The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Tim Hunt -
Number of replies: 19
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Oleg was nagging me about this, so I started a page on the Docs wiki to record ideas. Development:States_of_a_quiz_attempt

The basic problem is that if a student starts a timed quiz attempt, and then goes offline, then when they come back and time has expired, then they are stuck with an open quiz. There are various options for how this should be dealt with, for example
  • Moodle should automatically close the attempt when time expires.
  • It should solely be the responsibility of the student to submit the attempt.
  • The teacher should have the option to submit the late attempt for the student.
The goal of the wiki page is to collect all these different requirements, so we can make a solution that pleases everyone.

Note, that I am not planning to work on a solution any time soon, but if we reach a consensus about what the right solution is, then someone else might to it. Or, at least when I get time to work on it, I will know exactly what I am trying to do.

Anyway, please discuss.


Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Luis de Vasconcelos -
The way I see it is that Moodle should automatically close the attempt when the time expires. The quiz should also be graded. So, for example, if the student has answered 15 of 20 quiz questions then those 15 questions should be graded.
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In reply to Luis de Vasconcelos

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Tim Hunt -
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Well the policy at the OU is the opposite. It is the student's responsibility to submit their work by the deadline, or they get no marks. That is the same for all OU graded work.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Luis de Vasconcelos -

That's a valid point. Maybe a better option would be to automatically mark the attempt as closed after the deadline (instead of grading the attempt). So, a student starts a quiz with a time limit of 30 minutes. After a few minutes he gets distracted and moves away from the computer. While he is away the 30 minute time limit for the quiz is reached. Moodle should close the attempt and mark it as Closed and grade it zero. Maybe a "quiz attempt was automatically closed after deadline was reached" message could be written to the logs so that the teacher could see why the attempt was closed with a grade of zero.

My main "concern" is the one described in MDL-3030: Student starts a quiz. For whatever reason he doesn't complete the quiz and the attempt stays in an open state, even after the deadline has passed. When the student attempts the quiz again a few days later the transcript for the last attempt shows the Grade as zero and the Time Taken as 50 or 100 hours (or however many hours have passed since he last attempted the quiz). Is this an accurate reflection of events? Or should Moodle automatically close the quiz attempt after the maximum time for the quiz has been reached?

We used to see this quite often in pre-1.9.6 quizzes that used the 'Secure Window' setting. For whatever reasons (usually browser related issues I suspect) the secure window would not always close properly after the student submitted the attempt and the attempt would be left in an unclosed state and the Time Taken setting would show a very high value. This resulted in some very confused students and teachers.

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In reply to Luis de Vasconcelos

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Tim Hunt -
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I just remembered a tricky use case:

1. Teacher starts timed quiz during a classroom setting.
2. Fire alarm goes off, and all students have to leave for a time.
3. When they get back, the original time limit has expired.

* If Moodle has automatically closed all the attempts when the time limit expired, you have a problem.

* If Moodle has not closed all the attempts, then the teacher can just increase the time limit and allow the students can continue.

At least this shows, it is very helpful if 'Submit all and finish' is a reversible action. (But that won't be easy to implement. sad)
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Luis de Vasconcelos -

Students shouldn't be smoking in the classroom - especially during a quiz! big grin

In a rare (hopefully!) situation like this couldn't the teacher just delete those quiz attempts? Then the students could attempt the quiz again after the crisis is over.

Besides, would you really want the students to continue the quiz after the fire has been put out? They would probably have discussed it in depth among themselves while they waited for the fire to be put out.

And how would you explain to the auditors that, for this once particular instance, you had to increase the time limit? wink

The point is, in my corporate environment, if a quiz has a time limit of one hour and the student does not submit his response within that hour, for whatever reason, then he is not considered to have successfully finished the attempt and he has to do it again. But I agree, for those situations where e.g. the server crashes while the student is doing the quiz, a reversible 'Submit all and finish' option would be handy. You just have to control how and when it is used - and who has access to it.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Oleg Sychev -
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More real use cases would be student computer hangs and get reloaded, or electricity is off during an attempt, or student start an attempt and only then realise that his computer missing software he need to do the quiz....

Tim, you solution of this use case has several flaws. Teacher is forced to extend time limit for quiz, even if only some students were affected ( even for fire alarm - there could be another group in another building taking quiz simultaneously). And if he later return it to the normal value (for next attempts) he should avoid regrading...

This use case could be correctly resolved only if teacher would be able to extend time limit for particular attempts, not whole quiz. (I've already added such idea on a wiki page). Having a teacher who can submit (unsubmit) particular attempts and change time limit for them is good.

