Default Mark

Default Mark

by D L -
Number of replies: 13

I am new to Moodle and using version 2.2. I am attempting to create a multiple-choice quiz that will contain a total of two questions. I have so far created one question that asks "Which of the following statements are true?" There are four choices for this question, and the student can choose more than one. Two of the choices are correct.

What would I set the Default Mark to? What is the Default Mark? There doesn't appear to be an explanation of it in MoodleDocs. The only definition I found on the Web was at this Amherst site, but it doesn't make sense to me. Can someone give me a clear explanation of "Default Mark" and possibly how I'd set it for my quiz? Thank you.

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In reply to D L

Re: Default Mark

by Mark Hardwick -

D L,

In the screen where you build the question there is a box where you can choose if you want 'one answer only" or if you want "multiple answers allowed".  You should choose multiple answers to do what you are asking to do and then at each answer there is a box to put the grade with the % you want to give for answering that answer such as 50% on each one. That way they have to answer both to get 100% otherwise with just one answer right they will only get 50% for the entire question.

To make the final scoring do right you have to go into "edit quiz" under "settings" and set a point value for each question and make sure the total for all questions adds up to the total at the top.  For instance, if you have 20 questions in a quiz then each question is worth 5 pts each and the total at the top is 100 pts.  Without this step the quiz will not score out when the user finishes the quiz.

Hope this helps,

Mark 

   

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In reply to D L

Re: Default Mark

by Tony Gardner-Medwin -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

I think this kind of query about multiple-response MCQ questions gets asked a lot. But it seems to me a classic case for switching to True/False Qs instead: For each option, is it correct or incorrect? Marking is straightforward, and the student can indicate for each one (with CBM) if he/she is sure of that particular response. Using the MCQ format, in addition to setting +50% for each correct option you would need to set -50% for the other two incorrect ones - otherwise the student can always get 100% by ticking everything.

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In reply to Tony Gardner-Medwin

Re: Default Mark

by Jean-Michel Védrine -

I am enterely with Tony on this subject !

This should be written somewhere :

For the student answering a multiple responses allowed MCQ with n choices is exactly like answering n True/false or Yes/No questions.

But there is a big difference :

As Tony pointed out you need to set some negatives marks for wrong choices otherwise the student can always get 100% by ticking everything.

This has the very infortunate consequence that the student can say "I don't know,, so I don't want to answer" because no ticking any choice will get him some negative mark.

So in my opinion a sequence of T/F questions is a lot better (and is also a lot easier when the teacher want to analyse students performances after the test).

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In reply to D L

Re: Default Mark

by Jean-Michel Védrine -

How to use default mark :

Imagine that you create a question and set default mark to 3

Later when you add this question to a quiz, it will worth 3 points by default. On the line for this question in the list you will see a small editable field with 3 as value and a save button next to him.

You can change the question value here by editing this field and clicking on the save button (this is why it is called default mark)

At the top of the quiz questions' list you will see a  non editable field labeledTotal of grades and the value here will always reflect the sum of all questions grades (so I don't quite agree with Mark's answer, you don't need to make sure of anything, the total of grades is not editable and you don't need to adjust it, it will always reflect the sum of all quiz questions grades)

Under the total of grades you will see another editable field labeled as Maximum grade (should be 100 by default) and this is where you set the highest mark a student can get for this quiz (in France we don't use 100, we use 20 as exam's maximum grade for instance).

Once these values are set (and also the "Decimal places in grades" value you set in the first quiz creation screen) Moodle will take care of adjusting all student's quiz grades to [0, Maximum grade] whatever the Total of questions grades is.

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In reply to Jean-Michel Védrine

Re: Default Mark

by Matt Fedorko -

Jean-Michel,

Thank you for your response. It was very helpful to me just now.

I am wondering why going into the editing the question and changing the "default mark" field does not have the same effect? I need to try a few experiments -- changing the default mark in the question edit screen PRIOR to adding the question to the quiz, for instance. I'll report back on my results.

 

EDITED TO ADD:

In fact, that is exactly what is happening.

That says to me that if you are going to build quizzes with those questions in the future and will want the same values for those questions in other quizzes as well, you should edit the question, look for the box that's required that says "default mark" and change the value there instead of in the Quiz edit window. This will mean that any quiz that uses that question will have the new value.

Unfortunately, you have to either delete and then re-add any question in order for that to take effect, or change it as Jean-Michel has described above.

The other limitation I can think of to Jean-Michel's approach is with "random questions." I don't really know how it would work if you are picking random questions, and your "pile" you're picking from has questions of different values, nor do I know how you can specify those values...

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In reply to Matt Fedorko

Re: Default Mark

by Jean-Michel Védrine -

Hello,

When you add a random question to a quiz, this question is in fact choosen between all questions in a category of the question bank (what you call the "pile"). But in that case, the default mark of each question is not used at all. you set the mark for the random question on the page where you add question to the quiz.

May I add that if the random question was using the default mark of each choosen question I think it would be totally unfair to students attempting the quiz. I will try to explain why.

Imagine that in the category from wich the random question is choosen there are only 2 questions :

  • question A has a default mark set to 1 and is rather easy
  • question B has a default mark set to 3 and is more difficult

Maybe you are thinking "Well, after all it's justice if students that are requested to answer to question B get a greater "reward" for their response if it is right" don't you ?

But things are not so easy, because this random question is not alone in the quiz !!

To keep things simple, imagine the quiz contain just 2 questions : the random one, and another question (not a random one) that we will call C and that question C mark is set to 2.

Imagine now 2 students 1 and 2 attempting the quiz and that: student 1 must answer question A and student 2 must answer question B. then total of grades for student 1 = 1 + 2 = 3

and total of grades for student 2 = 3 + 2 = 5

So for sudent 1, question C account for 2/3 of his quiz grade, but for student 2 the same question C account for 2/5 of his quiz grade.

We are in the strange (and as I said very unfair IMHO) situation where giving the right response to same question C is not rewarded the same for all students.

So for me not using the question's default mark when these questions are part of a random question is the only sensible way.

Of course this imply that if you plan to use random questions in your quizes, when building your question bank, you must take care of only putting question having nearly the same difficulty level in each category that will be used for random questions.

 

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In reply to Jean-Michel Védrine

Re: Default Mark

by Matt Fedorko -

Agreed, Jean-Michel. And your explanation explains why I trailed off on my line of questioning...That way lies madness! Thanks for walking us through.

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In reply to Jean-Michel Védrine

Re: Default Mark

by Nuwan Fernando -

Hi,

We want Default Mark is working. Because we have to use quizs with MCQs and some easy questions. They are categorized as basic, moderate and difficult.  So one quiz may consists 40 MSQ questions 2 Basic easy questins, 2 moderate easy questions and 2 Difficult easy questions. Eash Basic easy qustions might have some marks(eg: 5), eash moderate easy questions have some othe marks(eg: 10) and eash Difficult easy questions have some other marks(eg:  15). And all these questions both MCQ and easy are added to quiz randomly. So with Default Mark not working in rando questions it is difficult to grade easy questions of eash quiz.

Please help on this.

Thanks.

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In reply to Nuwan Fernando

Re: Default Mark

by Jean-Michel Védrine -

Hello,

To acheive this, create 3 categories : basic, moderate, difficult.

Put each question in the relevant category (put all basic questions in the basic category, all moderate questions in the moderate category, all difficult questions in the difficult category)

Then in your quiz add the number of random questions from each category with the mark you want (for instance if you add 2 random questions from the basic category, set the marks for these random question to 5, and so on).

This way, each student get the same amount of questions from each category.

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In reply to D L

Re: Default Mark

by Russell Jones -

This thread is a little old, but this is my first post here, and my question is also about the default mark...

In moodle 2.7, I would like to set the default mark for a true-false question to zero, and I seem to be able to do this, but the "Total of marks" for the quiz remains unchanged. What am I missing?

I also teach the same class for a different department at my university and it (unfortunately) uses moodle 1.6 (I think). In that quiz I can set the weight of the question to zero and the quiz total drops one point as expected.

FYI, the reason why I want to do this is because it is a quiz that has already been administered and is not going to be reopened, but one of the questions was poorly worded so I want to zero the weight of the question without deleting it, then regrade all attempts.

If I have failed to include information you need to answer my question, please let me know. TIA.

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In reply to Russell Jones

Re: Default Mark

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
The default mark is only, well, a default.


If you want to change the value of a question in a particular quiz, then you need to go to the Edit quiz page for that quiz, and change the mark for the question there.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Default Mark

by Russell Jones -

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. Your answer was so brief, I knew the problem had to be me.

Long story short, I was on the order and paging tab instead of the editing question tab. Thus I couldn't see the option to change the question grade where it was "supposed" to be, so I was in the question settings playing with the default mark instead.

Anyway, problem solved. Thanks again.

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