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Optional Extras

The following is adapted from Moodle's documentation.

Comments

A comment is any line that starts with two forward slashes //. You can use them to provide headers or more information about questions.

Moodle will hide these lines when reading the question file.

Format:

//Comment

Examples:

//German to English Translation

Titles

A title can be added to a question by including it within two pairs of colons ::.

Format:

::Title::

Examples:

::Continents:: { =Asia } is the largest continent in the world.

Feedback

Feedback can be included for questions by adding a hash # character next to an answer.

Format:

#Feedback

Examples:

Japanese characters originally came from which country? {
~India #Sorry.
=China #Correct!
~Korea #Try again.
~Egypt #That’s not it.
}

For true-false questions, feedback is written slightly differently. The format is as follows:

Question Text {TRUE #Wrong #Right}

Matching and essay questions cannot have feedback for individual answers.

General Feedback

General feedback can be included at the end of a question block with four hash # characters.

Format:

####General Feedback

Examples:

How are you? {
####We hope you're feeling well.
}

Percentage Weights

You can add percentage weights to answers by adding the weight at the beginning of the answer inside two percentage signs %.

Format:

%Weight%

Examples:

Jesus Christ was from {
~Jerusalem
~%25%Bethlehem
~%50%Galilee
=Nazareth
}

Special Characters

If you want to use characters that have special meaning in the GIFT format, such as ~ = # { } :, you can use a backslash \ to escape these characters. With the backslash, these characters can be used as a normal character.

Note, the backslash is invisible when displayed on Moodle.

Format:

\~
\=
\#
\{
\}
\:

Example:

1 + 2 \= {3}

The largest desert on Earth is\: {
=Antarctica
~Sahara Desert
~Australian Desert
~Arabian Desert
}

Using HTML, Markdown or Plain Text

If you'd like to use HTML, Markdown or Plain Text inside of a question, you can do so by using the tags [html], [markdown] or [plain].

Format:

[html]
[markdown]
[plain]

Example:

[markdown]The *American holiday of Thanksgiving* is celebrated on the { ~second ~third =fourth } Thursday of November.

[html]<p>The sun rises in which direction?</p> {
=<p>The east.</p>#<b>Awesome!</b>
~<p>The west.</p>#What planet did <em>you</em> grow up on?
}

[html]Match the <b>activity</b> to the description.{
=[html]An activity supporting asynchronous discussions. -> Forum
=[moodle]A teacher asks a question and specifies a choice of multiple responses. -> Choice
=[plain]A bank of record entries which participants can add to. -> Database
=[markdown]A collection of web pages that anyone can add to or edit. -> Wiki

Categories

To add categories, you can use the $CATEGORY: tag.

Format:

$CATEGORY: Label //OR:
$CATEGORY: Folder1/Folder2/Folder3

Example: