in this case. Unless some smart minds with strong technical expertise manage to bypass it. 

But hey, let’s always look on the bright side as you could use a few hacks too 🙂

We understand your concern as this can defeat the purpose of your quiz and your overall testing objective. 

However, the restrictions mentioned in both methods will serve the purpose and prevent your students from downloading the audio file. In case, some technically aware students try to cheat by resorting to certain hacks or workarounds within this, they could lose access to the exam and may get disqualified eventually. 

Further, you could even set a small trap wherein you could hide your original exam and then create another version of it with a false version of the audio file. Students planning to cheat here will try to download the fake audio clip on accessing this version of the exam, This way, the original exam along with the authentic audio file is protected – purpose served again! We may not be able to completely stop students from cheating but it could definitely be reduced to some extent with such tricks. 

The option of screen recording to curb cheating could also be explored. However, this cannot be done automatically as of now. The users will have to share their screens voluntarily at their end if you want to monitor them. 

Something like this:

Summing Up

Alternatively, you can even try having the audio file and the questions as two separate activities. With this, you can limit your audio file to be played once. In this case, once your students complete the audio listening activity only then will the questions activity be unlocked for attempting or answering.

Are you encountering a similar issue?

We would like you to try one of these methods and let us know how it worked for you.

Also, the comments section is all yours. We are open to new thoughts on this or anything that you’d like to add to this in the comments below.