The Aiken Format Guide for Moodle Quiz Questions

Aiken format is a plain-text layout for multiple-choice questions that Moodle's Question Bank can import directly. Each question is just a few lines of text — no XML, no special editor — which makes it easy to write by hand, review before importing, or generate automatically.

Here's a single Aiken-format question, exactly as Moodle expects it:

What is the capital of France?
A. London
B. Paris
C. Berlin
D. Madrid
ANSWER: B

A file can contain any number of these blocks, separated by a blank line.

• The question text can span multiple lines, but must not itself start with a capital letter followed by a period (Moodle would misread it as an answer option).
• Each answer option starts with a single capital letter, a period, and a space — A. B. C. and so on, in order, with no gaps in the sequence.
• The line "ANSWER: " must be written exactly like that (capital letters, colon, single space) followed by the correct option's letter — nothing else on that line.
• Exactly one blank line separates each question block from the next — not zero, not two.

It's deliberately minimal, so it's worth knowing its real limits before you build a whole question bank around it:

• Multiple-choice only — no true/false as its own type (model it as two options, A/B), no short answer, essay, matching, or numerical questions.
• One correct answer per question — no partial credit or multiple correct options.
• No per-question feedback text, hints, or explanations — just the question, options, and the answer key.
• No images, tables, or rich formatting inside the question or answer text — plain text only.

For anything on this list, Moodle's own GIFT format or the Moodle XML format support it — Aiken trades that flexibility for being genuinely easy to write and read by hand.

• In your course, go to the Question bank (under More > Question bank, or the gear menu depending on your Moodle theme).
• Choose Import.
• Under File format, select Aiken format.
• Choose the category the questions should import into, then select your .txt file (save it as plain text, UTF-8 encoding).
• Click Import — Moodle shows a preview of every question it parsed before confirming.

Once imported, each question becomes a normal Multiple Choice question in your Question Bank — editable through Moodle's usual question editor like any other question, and addable to a quiz via Add > from question bank.