A UTF-8 plain-text .txt file. Each question is one line, each option a line starting with a capital letter and a full stop, then one ANSWER line with a single letter. A blank line separates questions.
What the Aiken format is, and what it can hold
Aiken is a plain-text format for multiple-choice questions that Moodle has been able to import for many years. A question is one line of text. Each option follows on its own line, starting with a capital letter, a full stop or a closing bracket, and a space. A final line reads ANSWER: followed by the letter of the correct option. A blank line separates one question from the next. Because it is just text, you can open the file in any text editor, read it, and fix a typo before you upload it.
That simplicity is also its limit. Aiken has no place for feedback, explanations, images, points or a second correct answer, and it only describes multiple-choice questions. Moodle's importer reads the first character after ANSWER: and ignores the rest, so a line such as ANSWER: A, C quietly becomes a question whose only correct answer is A. It also expects every question and option to fit on one line. A line that does not start with a letter and a full stop is read as the start of a new question, which is why notes or comments in an Aiken file break the import.
How our export builds the file
The export writes only what Aiken can hold, so Moodle reads every question the way you wrote it. Multiple-choice questions with one correct answer go in as they are, with options lettered from A. True/false questions become two options, A. True and B. False, with the correct letter on the ANSWER line. Line breaks inside a question or an option are turned into spaces, because Aiken needs everything on one line.
Everything else is left out rather than written in a way Moodle would misread. That covers multiple-choice questions with more than one correct answer, short-answer, fill-in-the-blank, matching, ordering and FAQ questions, and the rare question whose text itself begins like an answer line, for example a question starting with "A. " or with "ANSWER:". When anything is left out, a message after the download tells you how many questions were skipped and why. If nothing in the quiz fits, nothing is downloaded and the message says so.
The file is saved as UTF-8 plain text, which is what Moodle requires, so accented letters, other alphabets and our maths symbols such as x² and √ come through unchanged. The Copy Text (AIKEN) option in the same menu follows exactly the same rules and puts the text on your clipboard instead, which is handy if you want to paste it into a file of your own or check it first.
Importing the file into Moodle, step by step
In Moodle 5.0 and later, open your course and choose More → Question banks, then open the bank you want to use. In Moodle 4.x, choose More → Question bank. From the menu at the top of the question bank page, choose Import. Under File format select Aiken format. Under General you can pick the category the questions go into; the default category for the bank is fine for a first try. Under Import questions from file, drag in the .txt file or choose it, then click Import.
Moodle reads the file and lists the questions it found, with any it could not read. Click Continue to return to the question bank, where the new questions appear as multiple-choice questions named after the start of their text. Open one or two to check the correct answer is marked and, if you like, add general feedback, which Aiken cannot carry. Then add the questions to a quiz activity in the course from the quiz's Questions page, as you would any other bank questions.
When to choose Moodle XML, GIFT or QTI instead
Aiken is the plainest route into Moodle and the easiest to check by eye, but it drops a lot. If your quiz has questions with several correct answers, short-answer questions, or true/false questions you want imported as Moodle's own True/False type, choose Moodle XML from the same Download / Export menu. Our Moodle XML export writes multiple-choice questions with one or several correct answers, true/false and short-answer questions, and keeps each question's explanation as general feedback.
GIFT is Moodle's other text format and also sits in the export menu. If your school uses Canvas rather than Moodle, use the QTI export, which downloads as the .zip package Canvas imports; for Brightspace, use CSV → BrightSpace, which follows Brightspace's question template. Aiken was designed around Moodle's importer, so check another system's own documentation before relying on Aiken there.
What doesn't carry over
- Explanations and source quotes: Aiken has no feedback field. Moodle XML keeps explanations as general feedback.
- Multiple-choice questions with more than one correct answer.
- Short-answer, fill-in-the-blank, matching, ordering and FAQ questions.
- Moodle's own True/False question type: true/false arrives as two-option multiple choice.
- Line breaks and formatting inside a question or option, which become single spaces.
- The quiz title, points and time limits, which you set in Moodle.
- Later edits and results. The questions in Moodle are a separate copy.