By output · Aiken format generator
Aiken format generator and converter for Moodle quiz questions
Aiken converters reformat questions you already wrote. This one writes the multiple choice questions from your lecture or notes, then hands you the Aiken .txt Moodle imports.
What you are looking at
Three quizzes VidQuiz generated from three real YouTube videos. They are saved output, not generated in your browser. Pick one to answer it, and open the source video to check the questions against what is actually said in it.
For your own video, the live demo on the home page runs the real generator once, free, with no account.
This box only holds saved quizzes.
It has not sent your link anywhere. The live demo on the home page does run it: one real generation, free, no account and no card, on the same engine paying customers use.
What VidQuiz reads: paste a YouTube link and VidQuiz watches the video itself. For any other source (Vimeo, an MP4, a screen recording, an upload) paste that video’s transcript and VidQuiz writes the questions from it.
Questions from your video · answers and explanations · edit before you share
Free demo: 3 quizzes, one time, no card needed
The short answer
An Aiken format generator produces the plain text file Moodle imports as multiple choice questions: the question on one line, each option on its own line starting with a capital letter and a period, and a closing line reading ANSWER: followed by the correct letter. Most Aiken tools are converters that reshape questions you already typed. VidQuiz writes the questions first, from a YouTube link, a recording transcript or your notes, then exports the Aiken .txt with every answer key set. Plans start at $49 a month, or $24 a month billed annually.
Aiken is the plainest question format Moodle reads. There is no markup to learn: a question line, a list of lettered options, and a line that says which letter is right. That simplicity is why so many instructors reach for it the first time they have to load a question bank, and why so many search for a tool that will produce it for them.
The search hides two different jobs. In the first, the questions already exist in a Word file, a Google Doc or a printed test, and all you need is the reshaping. Any converter on this page will do that, and the browser based ones do it at no cost.
In the second, there are no questions yet. There is a recorded lecture, a training video or forty pages of notes, and a quiz that has to be in Moodle before the next session. A converter cannot help, because its input is finished questions. That is the job VidQuiz does: it reads the material, writes the multiple choice items with three plausible wrong answers each, lets you edit them, and exports a file Moodle accepts on the first try.
At a glance
Aiken format generators and converters compared
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| Tool | What you give it | What it does | Cost, read first-party October 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typing it by hand | Nothing but a text editor | You write each question, option and ANSWER line yourself, then save as UTF-8 plain text | No software cost. Quick under about twenty questions, slow and error prone beyond that |
| Mindstamp quiz format converter | An existing quiz pasted as text, answers marked with a star, a note or an ANSWER line | Converts to Aiken, GIFT, CSV or plain text in the browser, and lists anything Aiken cannot hold as skipped | No charge and no account. Does not write questions |
| Formswrite Aiken converter | A Word file, PDF, Google Doc or a pasted list of questions | Detects the question, options and correct choice, then formats them as an Aiken .txt | Aiken export needs a paid plan. Pro is $19 a month or $49.99 a year, Lifetime $150 once |
| Jivrus Form Builder | An Aiken file from Drive or your computer, or an existing Google Form | Imports Aiken into Google Forms and exports a form back to Aiken. A Google Workspace add-on | Plans are shown only as images on its pricing page, so we do not quote a figure |
| VidQuiz | A YouTube link read unaided, a recording with its transcript pasted alongside, or up to 60,000 characters of notes | Writes the questions and the answer key, lets you edit them, then exports Aiken. Also GIFT, QTI 1.2, CSV, Google Forms CSV, Blackboard .txt and PDF | A one-time demo of three quizzes, then plans from $49 a month or $24 a month billed annually. The only row that writes the questions |
Mindstamp, Formswrite and Jivrus read from their own tool and pricing pages in October 2026. VidQuiz from its pricing page the same day.
How do I import Aiken format questions into Moodle?
Through the question bank. On Moodle 5.0 and later open the course, choose More, then Question banks, and open the bank you want. On Moodle 4.x the bank sits in the course question bank menu. Pick Import, choose Aiken format, drop the .txt file into the upload box and press Import. Moodle shows every question it parsed before saving, so a bad line is visible at once.
