Student Complaint: They enter essays into a lesson block, but their essays don't seem to get entered.
What are the settings for partial lesson completion, so that the can come back and finish a lesson later?
How can a teacher get to the lesson essays easy, to comment on them?
Here is the issue.
For some reason, Moodle likes multiple choice items, short answer items, and matching items because there is an answer and a real point value assigned to the answer and it is checked. Essays are not checked until the instructor marks them. That seems to be where Moodle get confused and doesn't "mark" the part of the lesson the student is on when they exit. If you have a lesson where there are multiple choice items after the essay questions and the student makes it to the multiple choice portion, then Moodle "marks" the lesson and saves where the student left off.
Currently from my investigation there isn't a fix for this problem. I have created a workaround for this and shared it on a forum here on Moodle, I just can't remember where. I also shared this on the Oakland Schools website.
I will duplicate my workaround for you here, and hopefully it will work for you, it has worked quite well for my students.
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As well here is a link to a video I made on Moodle for this problem you may want to view.
http://www.livestream.com/mrballardsmoodle
Choose The Partial Lesson Essays completion in the On Demand Library for the video.
For some reason, Moodle likes multiple choice items, short answer items, and matching items because there is an answer and a real point value assigned to the answer and it is checked. Essays are not checked until the instructor marks them. That seems to be where Moodle get confused and doesn't "mark" the part of the lesson the student is on when they exit. If you have a lesson where there are multiple choice items after the essay questions and the student makes it to the multiple choice portion, then Moodle "marks" the lesson and saves where the student left off.
Currently from my investigation there isn't a fix for this problem. I have created a workaround for this and shared it on a forum here on Moodle, I just can't remember where. I also shared this on the Oakland Schools website.
I will duplicate my workaround for you here, and hopefully it will work for you, it has worked quite well for my students.
______________________________________
Came across this problem today and I have a fix for it. It isn't pretty but accomplishes the task. Moodle.org doesn't have a fix either, so I posted this on Moodle.org as well.
When creating a lesson in Moodle, the student should be able to leave the lesson part way through and then come back and pick up where they left off.
This only works part of the time. Why?
In doing some investigation it appears that if you only have instructional material where there are no answers to choose, or if you have essays that need to be manually graded by the instructor, the system doesn't mark the student's last progress. However, if you only have multiple choice questions or short answer questions, the system auto grades these pages and marks where the student left off.
The solution (workaround) I am suggesting - unless someone has something better.
For pages that are just instructional, put one answer on the page that reads "next page".
This will force the student to click on next page and this will cause the system to mark this as a completed page. The student will have to click one more time to get to the next page because the system always verifies the answer chosen, but it at least will keep track of where the student is.
The issue with essay questions is solved in a similar fashion. The workaround for this though is to add a page after the essay question which is left blank except for the answer "next page" which the student selects.
Teach the students when answering an essay question to always click to the next page to mark where they are and then it will work properly.
This works best.
If anyone has a better idea, please let me know.
____________________When creating a lesson in Moodle, the student should be able to leave the lesson part way through and then come back and pick up where they left off.
This only works part of the time. Why?
In doing some investigation it appears that if you only have instructional material where there are no answers to choose, or if you have essays that need to be manually graded by the instructor, the system doesn't mark the student's last progress. However, if you only have multiple choice questions or short answer questions, the system auto grades these pages and marks where the student left off.
The solution (workaround) I am suggesting - unless someone has something better.
For pages that are just instructional, put one answer on the page that reads "next page".
This will force the student to click on next page and this will cause the system to mark this as a completed page. The student will have to click one more time to get to the next page because the system always verifies the answer chosen, but it at least will keep track of where the student is.
The issue with essay questions is solved in a similar fashion. The workaround for this though is to add a page after the essay question which is left blank except for the answer "next page" which the student selects.
Teach the students when answering an essay question to always click to the next page to mark where they are and then it will work properly.
This works best.
If anyone has a better idea, please let me know.
As well here is a link to a video I made on Moodle for this problem you may want to view.
http://www.livestream.com/mrballardsmoodle
Choose The Partial Lesson Essays completion in the On Demand Library for the video.