Also, in you case either teacher and students may don't want to continue previous attempts. If it was fire alarm students may be too nervous (or excited) to concentrate on quiz properly. And if they leave, teacher may be concerned about validity of the results - students sure could get help that teacher doesn't want during overall confusion when leaving/returning. It may be just better to delete old attempts and start fresh ones.

P.S. Worst use case is a server going down during timed quiz attempt in a class. Maybe a tiny AJAX request before submitting, verifying that server is alive, would be a good thing.
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In reply to Oleg Sychev

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Oleg Sychev -
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Tim, you case has also security flaw. Only editor could change time limit for a quiz, regular teacher can't do that.

It will have some sense to give regular teachers ability to extend time limit for particular attempts (with comment describing why), while editor will continue to control time limit for entire quiz.
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In reply to Oleg Sychev

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Joseph Rézeau -
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Oleg,
Please explain what you mean by "editor" and "regular teacher".
Joseph
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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Tim Hunt -
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Editing teacher and Non-editing teacher.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Joseph Rézeau -
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Thanks for the info, Tim. In the situation where I work a "regular teacher" is of course an editing teacher.wink
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In reply to Luis de Vasconcelos

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by D e v -
but what setting require for that
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Oleg Sychev -
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Oh, yes, users tend to nagg developers about their petty problems, that has nothing to do with cleannes and elegacy of software architecture and implementation ;)

Idea how to settle time delay problem with later attempt for 2.0 (and 1.9 too?): we could change behavour of quiz time delay so it will use

$timenow - $quiz->delay < min($lastattempt_timestart +$quiz->timelimit, $lastattempt_timefinish)

for timed quizzes and

$timenow - $quiz->delay < $lastattempt_timefinish

for not timed ones. (I changed variable names a little to improve readability in forum).


Would anyone object?
Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Cay Horstmann -
This is driving me crazy. I use a "quiz" to collect programming homework. Students do their work in a development environment and, when they are done, paste the answer into Moodle. It takes them a while to do this, so they are used to saving their work and coming back.

Then, in the last attempt, they must make a choice between "Save this page" (there are no other pages) and "Save and close".

Routinely, at least one knucklehead forgets to hit "Save and close".

I want my grader (a "non-editing teacher") be able to grade the work (even if it is only partial) without me having to do crazy acts like extending the deadline and having the student close it.

Please, give me an option "Close quiz after deadline".
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In reply to Cay Horstmann

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Tim Hunt -
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From your description, it sounds like the assignment module may be more appropriate.

Anyway, I know this is an important issue, but that does not magically mean that I have time to work on it.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Cay Horstmann -
Unfortunately, the Assignments module doesn't allow me to have more than one deliverable in an assignment. So, if homework #5 has six problems, I can't have six separate input elements. I could do six parts homework #5 question 1, homework #5 question 12, homework #5 question 3, homework #5 question 4, homework #5 question 5, homework #5 question 6, but that would be a murderous amount of clicking to set them up.

So, while I absolutely welcome a better assignment module, the quiz module is what is working now, except for this issue that can cause submissions to be in limbo.

Thanks,

Cay
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In reply to Cay Horstmann

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Itamar Tzadok -
If all these problems are graded manually you can try the database activity. There adding an entry is virtually submission. Feedback can be given by means of adding a comment to the entry so it's not per problem, but you can add 6 comments one for each problem. Then the entry can be graded as a whole and the grade goes to the gradebook. It's a bit more setup work but overall may be closer to what you need until the quiz automatic submission issue could be addressed. smile
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In reply to Itamar Tzadok

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Cay Horstmann -
Thanks for pointing that out, but I don't see how that can work for me.

We have our own mechanism that produces an evaluation (but not a grade) for programming problems. A human must look over the evaluation report. The quiz module has a framework for adding new question types, and that's what we used to integrate the code evaluator.

Frankly, it is disturbing that there is no way of using those question types outside a quiz (e.g. in an assignment or a database activity).
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In reply to Cay Horstmann

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Itamar Tzadok -
Which question type is that? If the code evaluator is web-based or can interact with web application it shouldn't be too difficult to integrate it with the database activity entry form such that the evaluation report could be pasted into Moodle. smile
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: The old problem the late quiz attempts are not closed automatically ...

by Venkat V -
If the student is giving a test (only one attempt allowed) and because of technical glitches, lets say the window closes, then the student should be able to re login and resume the test with all the responses collected in other pages except the page he was in when the window closed and also there should be no or minimum time loss.

Do you think this is possible?
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