The Moodle documentation notes that the general import options, such as matching grades and stopping on error, do not change how Aiken is read. Every question lands as a single answer multiple choice item in the category you selected. After that you build the quiz from the bank in the usual way, by hand or with random questions drawn from the category.
Generate a quiz above, choose Moodle Aiken from the export buttons, and the file is already in the shape that screen expects.
- Import lives in the question bank, not in the quiz settings
- Choose Aiken format before you upload
- Pick the category first, because Aiken files carry no category line
- Check the preview, then build the quiz from the bank
Aiken format example for a Moodle quiz
Below are two questions exactly as the VidQuiz export writes them, a multiple choice item and a true or false item. Each stem is a single line. The options follow, each starting with a capital letter, a period and a space. The last line names the correct letter, and a blank line separates one question from the next.
Moodle accepts a closing bracket in place of the period, so A) is also valid, and it does not care how many options you give as long as there are at least two. The Moodle documentation shows an example with six. VidQuiz writes between two and ten, depending on the question.
What does the hidden layer of a neural network learn?
A. The raw pixel values
B. Intermediate features of the input
C. The final class label
D. The learning rate
ANSWER: B
A network with more layers always trains faster.
A. True
B. False
ANSWER: BDoes Aiken format support multiple answers?
No. Aiken marks one correct letter per question, and Moodle's importer reads only the first character after ANSWER:, so a line such as ANSWER: A, C imports with A as the only right answer. Questions with two or more correct choices need GIFT or Moodle XML, where each answer can carry its own percentage of the grade.
This limit costs nothing with VidQuiz output, because every item it writes has exactly one correct answer. If you are converting an older test that has multiple answer items, convert those few to GIFT and the rest to Aiken, or move the whole set to GIFT.
Can Aiken format do true false questions?
Only as a two option multiple choice question. Aiken has no true or false type, so the usual approach is a stem with A. True and B. False and the right letter on the ANSWER line. That is exactly what VidQuiz writes for every true or false item, using the answer labels in the language the quiz was written in.
The item behaves the same for students. The one difference is in Moodle reporting, which lists it as multiple choice rather than true or false. If that matters for how your department reports, export GIFT instead, which writes the native TRUE and FALSE type.
Why does my Aiken import fail in Moodle?
Almost always because a question runs over two lines. Moodle treats any line that is not an option or an ANSWER line as the start of a new question, so a stem pasted from Word with a soft line break splits in two and the first half is discarded with a question not complete error. The second most common cause is a lower case answer letter, either in the options or after ANSWER:.
Encoding comes next. A file saved from Word in its default encoding turns curly quotes and accented letters into garbage, and the Moodle documentation recommends saving as UTF-8 for exactly that reason. The quiet failure is a stem that begins like an option, such as a history question opening with U.S. or a stem labelled A) in the source. Moodle reads it as an answer outside any question and drops it.
The VidQuiz exporter guards against each of these before the file is written, which is the practical difference between generating Aiken and hand typing it.
- Keep each question on a single line
- Use capital letters for options and after ANSWER:
- Save as UTF-8 plain text, not as a Word document
- Make sure no stem starts with a capital letter and a period
- Give every question at least two options
Aiken or GIFT, which format should I export for Moodle?
Aiken when you want the simplest file a colleague can read and edit in Notepad, and the questions are single answer multiple choice. GIFT when you want the explanation for each answer to appear as feedback after the attempt, or you need true or false, short answer or matching as their own question types.
With VidQuiz the choice is not permanent. The same quiz exports both ways, so you can load Aiken today for a quick practice check and GIFT next term for a graded quiz with feedback, without writing anything twice. The page on the Moodle GIFT format generator covers the GIFT side in the same detail.
Can an Aiken generator write the questions for me?
The converters cannot, by design: they need finished questions and only change the layout. VidQuiz is the tool on the table that starts from your material. Paste a YouTube link and it reads the video directly. For a Panopto, Kaltura, Zoom or Teams recording, paste the transcript the platform already produced next to the link. Or paste up to 60,000 characters of lecture notes on their own.
