Adding Activities

Activities, such as forums, quizzes and wikis enable interactive content to be added to the course. Some are only suitable for a tutor/teacher supported course (tutor only) rather than a free standing open educational resource.

  • Blog allows for creation of blogs within a course (tutor only)
  • Choice enables a tutor to ask a question and offer possible responses (tutor only)
  • Custom Certificate is your preferred design, rather than standard Statement of Participation
  • Forum provides a discussion Moodle forum facility (tutor only)
  • Glossary can be a list of definitions, like a dictionary, or resources for information.  
  • H5P HTML5 Package of interactive content (presentations, videos, multimedia, questions etc).
  • Lesson enables sharing content and/or practice activities in flexible ways (tutor only). 
  • Questionnaire allows survey construction using a variety of survey question types.
  • Quiz enables a course author to create quizzes comprising questions of various types.
  • SCORM package Shareable Content Object Reference Model collection of files.   
  • StudentQuiz allows students to add questions for the crowd (tutor only).
  • Wiki lets users edit a set of linked pages, often a collaborative activity (tutor only). 
  • Workshop enables collection, review and peer assessment of students' work (tutor only)


7. Questionnaire

The questionnaire module allows you to construct surveys using a variety of question types, for the purpose of gathering data from users. However, you need to have the Course Manager or Teacher role to be able to add questions and see response data for questionnaires in OpenLearn Create, so will need to complete the Data Declaration form to get this role (please contact the OpenLearn create mailbox to request the form). 

To set up a questionnaire

Step 1:

Click on the dropdown arrow of the 'Add an activity' box

Step 2:

Select 'questionnaire' from the list

Step 3:

Type a name for the questionnaire.

Step 4:

If you have a set period for when the questionnaire will be available for responses, you can set this using the Timing options, otherwise leave these options blank.

  • Choose open date - You can specify a date to open the questionnaire here. Check the check box, and select the date and time you want. Users will not be able to fill out the questionnaire before that date. If this is not selected, it will be open immediately. (
  • Choose close date - You can specify a date to close the questionnaire here. Check the check box, and select the date and time you want. Users will not be able to fill out the questionnaire after that date. If this is not selected, it will never be closed.

Step 5:

Set the questionnaire response options:

  • Type (defaults to 'respond many') - Select whether users will be allowed to respond once, daily, weekly, monthly or an unlimited number of times (many).
  • Respondent type (defaults to 'fullname') - You can display your users' full names with each response by setting this to "fullname". You can hide your users' identities from the responses by setting this to "anonymous".
  • Students can view all responses (defaults to 'after answering the questionnaire') - You can specify who can see the responses of all respondents to submitted questionnaires (general statistics tables).The options are 'after answering the questionnaire', 'after the questionnaire is closed' and 'always'.
  • Save/Resume answers (defaults to No) - Setting this option allows users to save their answers to a questionnaire before submitting them. Users can leave the questionnaire unfinished and resume from the save point at a later date.
  • Allow branching questions (defaults to No) - Enable Yes/No and Radio Buttons questions to have Child questions dependent on their choices in your questionnaire.
  • Auto numbering (defaults to 'auto number pages and questions') - Automatic numbering of questions and pages. You might want to disable automatic numbering for questionnaires with conditional branching.Options include 'Do not number questions or pages', 'auto number questions', 'auto number pages' and 'auto number pages and questions'.
  • Submission grade (defaults to 'no grade') - you can choose a grade from 100 - 1 instead of No grade if there needs to be a submission grade set.

Step 6:

Set the Content options (default is 'create new') - Select one of the radio button options. 'Create new' is the default.

Step 7:

Click on 'Save and return to unit'

Step 8:

Click on the questionnaire link to open it

Step 9:

The questionnaire will show that it does not contain any questions.

Click on the 'add questions' link to add the questions you have worked out in advance.

Step 10:

The Add questions screen will appear

Step 11:

In the dropdown box you will see the following question type options:

  • Check boxes
  • Date
  • Dropdown box
  • Essay box
  • Label
  • Numeric
  • Page Break
  • Radio Buttons
  • Rate (scale 1...5)
  • Text box
  • Yes/No

Step 12:

Select the appropriate question type to suit the question and click on the 'add selected question type' button.

Step 13:

Complete the form (for Check box question type):

  • The Question Name is only used when you export responses to CSV/Excel format. If you never export to CSV, then you needn't worry about Question names at all. If you plan to regularly export your questionnaire data to CSV, then you have a choice of two options for question naming.
  • Response is required Yes/No - If you select Yes, response to this question will be required, i.e. the respondent will not be able to submit the questionnaire until this question has been answered.
  • Min. forced responses (defaults to zero)
  • Max.forced responses (defaults to zero)
  • Question text - you need to type the actual question into this box.You need to be careful that your question isn't actually asking multiple questions.
  • Possible answers - Enter one option per line for the user to select one or multiple answers from when they come to answer the question.

Step 14:

Click on 'Save changes'

Your question will now appear in the 'manage questions' list.

Step 15:

You can preview the question to see what it will look like by clicking on the 'preview' tab

Step 16:

You can set the advanced options for your questionnaire in the 'advanced settings' tab

Step 17:

There are various content options to set:

  • Questionnaire type - There are three types of questionnaires:
    Private - belongs to the course it is defined in only.
    Template - can be copied and edited.
    Public - can be shared among courses.
  • Title - Title of this questionnaire, which will appear at the top of every page. By default Title is set to the questionnaire Name, but you can edit it as you like.
  • Subtitle - Subtitle of this questionnaire. Appears below the title on the first page only.
  • Additional info - Text to be displayed at the top of the first page of this questionnaire. (i.e. instructions, background info, etc.)

Step 18:

You need to set the questionnaire submission options so that one the completed questionnaire is submitted the user receives notification they have successfully submitted it and the responses are notified to you.

  • You need to choose whether the user will be directed to a particular webpage after they submit the questionnaire or whether there will be a special page with message on it.
    Confirmation URL -
    The URL to which a user is redirected after completing this questionnaire.
    Confirmation page - Heading (in bold) and body text for the "Confirmation" page displayed after a user completes this questionnaire. (URL, if present, takes precedence over confirmation text.) If you leave this field empty, a default message will be displayed upon questionnaire completion (Thank you for completing this Questionnaire).
  • Heading text - if you chose 'Confirmation page' you need to provide a heading title for the page
  • Body text - if you chose 'Confirmation page' you need to provide the text which will appear on that page
  • Email - Sends a copy of each submission to the specified address or addresses. You can provide more than one address by separating them with commas. Leave blank for no email backup.

Step 19:

Click on 'save and return to course'.