One quiz attempt means one attempt

One quiz attempt means one attempt

by Hesed Tendero -
Number of replies: 14

Hello,

I would like to prevent students from "continuing attempts" of quiz that is set to have a time limit and to allow only one attempt.

This is what currently happens. A student starts a quiz, a sercure window opens, they start the quiz, but when they close the secure window without submitting/saving answers, they have the ability to continue the attempt because the predefined time has not expired.

It seems that moodle counts an attempt in relation to time and not by the number of instances the quiz was started. If I set the quiz to have a 5 minute time limit I can open the quiz infinite number of times until my 5 minutes is up or I click on submit. By open I mean closing secure window, and clicking "Continue the last attempt."

For the most part, this feature is appreciated, because it allows the student to continue the quiz if someone suddenly unplugged their computer. But there are situations where this is not appreciated because some students have found this as a way to cheat, that is to preview the quiz questions, look at their notes, and then take the quiz.

Does anyone have a work-around?

Thanks, 
Hesed 

Moodle 1.9.2+ (Build: 20080723)

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Hesed Tendero

Re: One quiz attempt means one attempt

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hesed > "some students have found this as a way to cheat, that is to preview the quiz questions, look at their notes, and then take the quiz"

Previewing a quiz, looking at your notes and then taking the quiz sounds like a very sensible learning strategy to me.wink

Joseph

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Hesed Tendero

Re: One quiz attempt means one attempt

by Brenna Reinhart -
I do not have an answer, I just wanted to add to the discussion in the hopes that someone else would know of a way around this.

Some of our instructors have specifically requested that the students can only see and answer one question at a time without being able to look at previous questions or go back and change their answers. The ability to close out of the window and click "continue last attempt", as well as the list of the questions at the top of the page prevents this sort of testing scenario.
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In reply to Brenna Reinhart

Re: One quiz attempt means one attempt

by Tim Hunt -
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Yes, but why are they requesting this? How does it help the students learn?

Requests for bizarre and control-freak-y features are always more convincing if accompanied by a little story illustrating why they are a good idea.

Moodle does not currently offer these kinds of features, becuase they go against some of the assumptions that are built into the quiz code.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: One quiz attempt means one attempt

by Brenna Reinhart -
Fair enough, I'll ask the instructors why they want the feature. Thanks.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: One quiz attempt means one attempt

by Margaret Matthias -

I had posted something similar to this in the past.  Not all of our faculty are interested in this function but ...

Some of the courses offered are to prepare students for specific board/certification exams.  I am told that these exams allow the student to see and respond to one question only without being permitted to review items that were already submitted.  Our faculty are attempting to duplicate this format so that students are not 'thrown' when they are in the real world.  I don't think the faculty see this as 'bizarre and control-freak-y features,' they see it as a way to prepare the learner.

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In reply to Margaret Matthias

Re: One quiz attempt means one attempt

by Tim Hunt -
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No, this just means that the exam board is being bizarre and control-freak-y wink

The case could be covered by just telling the students what the real exam will be like, and so suggesting to them that they should not use the ability to jump back in the Moodle quiz, so that their practice is like the real thing.
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In reply to Margaret Matthias

Re: One quiz attempt means one attempt

by ben reynolds -
I've seen something like this when I was grading College Board SAT essays for a company called Pearson. It was built with Authorware and was astonishingly clunky to use. Basically, I had to read an essay, choose a score, and press a button. There was only forward, never back.

You could probably get Authorware and build a replica test, then put it in an i-frame.

But I agree w/ Tim. It will be easier to just tell the students that the real test doesn't allow going back, so don't do it.

You could also show them a couple of screen shots of the real test's User Interface so they know what to expect. The rationale for this comes from a friend who took a spelling test yesterday. The instructions were more inferred than stated, and she got through ten misspelled words before it occurred to her that she was intended to *correct* the spelling so the software could count the corrections.
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In reply to Brenna Reinhart

Re: One quiz attempt means one attempt

by John Rodgers -
You might be able to get this functionality from Gordon Bateson's Quizport (formerly Hot Potatoes formerly Hot Pot) module. I think it supports Quandry files (not sure), which suddenly becomes free and unsupported in 11 days.

