Open Moodle Tools for a Psychological Assessment
Anastasiya Zyamzina
2021 1st International Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning in Higher Education (TELE) | 978-1-6654-4396-8/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/TELE52840.2021.9482475
Vladimir Parkhomenko
Institute of computer science and technology
Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University
St. Petersburg, Russia
zyamzina.as@edu.spbstu.ru, 0000-0001-8088-3074
Alexander Schukin
Institute of computer science and technology
Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University
St. Petersburg, Russia
Alexander.Schukin@spbstu.ru, 0000-0002-9534-824X
Abstract—Psychological support is an important part of learn-
ing processes. Its main sub-process is a psychological assessment.
We develop tools to provide the assessment with the use of
Moodle. A new method of a psychological tests implementation
based on the Quiz module is presented. As an example of its
applicability, we propose a new system of plugins to implement
Lusher color test and Amthauer test. We conducted experiments
with the participation of about 200 students and collected both
learning performance and psychological datasets. A preliminary
analysis of theirs connections is given.
Index Terms—Moodle, Quiz, plugins, development, psycholog-
ical tests, assessment, students, university
I. I NTRODUCTION
Nowadays distance learning occupies a leading position
in education. Its significance increased rapidly because of
COVID-19. There are a lot of distant learning tools (Learning
Management Systems, LMS) for schools, universities and
companies. Psychological support has always been a part
of learning processes in higher and secondary education.
Nonetheless, the appropriate tools with open-source psycho-
logical tests in systems like LMS have not been presented yet.
A monitoring system of student’s psychophysical state at
SPbPU is presented in [1]. We chose two psychological
methods called Lusher color test [2] (LCT, for short) and
Amthauer test [3] (Intelligence Structure Test or IST, for short)
to provide theirs new implementations. The LCT implemen-
tation presented in the paper has never been proposed at the
university before.
LCT allows measuring a person’s psycho-physiological
state, his (her) stress tolerance, activity and communication
abilities. The test allows a participant to determine the causes
of psychological stress.
IST was developed in 1953 for tasks of professional se-
lection and career guidance. Results of this test can help in
studying the structural and level characteristics of the intellect,
in determining what type of activity the person is capable for.
The Amthauer method allows assessing a person’s abilities for
different types of sciences, such as natural, technical, foreign
languages, which can predict the learning preference.
978-1-6654-4396-8/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEEXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE
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Institute of computer science and technology
Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University
St. Petersburg, Russia
vladimir.parkhomenko@spbstu.ru, 0000-0001-7757-377X
Irina Bondarchuk
Institute of physical culture, sport and tourism
Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University
St. Petersburg, Russia
bondarchuk il@spbstu.ru, 0000-0003-1374-3017
Moodle is chosen for an implementation of a psychological
assessment among other LMS because of its active usage
at SPbPU, open source code and extendability by plugins.
Moreover, in Moodle one can login with an account through
SSO. This option helps students to be familiar with the user
interface and to get assessment without switching from a
distance learning course (of physical culture).
Note, that Moodle standard modules, except for Quiz, do
not have a possibility to create new questions types with
complex behavior, as well as with pre- and post-processing
of answers. For example, in comparison to typical quiz ques-
tions, a psychological research involves questions, which are
connected with each other in a special way to infer a feedback
(assessment).
However, Quiz does not fit our needs perfectly, e.g. one can
not simply make all questions in a quiz to be compulsory. As
a result, a purpose of a psychological assessment may be un-
achievable. Also there are no any open timer implementations
in Quiz. These and other problems are discussed in the paper
in details.
The aim of the paper is to describe a new method of a
psychological tests implementation in Moodle, as well as to
present a new system of plugins for LCT and IST implemen-
tations.
The rest part of the paper is organized as follows. In Sec-
tion II a short survey of LCT and IST implementations is
given. Section III describes a method of a psychological tests
implementation based on Quiz. Section IV presents an imple-
mentation of Lusher and Amthauer tests on the basis of the
method proposed. A system of the Quiz plugins is presented.