You choose the number of questions, up to 30 per quiz, and the difficulty. Each multiple choice item comes with three wrong answers written to be plausible, the correct answer marked, and the moment in the recording it came from. What comes back is a draft for an instructor to review: every stem, option and answer is editable before you export. The demo runs the real generator on your own material before you pay anything.
Spec
Aiken rules in Moodle, and what the VidQuiz export does about each
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| Rule in Moodle's Aiken importer | What breaks if you miss it | What VidQuiz writes |
|---|---|---|
| The question must sit on one line | A second line opens a new question, and the first one is thrown away with an error | Line breaks inside a question are folded into single spaces |
| Each option starts with a capital letter, then a period or a closing bracket | A lower case letter makes the line read as a new question | A. to J. for up to ten options |
| ANSWER: with a capital letter closes the question | Moodle reads only the first character after the colon, so ANSWER: b or a missing line breaks the item | ANSWER: and one capital letter on every question |
| At least two options per question | The question is rejected | Questions with fewer than two choices are left out of the file rather than sent broken |
| A question line must not look like an option | A stem such as U.S. history or A) is read as an answer choice | Such stems get a Question: prefix the parser cannot mistake for an option |
| One correct answer only | There is no way to mark two letters, so multiple answer items cannot be expressed | Every VidQuiz item has exactly one correct answer, so nothing is lost |
| No feedback, no comments | Explanations have nowhere to go | Explanations and timestamps are left out. Use the GIFT export when you want them in Moodle |
| Plain text, UTF-8 | Curly quotes and accented letters from a Word file turn into garbage or stop the import | Always UTF-8 .txt |
Rules read from the Aiken format page in the Moodle documentation and from the importer source, public/question/format/aiken/format.php on the main branch. The right column describes the exporter as it runs today.
Related reading
- Moodle GIFT format generator is the format to export when explanations should appear as Moodle feedback.
- Moodle quiz generator covers the whole route from a recorded lecture to a finished Moodle quiz.
- import questions into Moodle lists every format the question bank accepts and what each one loses.
- importing Moodle questions from Excel explains the spreadsheet workarounds, since core Moodle has no Excel importer.
- best Aiken format converter for Moodle compares the converters side by side when your questions already exist.
- multiple choice question generator is the starting point when the destination is not decided yet.
Why VidQuiz
What you get with aiken format generator
Writes the questions, not just the file
Converters need finished questions as input. VidQuiz reads a YouTube link, a recording with its transcript, or notes you paste, and drafts the multiple choice items before a single Aiken line is written.
Built to Moodle's parser, line for line
The exporter follows the rules in Moodle's own Aiken importer: one line per question, A. to J. options, ANSWER: with a capital letter, and a guard for questions that start like an option.
Same quiz, every other format too
If you later want feedback in Moodle, the same quiz exports as GIFT. For Canvas or Brightspace it exports QTI 1.2, and for Blackboard a tab delimited upload file.
What you can do
Everything aiken format generator for moodle gives you
Paste a YouTube link and VidQuiz reads the video itself; for anything else, upload it with its transcript. Either way it writes the questions and you edit anything before you share. You stay in control of the final quiz.
- Fill an empty Moodle question bank from a recorded lecture
- Turn a chapter of notes into an Aiken file without typing a line
- Get three believable wrong answers for every question
- Load true or false checks as two option multiple choice
- Stop losing a whole import to one question that spans two lines
- Reuse the same question set in Canvas, Blackboard or Google Forms
Quiz Studio
Try it on a video right here
Pick a sample or paste your own link, generate the quiz, then answer the questions. Each one is tied to a moment in the video, with the answer and a short explanation.
What you are looking at
Three quizzes VidQuiz generated from three real YouTube videos. They are saved output, not generated in your browser. Pick one to answer it, and open the source video to check the questions against what is actually said in it.
For your own video, the live demo on the home page runs the real generator once, free, with no account.
This box only holds saved quizzes.
It has not sent your link anywhere. The live demo on the home page does run it: one real generation, free, no account and no card, on the same engine paying customers use.
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Aiken converters reformat questions you already wrote. This one writes the multiple choice questions from your lecture or notes, then hands you the Aiken .txt Moodle imports. Make your first quiz in seconds.