Although Quandry won't be supported, Gordon himself is something of a support machine.
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In reply to Hesed Tendero

Re: One quiz attempt means one attempt

by ben reynolds -
In the days of paper, I loved seeing all the quiz questions. My high school learning was mostly manufacturing answers to "what" questions.

What is the symbolism of [please regurgitate the teacher's opinion]
What does Macbeth realize when he sees an army of trees approaching his castle?
What is Planck's Constant?

And the great virtue of seeing all the quiz questions was that later questions gave away the answers to earlier ones. "Oh yeah, that earlier quotation about Burnham Wood . . ."

In my opinion, you are asking the technology to compensate for instructors who are all about "what" questions when they should probably be thinking up "how" and "why" questions. In the real world, you don't have to memorize Planck's Constant, you have to know how to use it.

And to agree with Joseph, my biochemist stepfather used to give out all the essay questions before the test. If you knew all the answers, you knew the course.
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In reply to ben reynolds

Re: One quiz attempt means one attempt

by Cristina Berisso -

I agree about the good old days of the paper exams when the student could see all questions and have a panoramic view of the evaluation. Moodle seems to accurately reproduce that.

The only vague justification I could think of for defending the not going back to a question already answered would be cases where in a question further down the test a previous question is inadvertently answered. If the test is carefully written and tailored, such would not happen. In particular, I recall cases that happened to me (I am not that careful) in Moodle when using random questions from a category (I do not remember very well all the type of questions in a category and their phrasing). An example that comes to my mind is:

In question #2 I asked the student to recognize the "degree" of a given polynomial whose algebraic expression is shown.

Question #8 asked the student to "find the roots of a polynomial or degree 3 given below" (the algebraic expression of the polynomial was shown).

A student commented that he initially answered question #2 wrong, and after reading question #8 went back to #2 and in a second attempt answered it right. That did not bother me much since the purpose of the class was met: "the student finally understood what the degree of a polynomial is and probably still remembers it."

Having said that, I still do not see a fundamental reason for not allowing the student to go back and re-think a question. But if such is so important in a particular subject, may be the teacher could split the test in two or three different quizzes that cannot be opened simultaneously but in sequence.
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In reply to Cristina Berisso

Re: One quiz attempt means one attempt

by Brenna Reinhart -
Thanks, Cristina!

The instructor in question is teaching a course with lots of media samples that the students listen to and make judgments about, and I'm guessing there were some process-of-elimination type questions in the test. I agree that the best scenario would be to write a better test, but I was asked to see if it were possible to have the student not be able to go back and change their answers. I think using different quizzes might be a good way to solve the problem, so thank you for the suggestion!
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In reply to Brenna Reinhart

Re: One quiz attempt means one attempt

by Liz Norman -

If you want to use quizzes to assess student decision making in a scenario, you need them to not be able to see all the questions at once. For example you may present a scenario and ask them how they would proceed, then present them with more information for them to assess and plan with.

For example imagine the scenario is a limping dog and the first question asks the student what possible reasons for limping they can think of. The second question asks them whether they would like to take an Xray or do something else, and the third question shows the X-ray and asks them to interpret it (and it clearly shows a broken bone). Each of the questions gives away part of the answers to previous questions, yet I don’t think you could say that wanting to stop students seeing all questions at once so that you can present real life scenarios like this is being bizarre and control-freak-y.

Liz

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In reply to Liz Norman

Re: One quiz attempt means one attempt

by Joseph Rézeau -
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Hi Liz,
For your "limping dog scenario" the Lesson module would be the ideal tool to use, rather than Quiz.
Joseph
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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: One quiz attempt means one attempt

by Liz Norman -

Hi Joseph,

Thanks for this suggestion. Unfortunately Lesson is not adequate for this purpose, primarily because you cannot show students a detailed report of their answers, but secondarily because of things like not being able to show feedback for every option, and having an all or nothing scoring on mutiple select questions.

regards
Liz

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