For testing you need a Moodle course and at least two users who can create questions. Create a Moodle course Create two user (eg. editingteacher), teacher 1 and teacher2. Enrol teacher1 and teacher2 in the your course login as teacher1 in to this course Go to the question bank Press "Create a new question ..." button Choose 'Essay' and press the "Add" button While filling the question fields, make a note of the original default value of the following fields: Default mark (defaultmark) Response format (responseformat) Require text (responserequired) Input box size (responsefieldlines) Allow attachments (attachments) Require attachments (attachmentsrequired) Maximum file size (maxbytes) Then change the values of these fields and remember them Press "Save changes" button Press "Create a new question ..." button again Choose 'Essay' the press "Add" button Verify that the values of the fields you as teacher1 have changed in previous 'Essay' question appear on the form as defaults. Logout Login as  teacher 2  into this course Go to the question bank Press "Create a new question ..." button Choose 'Essay' and press the "Add" button Verify  that default values are displayed again (so values changed for teacher1 previously doesn't appear). In other words, when user create a new question and modify some default setting, they are saved as user preference, so that the next time when a new question of the same type is created by the same user, the default values are taken from the user_preferences table for this user. I.e, teacher1 gets their preference as defaults for a new 'Essay', whereas teacher2 will get original default values .