Unable to show more than 2 students in Grader Report

Unable to show more than 2 students in Grader Report

by Penny Pearson -
Number of replies: 6

Hi All, 

We just upgraded to Moodle 2.3 and in a few courses (imported from Moodle 1.9 and restored on the Moodle 2.3 server) teachers are unable to see more than 2 students in their gradebook - grader report. 

As Admin, I went in and changed the "Grades: My Preferences" to reflect 10 students per page, but it still didn't work.  Note: Other courses are not having this problem. I took two screenshots in the attached .zip file. 

I don't know of any settings at the site level that may affect the grader report (especially so inconsistently) Any suggestions are welcomed! 

Penny

In reply to Penny Pearson

Re: Unable to show more than 2 students in Grader Report

by Bob Puffer -

Preferences are user-specific so if you, as admin change them for the course the instructor will not see the reflected change -- they need to change them.  If that still doesn't work, do a search in your mdl_user_preferences table for the name = 'grade_report_shownumberofgrades' and look for users who have values lower than 10.  Sounds like something's stuck.

In reply to Bob Puffer

Re: Unable to show more than 2 students in Grader Report

by Penny Pearson -

Thank you Bob - It was my understanding that the editing teacher did make these changes, but saw no difference. I'll try to reconfirm that fact.  Meanwhile I'll see if I can get my IT/Programmer to look at the code in the table you referenced (I'm only a 'front page' admin -- I'm not allowed to muck about in the databases! mixed ) 

Thanks so much for posting a reply! 

Penny

In reply to Penny Pearson

Re: Unable to show more than 2 students in Grader Report

by Paul Nicholls -

Hi Penny,

How many grade items are in the affected gradebooks?  Moodle 2.3 contains a workaround for an annoying PHP configuration option which limits the number of form fields that PHP will process - the workaround reduces the number of students shown per page if it would otherwise hit that limit.

Unless max_input_vars has been set considerably lower than the default on your server, I wouldn't expect that to be happening, though; the default is 1000, which should give you more than 2 students unless you have a huge number of grade items.  If you're only seeing it in a few courses, though, this could well be what's happening.

-Paul

In reply to Paul Nicholls

Re: Unable to show more than 2 students in Grader Report

by Penny Pearson -

Hi Paul, 

Your suggestion is interesting. The gradebook is not organized at all (no categories for example) so it is one long list of items. I would estimate around 100-ish. So I'm nowhere near the max... Can the max_input_vars value be controlled/accessed through the Site Administration block? If not, I'll have to find someone who can find and modify that code (see my above post). 

I'll check out the workaround as well - though if it is about php code, I'm woefully ignorant!

I'll try to post whether these suggestions resolve this issue. 

Thank you so much for posting! 

Penny

In reply to Penny Pearson

Re: Unable to show more than 2 students in Grader Report

by Paul Nicholls -

Hi Penny,

Just to clarify, max_input_vars is a PHP configuration option which can't be changed from within the Moodle interface - you'd need to get a server admin to change it.  You can, however, check what it's currently set to through the Moodle interface by going to "PHP info" in the Server section of Site Administration - that'll give you a huge amount of info about the server's PHP configuration, including what max_input_vars is set to.

The workaround I mentioned is a part of Moodle 2.3 and is not something you need to do anything with - it just automatically reduces the number of students shown per page if max_input_vars would be exceeded.  It does this to make sure that you'll be able to successfully save all grades entered, as otherwise PHP will effectively cut off the form when it hits max_input_vars, resulting in only the first part of the grader report saving.  I was therefore suggesting it as a possible explanation for why you're only seeing a couple of students, not as a solution to it.

If you can get your server admin to increase max_input_vars (maybe start by doubling it) and you subsequently get more students appearing, that would provide confirmation that this is what's happening - and you can either choose to live with seeing fewer students per page in the grader report in courses with lots of grade items, or you can get your server admin to increase max_input_vars even further (but I'll leave that to you and your server admin to decide!).

Hope that all makes sense,
-Paul

In reply to Penny Pearson

Re: Unable to show more than 2 students in Grader Report

by Bob Puffer -

if max_input_variables is set to default (1,000) you could easily be hitting the limit with two students and 100 grades.  You should figure four variables per grade cell (grade, feedback, oldgrade, oldfeedback).