The preliminary results of data gathering and mining are
discussed in Section V.
II. S HORT REVIEW OF LCT AND IST IMPLEMENTATIONS
Since we are strongly focused on learning processes and
Moodle in matters of a test design and implementation, the
Section briefly provides an overview of existing online LCT
 and IST implementations. Some other opportunities of test – Create a new evaluation procedure (with a user
implementations are discussed in the conclusion. feedback) based on the gathered answers.
We could find only one website with the Amthauer test [4]. – Save a response to a separate data base table.
It allows users to select the respondent age, which affects on • * Make post-processing actions for one question.
a result evaluation. There is a timer for each subtest, which – * Create a timer after a question.
starts with an attempt. When the timer ends the user’s answers
5) Set up the designed questions and check a performance
are saved, even if all questions are not answered. The web
of the test.
page proceeds to the description of the next subtest. The main
One can reverse to the previous steps at any moment if
service disadvantage is that person can leave a current subtest
necessary. All steps marked with the star symbol (*) are
without giving answers.
optional. In the vast majority of cases, some of the template
The comparison of some Lusher test web implementations
(or additionally developed) types of questions and behaviors
is given in Table I.
can be used as the basis for the tests. It is easy to see that
TABLE I: Comparison of Lusher Color Test online implemen- the method proposed is based on one of the fundamental
tations approaches in software design. Any of theirs combinations
can be supported with the proposed steps.
Features Online services The following is a brief look at some examples and variants
Online test Pad [5] Color Psycho how these certain options can be organized in code.
Quiz [6] tests [7]
Color Cards + + + A. Deactivate the obligatory assessment of the question an-
Supported, but a user can move to the
A timer
next question before time is over.
- swers
between
questions Several approaches can be used to deactivate the evaluation
Measurement + - - of answers. A question behavior plugin is used to handle
of test time the evaluation. Consequently, one approach is to exclude the
An option to + - -
share a result evaluation in our question behavior plugin. For example, a
SSO - - - separate behavior has been created for our d&d question in
Open source - - - which the basic evaluation functions return empty values.
code, API for
wrapping
In addition, the question type plugin handles the grades.
When trying to go to the To prevent the test from showing the answer settings, the
The test proceeds to
next question the system specific_feedback and correct_response func-
the second question
shows 8 cards again and
An obligatory
prompts user to select them
only when all the tions should be overridden to return empty values [8].
choice of all cards in the first ques- In plugins like d&d, there is a need to configure fields so
cards again, displaying previous
tion are selected.
selectiona . that respondents can move answers there in the future. That
a Ifnot all cards are selected, for example, if user selected only blue and green is why there is a configuration of correct answers in these
and pressed continue, the system will show user all the cards again , and on plugins, so manipulations with question behaviour plugins are
the blue and green card there will be the order of the previous selection.
enough to deactivate the evaluation in such situation.
In the next section, we discuss possible steps to design new B. Make a question compulsory
psychological tests. Both basic and new functions are used to check for a
response correctness. For example, to check the completeness
III. A METHOD OF A PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS of the is_complete_response, simply add some code
IMPLEMENTATION IN M OODLE Q UIZ to the function get_state_string which is involved in
completing an attempt.
Let us define the following steps of the new method of Such manipulation will not end an attempt until all questions
creating psychological tests in Moodle Quiz. in the test would be fully answered.
In order to notice which question does not have a complete
1) Analyze the method of conducting a psychological test.
answer in the file renderer.php some code should be
2) Describe question types and theirs behavior and model-
added. This file render a display of the question, so we can
ing of their interaction to solve test tasks.
add a text of an error in the feedback field on the question.
