Delayed answer display within quiz

Delayed answer display — qbank_delayedanswers

Delayed answer display is a Moodle question bank plugin that hides the answer options of multiple-choice questions for a short, configurable delay at the start of each quiz question.

Students first see only the question, encouraging active recall instead of recognition. The delay is a pedagogical nudge, not an anti-cheat mechanism, based on research carried out by Utrecht University: giving learners a moment to formulate their own answer before seeing the options improves retention.

Features

• Site-wide default — Enable globally and set a default delay under Site administration → Plugins → Question bank → Delayed answer display.
• Per-quiz override — A tri-state dropdown is added to each quiz edit form: Use site default, Enable for this quiz or Disable for this quiz, with an optional per-quiz delay of 1–60 seconds.
• Resolution rule — A per-quiz override takes precedence over the site-wide default. Quizzes without an override follow the site setting.
• Sensible default — Ships with a default delay of 10 seconds.
• Pure-CSS reveal — Uses a native @keyframes animation with animation-delay. No JavaScript runs on the student side.
• Waiting message — Optional message shown while options are hidden; enabled in settings and edited via Moodle language customisation.
• Accessibility-safe — Hidden options are removed from the keyboard tab order and assistive technology trees during the delay.
• Automatic cleanup — An event observer removes per-quiz settings when the quiz is deleted.
• Privacy API — Stores configuration and per-quiz settings only. No personal user data.

Screenshots Site-wide settings

Per-quiz settings

Documentation

Full user manuals, including step-by-step configuration instructions with screenshots:

• 🇬🇧 User manual in English
• 🇳🇱 Handleiding in het Nederlands

Tip: The delay applies per quiz page. For the best effect, show one question per page using: Quiz settings → Layout → New page → Every question.

How it works

The plugin only affects Multiple Choice questions provided by qtype_multichoice. Both single- and multiple-answer modes are supported.

The plugin has two configuration layers:

1. Site-wide default — Administrators configure an Enable globally checkbox and a Default delay (seconds) value.
2. Per-quiz override — Teachers configure a Delayed answer display dropdown on the quiz edit form.

Per-quiz dropdown

Teachers can choose:

• Use site default — The quiz follows the site-wide setting, including later changes to it.
• Enable for this quiz — Delay enabled regardless of the site setting. The Delay (seconds) field accepts 1–60; if left empty, the site-wide default is used.
• Disable for this quiz — No delay is applied, regardless of the site-wide setting.

The Enable globally setting only applies to quizzes without an override. Selecting Enable for this quiz or Disable for this quiz pins the choice and the global toggle no longer affects it; switch back to Use site default to restore global behaviour.

Resolution table

To disable the delay site-wide, the administrator can either clear the Enable globally checkbox or set Default delay (seconds) to 0. Disabling Enable globally removes the delay from quizzes that follow the site default. Setting the default delay to 0 disables it for site-default quizzes and for enabled quizzes without their own delay value. Quizzes configured with Enable for this quiz and an explicit number of seconds continue to use that value.

Waiting message

Administrators can enable or disable the message site-wide using the Show waiting message setting. The message itself can be changed through Moodle's language customisation functionality.

Copyright

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