After reading all about this subject , I don't really see how a big Moodle site can use this concept.
Some of the people want just to share among their own courses, some among some of there collegues etc ..
With 1.6 they used public categories to build their quiz after they hide them.
It's not suitable for admin to manage all this stuff.
Right now, the only way I see is to give the teachers the capacity to build their
own context to share what they want through this context but it's impossible to do with 1.9.
so I would like to know how big moodle sites do to handle this.
Thanks in advance,
I did not respond to Hélène's post for some reason. Anyway, she just sent me some more detailed comments by email which I am taking the liberty to post here, because they explain more clearly what is required in some places:
I've just had a look on Plan to Improve Flexibility of Question Category Sharing and Permissions and all doc around the subject. My conclusion is it doesn't appear to be really suitable for what teachers want.
My main idea is that question bank should be an independent object, outside course and category, on which a question bank manager could give some permissions.
In fact, teachers want to share questions between their courses and sometimes give some permissions to some other people chosen by themselves.
Actually, the only way I see is to create some special categories in which they could put all the courses with which they want to share questions.
The problem is if we give roles on this category we have to implement some stuff to permit teachers to move courses from upper categories to theirs.
The situation is this:
The difficulty with trying to make the question bank completely independent is that in Moodle, there is no mechanism for doing permissions checks in a completely independent place. We can only check permissions in a context like a course, activity, etc. Of course, one of those etcs is the user context, but you can't have questions there.
- The question bank in Moodle 1.9 is more flexible than what we had before
- Some people say it is too flexible, or at least it is too complicated to set up.
- Even so, it is not flexible enough for all the thing adminstrators and teachers want to do. (The things that Hélène's teachers want are very sensible requirements but not really possible at the moment.)
- The todo list is insanely long already, I don't think it is realistic to make any further changes in that release.
- Moodle 2.0 does include the new files/repository API, which does a really nice job of handling files and how teachers access them.
- Wait until Moodle 2.0 is released.
- Take a good look at how files are handled there (and wait to see if any flaws are found with it and fixed).
- Work out how we can apply the same concepts to sharing questions around Moodle, and come up with a plan.
- Implement that plan for Moodle 2.1.
The difficulty with trying to make the question bank completely independent is that in Moodle, there is no mechanism for doing permissions checks in a completely independent place. We can only check permissions in a context like a course, activity, etc. Of course, one of those etcs is the user context, but you can't have questions there.
There is still the system context. It means that we 'll have at least 2 levels under system. Right now, I don't know enough about the code to go further but I'm going to think about this issue in the next months.
But waiting, I have to find a short term solution.
But waiting, I have to find a short term solution.
Putting everything under system is the simplest solution at the moment. The only trouble is that there is then no way to let different teachers access different question categories there, becuase you can only apply different permissions in different contexts, and the system context is just one context.
Of course, if teachers would just be more relaxed about sharing, and could be trusted not to break each other's questions ... OK, back to the real world
Of course, if teachers would just be more relaxed about sharing, and could be trusted not to break each other's questions ... OK, back to the real world
I agree with Tim here. We have put our whole question bank into the System Level, and encourage everyone to be relaxed about sharing. 
When teaching teams begin to see how they save time by sharing questions, the openness grows.
Hi Hélène,
As we work at the same university, I share your concerns about question sharing
.
I used questions across different courses so they cannot be shared using metacourses but could be shared across departement or faculty context.
However, questions are used in quiz and when they are used in at least on quiz they should not be modified unless you are sure that you are not changing the grades in a "bad" way.
This is even more troublesome if you are modifying an old question to use in a new course. You cannot easily trace where the question is used.
So this year, I change my questions handling by transfering the questions between different courses using the import-export facilities.
Then I am in "complete" knowledge ( or control ) of the quiz and questions handling in each specific course.
I just need to store somewhere which can be as easily as the category name, where these questions come from and go back to the initial course if I find an error in a specific question.
A more complete sharing process will need a control of questions modifications when they are used in a quiz and as long as this quiz is valid. Backup and restore could also be problematic.
Pierre
As we work at the same university, I share your concerns about question sharing
.I used questions across different courses so they cannot be shared using metacourses but could be shared across departement or faculty context.
However, questions are used in quiz and when they are used in at least on quiz they should not be modified unless you are sure that you are not changing the grades in a "bad" way.
This is even more troublesome if you are modifying an old question to use in a new course. You cannot easily trace where the question is used.
So this year, I change my questions handling by transfering the questions between different courses using the import-export facilities.
Then I am in "complete" knowledge ( or control ) of the quiz and questions handling in each specific course.
I just need to store somewhere which can be as easily as the category name, where these questions come from and go back to the initial course if I find an error in a specific question.
A more complete sharing process will need a control of questions modifications when they are used in a quiz and as long as this quiz is valid. Backup and restore could also be problematic.
Pierre
Why can't you just give your teachers access to a central repository which is a meta course? Let them build those tests they wish to share along with the images that go along with the questions. Then any teacher would be able to access the master test questions to build their own tests as they wish. We do that at our two middle schools so teachers can share tests. It works for us. Or am I being too naieve in all this?
bill c
I had this idea but I didn't try it - My conclusion was that it's not possible
My arguments (may be wrong ) were
- the context of a meta cours doesn't include a course context even if the course is attached to the metacourse.
- we can't have a metacourse of metacourses;
The goal is not only to have a central repository by to have the possibility to use questions from any choosen course. I'm going to do some test but I can't see how it's possible for a teacher to access the questions from the metacourse if he can't use his own one from all his courses.
My arguments (may be wrong ) were
- the context of a meta cours doesn't include a course context even if the course is attached to the metacourse.
- we can't have a metacourse of metacourses;
The goal is not only to have a central repository by to have the possibility to use questions from any choosen course. I'm going to do some test but I can't see how it's possible for a teacher to access the questions from the metacourse if he can't use his own one from all his courses.
The idea is to create a repository in which all quizzes to be shared are built along with their images. This is defined as a meta course. From within each teacher's course they build their own resources, and then build the links to the shared quizzes within the repository. Everyone then has ability to share these. Plus, if you need to edit any of the questions you do so from within the repository. Since no one has taken any of these tests within the repository they are editable at any time. Now if teachers want to create their own tests, which won't be shared, they build there in their own course category files.
I hope that I have explained how we do this. It has worked for us for 5 years. And I don't have any duplication of quizzes to deal with. Plus teachers can still mix-and-match questions for any test they want to create.
bill c
Do you mean that every student do their tests in the metacourse?
No. The original quiz is built in the meta course, then the teachers link to this quiz from their own courses. So the students take the test that is built by the teacher. The beauty of this for us was that I didn't have to duplicate quizzes, especially with the image problem, and teachers can build specific tests using multiple quiz masters from the meta course.
And of course special teacher specific quizzes are still built in the teachers course category.
bill c
Hello,
I'm new to the 'context' feature in Moodle.
So how do I share questions from a metacourse to its related courses? The questions in the metacourse are not visible anywhere outside by default, I think.
Another important issue is this: do I need to have superpowers to accomplish this task?
Thank you in advance
Jander
I'm new to the 'context' feature in Moodle.
So how do I share questions from a metacourse to its related courses? The questions in the metacourse are not visible anywhere outside by default, I think.
Another important issue is this: do I need to have superpowers to accomplish this task?
Thank you in advance
Jander