3) Design an interface and functionality of new questions
based on the basic Quiz plugins (designing new plugins). C. Organize a special logic for several questions
4) Modify basic questions plugins or/and behavior plugins 1) Create a new evaluation procedure: To create an
for Quiz (development of new plugins). assessment for several questions at once there is a need to
• * Deactivate the mandatory assessment of the ques- write additional functions in a behavior plugin. The basic
tion answers. Moodle plugins do not have this feature. The questions
• Make a question compulsory. can be scored independently, each question can have its
• Organize a special logic for several questions. own mark and a total score is compiled by adding up its

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 individual scores. For example, in the eight-color Lusher
test the score depends on both answers, so to create a
new assessment method there is a need of a response
summary from both questions at the same time. This can be
implemented in behaviortype.php by using the function
controls in question_usage_by_activity,
where slots with response information are stored.
Thus, bypassing the array of slots and the function
$quba->get_response_summary($slot) pulls
up the response and allows to make a new algorithm to
re-evaluate the test later. The output of the new score occurs
in the same control function. Then a new generated
html-labeled text can be passed as a return argument.
Suppose, that it is necessary to determine which subtest is
currently displayed. In a new questions form teacher should
start a name of the question with a code of the subtest, for
example, in IST by sub1. Later, in the behavior in order to
find out the number of the subtest we need to read the code
of the question from the test.
2) Save a response to a separate data base table: This
option is useful to supply a teacher (researcher) with a table
of the anonymized gathered psychological data. The question
behavior plugin in responsible for displaying test for a student,
saving the result and presenting the reviews, so it will handle
data for all questions. Even so, creation of a new table in the
Moodle database in the behavior plugin requires additional
code.
Moreover an administrator should take away the rights of
watching of the non-anonymized person’s test results by a
teacher (researcher), e.g. switch off mod/quiz:regrade.
To create an anonymous data table, there is a need to create
a field to save a unique quiz id. An administrator can later link
the quiz and the student’s data. Since the quiz data should not
be publicly available, only the site administrator can retrieve
data from this table.
The data should be added in a table by
behaviortype.php, in a review making page of the
test. The new data should be written as an array with the key
being the name of the fields and the value being what you
want to write into that field. All question data is stored in
the $slots variable, so the $guba can be used to find out
everything about the questions in the quiz: the respondent’s
answer, the question text, the response to the answer.
D. Make post-processing actions after a question
1) Create a timer after a question: The question timer
should be presented in the behavior plugin, since it is respon-
sible for displaying questions in the quiz. For example, the
Lusher test assumes a pause for 3 minutes between questions,
so the timer should be placed after the first question. To create
a timer in Moodle one need to write JavaScript code with
AMD technology, e.g. in php like in Fig.1.
Add the code to the file renderer.php, which is re-
sponsible for displaying questions for attempt. For example,
if you need a timer on the first question, you could check
$slots: $qa->get_slot()==1;
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$PAGE−>r e q u i r e s −>j s c a l l a m d (
’ q b e h a v i o u r l u s h e r / countdown ’ ,
’ initialise ’ );
Fig. 1: Calling to JavaScript code
In order to prevent the timer to be displayed
on the review page there is an additional check:
!strpos($url, ’review’). The next section describes
two applications of the method proposed.
IV. T HE SYSTEM OF NEW PLUGINS
We use the techniques proposed in the previous section
to implement the Lusher and Amthauer tests. The Section
provides a detailed description the new plugins, which are
available through link in [9].
A. Question type for Lusher test
The question type plugin for LCT is based on the Drag and
Drop on to Image question type plugin.
A detailed description of the new interaction system model
is presented in Fig. 2.
Since the Lusher test has its own criteria for evaluating
answers, additional fields have been added to the question
settings. For a simpler interface in a question creating form has
been added the text of the picture. It is displayed in a separate
text field. To simplify the evaluation the code of the description
of the pictures is changed. Also the original number of pictures
and positions was changed to 8, the button to add new fields
is removed.
In the standard algorithm of the Lusher test, the respondent
chooses a card and puts it colored side down. In order to
comply with this rule, the disappearance of color pictures is
added to the test. If a card is placed on a drop area, it will be
hidden for the respondent. To avoid errors, a hidden field has
been added. This field stores the number of how many colors
have already been placed.
