Summative assessments provide students with a score in order to summarize their educational development at the end of a learning unit. In traditional classroom learning this would be a paper exam, whereas in distance learning it takes the form of an online assessment. While Moodle's quiz activity has a great deal of flexibility and lends itself well to being used as a learning tool, it can also be used for summative assessment if set up appropriately.
However, online summative assessment does come with risks. Users are not in a formal examination environment, so there is more scope for cheating. There are tools in Moodle quiz that we can use to mitigate this risk, including:
Opening and closing a quiz at a specific time. This goes against the scheduling flexibility that many turn to distance learning to take advantage of, although a quiz could realistically be opened on a weekly or monthly basis for summative assessment.
Timed quizzes, which reduces...