Prohibit question export

Prohibit question export

by Sergei Yegorov -
Number of replies: 5
Hello,
I'd like to allow teachers see all questions (viewall) but prohibit export. Is it possible in 1.9?

PHP hack will do as well.

Thank you!
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Sergei Yegorov

Re: Prohibit question export

by John Isner -
Unfortunately, the ability to export is bundled into viewall. I think it should be controlled by a separate capability because your institution may want to promote reuse (viewall) while at the same time discouraging proliferation of copies (export - import) or worse: theft of intellectual property. What do you think?
In reply to John Isner

Re: Prohibit question export

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Haven't you got 'use' capabilities to promote reuse, without being able to see all the details?
In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Prohibit question export

by John Isner -
Tim,
I guess I don't understand the difference between view and use. The documentation is not too helpful:

moodle/question:viewall
  • This allows a user to view all questions
  • This is different to the capability moodle/question:useall which only allows you to preview a question. If you can view a question it means you can see all the question answers and can also save as new question and export the question in the category.
Bullet 1 is a circular definition. Bullet 2 says useall lets me preview the question. Hmm. Which one of them allows me to use the question in a quiz? That's what I mean by "reuse."

If you clarify the difference between view and use, I'll update the docs.
In reply to John Isner

Re: Prohibit question export

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 difference is that with 'use', you cannot see all the inner workings and settings of the question. You can only add it to a quiz or preview it, so see it from the student's side. Also, because you cannot get at the inner workings, you cannot export it or do Save as.

'view' lets you see the inner workings (that is, the question editing form) and export it as Moodle XML, so that you can easily create new questions based on it.

Of course to edit the question itself, rather than doing Save as, you need 'edit', in order to overwrite the original question.

Is that now clear?
In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Prohibit question export

by John Isner -
Tim,
I understand now, and I'll clarify the documentation.

I really like what's happening with quiz and question capabilities. They're becoming more and more fine-grained, and therefore more useful. So I was surprised to see the opposite trend for export and import.

In a business, export touches on issues of question ownership/intellectual property. Suppose your company has developed a large proprietary question bank and doesn't want its employees exporting questions and setting up their own companies. But it's OK for them to see the "inner workings." They need an export capability separate from view.

So what about giving export its own capability, unbundling it from view? Yes, I know you that you just got finished bundling it into view in 1.9.