To output the response as a sequence, the
summarise_response function has been fixed to
keep the sequence of responses separated by commas:
implode(’ ’, $choices).
B. Question behaviour for Lusher Test
The question behavior plugin is responsible for how the
respondent will interact with the test, how the questions will
be displayed, their sequence and evaluation. Note, that the
evaluation of several questions at once is not presented in the
basic Moodle plugins. In basic mode is possible to calculate a
total grade, but each question in the test is evaluated separately.
The assessment algorithm and assessment for two questions at
a time are the key in the simulation of the whole test.
The question behavior for the Lusher test is based on the
standard files with some additions:
• a new php file, LusherEstimArr.php, is created to
describe the results for the Lusher test, including the
 Fig. 2: Application view of the Lusher test plugins
creation of html-labeled text which would be displayed
in the test result;
• in behavior.php all classes related to evaluation of
the test are removed, since the standardized evaluation of
the Lusher test is not needed;
• behaviortype.php is complemented by a new
function for evaluating answers to the Question Type
Lusher, and also has changed the standard function
summarize_usage to display the results correct;
• in renderer.php the function controls has been
changed to display a new ”continue” button to provide
an ability to start the timer between questions;
As noted above, initially no one has been evaluated the test
on more than one question at the same time before. To solve
this problem the III-C1 point from method is implemented.
Moodle has a timer for the quiz, but no timer between
questions. Within the plugin, the timer between the first and
second questions is based on AMD technology and javascript
code. A new AMD countdown.js file is created to display
the timer after pressing the ”continue” button (when all the
pictures have been arranged). Moreover, there is a check code
in this file upon which the test taker will not be able to press
the ”continue” until he/she has arranged all 8 colors in the
preference order.
C. Question behaviour for Amthauer test
The process model of the new plugin is presented in Fig. 3.
The way how to save the number of the subtest is discussed
in the previous section. Now we are going to discuss some
other technical problems. In the fourth subtest, the respondent
is required to select two answers. To avoid mistakes, during
the completion of the form a teacher or administrator can set
a penalty of half a point for incorrect answers. Each correct
answer is evaluated with 0.5 points. In order to produce a
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correct score, it is necessary to recalculate the points, the
example of code is given in Fig.4.
It is necessary to handle the possibility that the respondent
does not want to take the test and can try to complete it before
time runs out without answering all questions. Moreover, the
Amthauer test assumes that the respondent can fail to answer
all questions in the allotted time. Hence it is important to
save the attempt. Adding a ”required” response is described
in III-B.
The way how to create a timer on the first question is
described in III-D1. It is implemented in ninth subtest. The
display of the timer is changed: the timer is located on the
first question and starts immediately at the beginning of the
test attempt, the button for the next question is hidden. When
the timer expires there is a code which simulated pressing the
”next” button to go to the next question. While creating the
Quiz it is obligatory to put ”not free navigation”, so that the
respondent could not go to the first question on the further test
questions.
V. E XPERIMENTS
The experiments are conducted as a part of monitoring of
student’s psychophysical state at SPbPU [1] in the spring of
2021 year. We gathered and analyzed 237 answers for the
Lusher test and 45 answers for the first Amtchauer subtest
before the paper submission. All Amtchauer subtests can be
taken separately, that is why students do not pass all of them.
The first subtest has the highest number of answers.
The tests are conducted among students of 2020 (first, for
short) and 2019 (second, for short) years of admission. There
are 191 respondents of the first and 46 respondents of the
second year. There are 95 male and 142 female students from
18 to 53 years old. 223 students are part-time students.
