Embedding quiz in book module

Re: Embedding quiz in book module

by Matt Fedorko -
Number of replies: 6

Tim,

Thanks for the comment.

Regarding number 2, as you say, "not really finished yet." But interesting.

Regarding number 3, I would be very interested to hear more about OU's oucontent module.

I think my reply to number one is pretty well articulated in the original response, or any of the numerous posts I've made in the last 3 years expressing discontent with, or befuddlement with the Lesson activity's seemingly nonsensical settings and configuration. If I'm wrong about that, lemme sum it all up, and repeat myself: "Lessons are horrible, and I wish I didn't have whole courses built out of them."

After my post above, I did exchange some messages with the people in charge of the Book module development. I proposed the idea of a separate activity called an Interactive Book that would accomplish essentially what I outlined above. Their response wasn't encouraging, and mentioned that the question of including that type of functionality came up during the Book's development, but was removed in favor of straight content presentation.

I don't want to get too pedagogical, but that attitude severely hampers learning by limiting student-to-content interactivity. The Book is clean and easy to use, and presents information very nicely. But presenting information is not teaching. If there was a way to add interactivity, it would be a powerful teaching tool.

Again, I don't have the knowledge or the manpower to do this myself. But I figure if I keep being annoying about it, someone somewhere will think it's a good idea. I might write up a design document at some point as a bump.

Thanks again...

 

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In reply to Matt Fedorko

Re: Embedding quiz in book module

by Beatriz Rojo -

Matt, Tim and Brendan,

I totally agree with you and will find it great if the Book implements the possibility of adding quiz questions and becoming interactive.

Some people suggested me to replace the lesson with a quizz with interactive question behaviour, but I like the navigation/content bar of the lesson and the book module. I don't think there are just 3 people wishing this feature.

Regards,

Beatriz.

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In reply to Beatriz Rojo

Re: Embedding quiz in book module

by Robin Young -
Beatriz, Matt, Tim and Brendan

At least four people now!

I have read the above posts with great interest.  I have a couple of courses I've written in Moodle Book with the idea that students had an online textbook to study and support what we were doing at school.  The flexibility with media types I understood at the time to mean "interactive" but then I was new to teaching and learning and now realise that this is just a different mode of delivery of content.

So when talking about interactive, we really mean that the student interacts with the knowledge and constructs meaning from it. When I read a text, I realise that I now ask my own questions during this process to make sense of what I am reading.  This is a skill that has taken me many years to develop but is made considerably more efficient by having the author or expert pose the questions as many do in any decent textbook.  

Formative assessment works well when a student then has immediate feedback on their constructs of meaning.  Moodle does this in various ways.  The book provides content, lessons provide a delivery of content through a web of choices (basic questions) and quizzes give the tutor the chance to elaborate excellent resources and foster a robust remote environment for guided learning.  

I suppose you could argue that what glues this all together then is the moodle course page itself and the learner can flip in and out of the activities.

But wouldn't it be nice to have self assessment questions and reading quizzes embedded in the book activity so that you don't have to leave the book to take a quick test to see how well you're doing?

Alternatively, is there not a simple way of bringing all these activities together in a sequential and seamless fashion so that the learner is unaware that they are flipping in and out and from one activity to another? Maybe that would be the solution - a navigation tool that reads a half chapter of the book, takes the user to a reading quiz and (wish list here!) depending on their score or confidence level, go back to another part pf the book or continue to the next book section.

Moodle seems to be on the verge of creating a very powerful tool for learning.  All the bits seem to be there already ... they just need to be joined up in a way that the learner is unaware of or responsible for how they are taken between activities and can therefore concentrate on the important bit; learning process itself.
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In reply to Robin Young

Re: Embedding quiz in book module

by Glenys Hanson -

Hi there,

You can insert Hot Potatoes exercises into Book just as you can any other HTML page. The answers are scored but they are not integrated into the Gradebook as they are through the HotPot Module and TaskChain.

I no longer use Moodle so I can't give you access to a live exercise but I've attached a couple of screenshots.  They way I did it was to have the exercise appear in a separate window. After doing the exo, the student clicks on "Close this window" and is returned to the Book. lIf anyone's interested I can provide detailed instructions.

You could also use TaskChain to alternate between HTML "content" pages and Hot Potatoes exercises - see Alan Hess's Stories for Learning.

Cheers,

Glenys

Attachment Hot Potatoes exercises in Book.gif
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In reply to Glenys Hanson

Re: Embedding quiz in book module

by Beatriz Rojo -

Thanks Glenys, this is also a good idea! I think I can figure out how did you do it. If I have difficulties, I will post here again.

Regards,

Beatriz.

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In reply to Glenys Hanson

Re: Embedding quiz in book module

by Matt Fedorko -

Thanks, Glenys. That's pretty interesting. I'll be looking into it for sure. Brendan posted something else in a separate discussion about using Wordpress and LTI to do something similar, but I'm not sure if he actually pursued that. It would be worth trying if you're interested in splitting your systems, or already have -- something we've done, and something I regret.

I was very surprised to come back to this page and see people responding to my original posts. Sometimes I feel like a little yapping dog in the dark, you know? Hahaha...I posted a similar long-winded, "oh, why doesn't he just stop?" rant over in the Lessons vs. Quizzes thread (https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=207365), which just summarizes my feelings that the Question Bank (even without the improvements that are slated for 2.8, I think, or maybe they're in 2.7 -- we're still on 2.6) is a great tool, or more generally the question types plugins. 

When I move between Questionnaires, Quizzes, and Lessons, it just gets me rankled that I have these questions stored in 3 different formats, and fixing that problem, it seems to me, would be the same as figuring out how to use quiz questions in the Book activity. So I have my pedagogical gripes (see posts above), and I have my "isn't this just annoying?!" gripes.

But Tim's post still holds true, as far as I know -- there's been no movement on the Tracker issue he mentioned, and I've seen nothing to indicate the (great and wonderful) dev group is doing anything in this arena. 

What I have seen is discussions about things like Survey 2 that are still on the path of storing unique question types inside the Activity itself, which is just more of the same as far as I'm concerned. 

But beggars can't be choosers, and if I was serious about it I would get my boss to pay someone to do something about it, or learn PHP and start staying up late.

Thanks, everyone!

EDITED TO ADD: Just found this: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Lesson_activity_module_2 Looking at it now. 

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