Copy and Paste not working in Essay Question

Copy and Paste not working in Essay Question

by Caryl Gordon -
Number of replies: 6

Hi All!

I have essay questions in my exam. I suggest that student use Word or another word processing program to check grammar, spelling and to save the response in case the quiz times out, their computer crashes, etc. Then, students can copy and paste their responses from the word processing document into the essay answer area.


I have been getting lots of email from students telling me that copy and paste will not work. I then tested this myself and here are my findings:

In the quiz settings, I left the secure window setting set to No. I COULD copy and paste information into the essay question placeholder with no problem using both IE 7.0 and Firefox.

Then I created another quiz with the secure window setting set to Yes. I COULD copy and paste information into the essay question placeholder in Firefox but NOT with IE 7.0.

However, many of my students could not copy and paste content regardless of what browser they were using. Our university recommends IE 7.0 and many students and faculty will not use another browser.

Could this be dependent upon individual computer settings? I would like to figure this out before the Fall semester starts in a few weeks.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Caryl Gordon
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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In reply to Caryl Gordon

Re: Copy and Paste not working in Essay Question

by Mary Cooch -
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Well I just had a go - Moodle 1.9.3 with IE7 - I made a quiz with an essay question and then I logged in as a student and copied and pasted something I had done in word 2007 - and it worked fine.So then I went back and set it to secure window as you did - and I couldn't paste either.
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In reply to Caryl Gordon

Re: Copy and Paste not working in Essay Question

by Joseph Rézeau -
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Hi Caryl,

I do appreciate that by typing their essay in a word processor your students will benefit from its spell checker etc. features. However I'd like to point out that doing a copy and paste of text from a word processor (especially MS Word?) into Moodle's HTML editor will quite often result in unwanted "garbage" formatting codes being transferred along with the text itself. Almost everyday we see examples of this in these moodle forums. I keep telling my students and faculty colleagues to never ever copy-paste from MS Word into Moodle. Not to mention the copy-paste not working problem which is the main gist of your post.

If the spelling and grammar checker of a word processor are important features for your students' essays, may I suggest that, instead of using the Essay question type in the Quiz activity you use the Assignment activity, in which your students can simply post their Word document.

Joseph

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In reply to Caryl Gordon

Re: Copy and Paste not working in Essay Question

by Glenys Hanson -
Hi Caryl,

Personally, I don't recommend students copy and paste from Word for reasons I've explained here Re: Language issues in copied questionnaire

I suggest they write directly in Moodle using Firefox and install the United States English Dictionary (in fact, just a spellchecker) and Lazarus: Form Recovery which enables you to restore (almost) anything that's been typed in a text box. Maybe there's something equivalent in IE. They could also prepare their work as an email: most mailers these days use HTML and have a spellchecker. I don't often do it this way myself, so maybe there are drawbacks I haven't noticed.

Until I discovered Lazarus, I just frequently "copied" what I was typing so that I could recover it from the clipboard if I inadvertently closed the text editor.

Cheers,
Glenys

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In reply to Glenys Hanson

Re: Copy and Paste not working in Essay Question

by Glenys Hanson -
Hi Caryl and Joseph,

I hadn't seen your post, Joseph, when I wrote mine. So I wasn't trying to "hammer" you, Caryl, by making some of the same points. It's just that Joseph and I are often "pulling on the same cord" as we say in French.

Cheers,
Glenys
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In reply to Caryl Gordon

Re: Copy and Paste not working in Essay Question

by Tim Hunt -
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It is intentional that 'Secure window' mode stops the student copying-and-pasting. That is kind of the whole point, in as much as 'Secure window' mode has a point. (And it is a bug that it does not work in Firefox.)

If you want students to copy and paste, leave that option off.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Copy and Paste not working in Essay Question

by Caryl Gordon -

Thanks everyone - your information really helps!

Caryl

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