 Fig. 3: Process model of question behaviour for Amthauer test

i f ( $ f o u n d [ 0 ] == ’ s u b 4 ’ ) {
$ t o t a l m a r k =0;
f o r ( $ i = 0 ; $ i < c o u n t ( $ s l o t s ) ; $ i ++){
i f ( $quba−>
g e t q u e s t i o n m a r k ( $ s l o t s [ $ i ] ) == 1 )
$totalmark = $totalmark + 1;
$ r e s p [ $ i ] = $quba−>
get response summary ( $ s l o t s [ $i ] ) ; Fig. 5: Average of exclamation points numbers in age groups
}
}
The number of exclamation points can vary from 0 to 12:
the higher the number is, the higher the level of the person’s
Fig. 4: Counting a new mark
anxiety is. More young people could be regarded as more
anxiety. Here and later the academic performance is an average
A. Data gathering of all students marks within all his/her sessions.
We built (Kendall) correlation matrices. The example is in
To get LCT and IST one need to download and install four
Fig. 6. There is no correlation between the anxiety (excla-
developed plugins: the d&d question for the Lusher Test, the
mation points) and the performance. The p-values for these
Lusher behavior plugin, and the Amthauer behavior plugin [9].
To collect the data we use SQL queries. Queries are
developed on the basis of a unique quiz number, which is saved
in the table for data collection. This number is also presented
in the standard tables of the quiz module. The anonymity of
the responses for the queries is preserved.
For example, to display a time of start and end of a
quiz, there is a reference to the standard table of the
quiz module quiz_attempts. The fields timestart and
timefinish store data about the start and end times of the
quiz. This time measures when the data consumes into table.
It should be noted that data is stored in Unix format.
B. Data processing
All calculations are performed in Python. Fig. 6: Correlation matrix with Lusher and learning data
1) Data analysis for Lusher Test: First of all, we defined
three age groups: 0-20, 20-30, 30-55 years with 91, 129 and correlation coefficients are 0.196 for years of admisstion, 0.693
17 students, respectively. The average value of the Lusher’s for gender, 0.404 for age, 0.658 for academic performance.
so-called exclamation points for these groups is given (as 2) Data analysis for Amtchauer Test: We checked the
exclamcount) in Fig. 5. correlation between the (Amtchauer’s) total mark of the first

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 subtest and other main characteristics as a year of admission,
age and average marks for the university courses (academic
performance). The correlation is presented in Fig. 7. The
results presented could not be reliable enough (because of the
small number of student). P-values for the coefficients are 0.1
Fig. 7: Correlation matrix with Amtchauer and learning data
for the academic performance, 0.15 for gender, 0.45 for years
of admission and 0.63 for age.
The average numbers of the Total Mark (the result of the
first subtest) subtest and Academic Performance are presented
in Fig. 8. The mark group means the interpretation of the Total
Mark values, ordered from “poor” (1) to “excellent” (5).
Fig. 8: Total Mark and Performance (avg) in mark groups
The average numbers of the Total Mark for the first subtest
and Academic Performance (grouped by years of submission)
are presented in Fig. 9.
Fig. 9: Total Mark and Performance (avg) for admission years
VI. C ONCLUSION
The paper presents new techniques for creating psycholog-
ical tests and questions in Moodle Quiz. As an illustration of
creating tests, the process of creating the Lusher and Amthauer
tests is described. The system of plugins is proposed. A
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preliminary analysis of gathered learning and psychological
datasets is presented.
Among the main disadvantages of the proposed tools is
the fact that there are requirements to a researcher for the
knowledge of basic JavaScript and the technology of a plugin
development in Moodle.
It seems that our approach is not drastically differ from
Google Forms (in simple tests). However, compared to the
Google solution, our testing process remains in a familiar
environment for participants of an educational process, and
educational process owners retain control over the data on
a server. One can not make authentication with SSO in the
Google case, but could try to wrap a google form.
Similar reasoning is also acceptable to psychological soft-
ware like [10]–[14]. However, this approach also allows one
to maintain control over the data on a server and make
authentication with SSO.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are grateful to SPbPU Institute of physical
culture, sport and tourism for the support. Special thanks
are to Oleg E. Piskun the head of Physical culture and
sport department. The method of the new questionnaire-like
tools implementation based on Moodle Quiz is proposed by
V. Parkhomenko and adopted by A. Zyamzina for a psycho-
logical assessment. A. Zyamzina is the main contributor to the
tools implementation.
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