# Comparative Study of Moodle Plugins to Facilitate the Adoption of Computer-Based Assessments
## 6 Conclusions  
A descriptive and comparative study about the available Moodle plugins used to import questions into Moodle was developed in this article. An extensive literature review was carried out to describe and select the most important plugins for importing questions in Moodle. Plugins were grouped in categories based on the computing resources required: Web-based plugins, specialised software, plugins developed in text processors and spreadsheet plugins. These plugins were compared according to the question types that they provide and other relevant features, such as the availability to create parameterised questions or gamification functionalities. After this comparison, the most recommended plugin of each category was selected: VLEtools.com (Web-based plugin), Question Machine (specialised software), Moodle2 Word (text processor plugin), and Moodle Cloze Generator (spreadsheet plugin). Several limitations were detected in these plugins. Firstly, none of them provided all the considered question types: MCQs (single and multiple answers), true/false, matching, short answer, missing word, essay, Cloze and description questions. Then, none of the spreadsheet plugins provided parameterised questions: an automatic process that could ease adding a large quantity of questions, which would not be feasible through a manual \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Other Features** & **VLEtools.com** & **Moodle2 Word** & \
\begin{tabular}{c} **Question** \\ **Machine** \\ \end{tabular} &
\begin{tabular}{c} **Moodle Cloze** \\ **Generator** \\ \end{tabular} & **FastTest PlugIn** \\ \hline Installation in & NO & YES & NO & NO & NO \\ Moodle & & & & & \\ Operating system & All & Windows & Windows 1  & Windows/macOS 3  \\ Parameterised questions & NO & NO & NO & YES \\ Requires & & & & \\ commercial & NO & YES & NO & YES \\ software & & & & \\ Written tests & NO & YES & YES & NO & YES \\ Gamification & NO & NO & NO & NO & YES \\ Images & NO & YES & YES & NO & YES \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 7: Comparison of other features. process. Finally, other relevant features such as Gamification functionalities were not included in the analysed plugins. Considering the detected limitations in the literature review, in this paper we described FastTest Plugin: a new plugin for importing questions into Moodle. FastTest PluginIn was validated in seminars with 230 faculty members, obtaining positive results about expectations and potential recommendations. Authors took into account the detected limitations to provide FastTest PluginIn with features to mitigate them. FastTest Plugin was included in Moodle's plugins directory in December 2021 and had been downloaded almost 685 times (an average of three per day). FastTest PluginIn was compared with the selected plugins in the literature review. It was concluded that FastTest PluginIn and Moodle2 Word were the most complete plugins for importing questions into Moodle. It was also shown that FastTest PluginIn had several advantages over Moodle2 Word. Firstly, FastTest PluginIn allows for the definition of all the analysed question types. Taking the 16 native question types of Moodle, 14 of these questions can be created with FastTest PluginIn, only 2 drag and drop question types are not available because they cannot be created with plugins that are not embedded in Moodle. Next, as FastTest PluginIn is based on a Microsoft(r) Excel spreadsheet, the use of Excel functions allows for the definition of parameterised questions. Excel functions can be used to compute the results of numerical questions, meaning that faculty members must only enter the corresponding formulas and the result will be calculated automatically. This reduces the number of mistakes made when entering the question data. Then, FastTest PluginIn allows for the definition of gamified versions of traditional tests, exporting questions generated in the MCQ format (with one correct answer) to a game called Cauchy App (available for Android).