I am a Latin teacher who has my students choose a Latin name from a list of about 25 options. I tried to make a questionnaire do that and ran into a bug, or at least a significant limitation. I want the students to list their top 5 choices of name. So I created a 'rate' question, said that responses were required, that the number of scale items was 5, the type of rate scale was 'no duplicate choices' and then put in my 25 choices, one per line in the possible answers box.
When I previewed the question the silly thing had overridden my '5' and replaced it with '25' and I had a huge mess of answering to do.
While I certainly don't object to it defaulting to the number of answers, I really do want to choose that number sometimes. Is there a fix?
Andrew Gollan
Ave Andrew,
I'm afraid you have misunderstood the way the "rate" question works in questionnaire.
It will certainly not enable the respondent to rate only 5 out of 25 possible choices. It can only enable the respondent to put 25 items in order of preference.
You should use the Check boxes question type, making sure to set both Min. forced responses and Max. forced responses values to 5. If a student submits their responses with less or more than exactly 5 choices, an error message will be displayed.
See attached screenshots.
Hope that helps,
Joseph
I am impressed by the speed and thoroughness of this response. You even mocked up my exact situation. Thank you.
But, there is something that your solution does not do, which I very much want. If I do as you suggest, I won't know their first from their second choice, which is a crucial part of the question. I understand that what I want is not (currently) what this question type does. My real question is whether is could be done the way I imagined it, and would that break anyone else in some important way.
My first impression is that it could do as I want without harm: and in fact allow a new and flexible scenario: here are N choices, rate your top M in order (or ideally, but harder, up to your top M).
Andrew Gollan
But, there is something that your solution does not do, which I very much want. If I do as you suggest, I won't know their first from their second choice, which is a crucial part of the question. I understand that what I want is not (currently) what this question type does. My real question is whether is could be done the way I imagined it, and would that break anyone else in some important way.
My first impression is that it could do as I want without harm: and in fact allow a new and flexible scenario: here are N choices, rate your top M in order (or ideally, but harder, up to your top M).
Andrew Gollan
Hi Andrew, thanks for your reply. Thanks for being impressed.
Now I think I understand exactly what you want. Unfortunately, the Questionnaire rate question type does not work the way you want. I will have a look. It may either be a trivial or difficult change to one or more of the Questionnaire core file(s).
I understand "here are N choices, rate your top M in order".
I do not understand "[...] or ideally, but harder, up to your top M".
I'll keep you posted.
- Joseph -
The 'up to' is not important, it would just allow students to stop before they had selected all five (in the example above). I really wouldn't worry about it, since it would require a change to the interface.
OK,
I think I've managed it. But I do need your help in testing it on my Moodle test site. Login as teacher1, password Teacher1!, go to the Questionnaire Module Demo course. Test the "Latin" questionnaire, which contains just one question.
You are welcome to add more questions to that questionnaire or create your own, etc.
If tests go well, I will commit the modification to CVS (if my co-maintainer Mike agrees). For anyone willing to modify their own Questionnaire files, I will post the simple patch in the Bug tracker soon.
Joseph
This worked exactly as I imagined it would. Thank you so very much. I'll pressure our administrators to take your modification as soon as it is available.
I note with great appreciation that if you leave the number of scale items blank, it automatically calculates the total number of responses. Very nice.
I note with great appreciation that if you leave the number of scale items blank, it automatically calculates the total number of responses. Very nice.
Patch can be found in CONTRIB-2200.
Did this ever make it into a release? I don't know how to tell.
I was waiting for approval from the co-maintainer, Mike. Since he has not answered and you need it, I will commit the patch. It should be available in contrib some time tomorrow.
Joseph
Joseph
I may not understand the release mechanism, but when we updated our main server to 1.9, this functionality didn't seem to appear. Should something from 'contrib' have automatically come along, or should our administrators have done something additional. The 'questionnaire' module is there.
@Andrew,
The update of the various contrib modules is totally independent of the update of the main moodle core files. Please ask your admin that you are actually using the latest available Questionnaire files for Moodle 1.9 here:
Just wanted to say thanks for this patch, I was confused by the same thing. With the patch it works as I expected it to originally
One thing I've just noticed, in the possible answers I had put
1=Most
2=Second
3=Third
Then the options. This caused an error when submitting the questionnaire just saying There is a problem with question #1.
I found when I removed the custom names it worked fine.
Please provide the complete contents of the question which causes a problem, including all the settings :
Response Required Yes / No
Nb of scale items
Type of rate scale
Joseph
Just discovered this unanswered bug and fixed it...
Joseph
I'm having difficulty getting the functionality described above. Our administrator has kindly updated the contrib files but the rate scale question still does not provide an exclusive column (ie out of 10 choices all can still be ranked '1'). Each row only allows 1 selection. Could you outline the stages in creating the amended rate scale question so I can check I'm doing this correctly?
@Doug: Which version of moodle are you using? Are you sure you are using the latest version of Questionnaire corresponding to your moodle version?
Have you tried testing it on my Moodle test site? Login as teacher01, password Teacher01!, go to the Questionnaire Module Demo course. Test the "Latin" questionnaire, which contains just one question.
Joseph