Lesson attempts not showing up

Lesson attempts not showing up

by Philip Anderson -
Number of replies: 23

Hi all,

One of our teaching staff is using lessons in his Moodle course.  Apparently all of his students completed one of the lessons in class yesterday (he saw them do it) yet today, many of the students' attempts are missing from the list on the Reports tab (as if they hadn't made an attempt) and a few others are listed as "Not completed".

I've run an SQL query against the Moodle database for that particular lesson and the number of attempts there corresponds to the number shown in the Reports tab (from which the staff member insists there are attempts missing).

Does anyone know if the attempts are recoverable, or if this is a known issue?  Are we missing something?

We're running Moodle 1.9.3.

Hope you can help.  Thanks in advance.

Philip Anderson,
e-Learning Materials Officer,
South Tyneside College.

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In reply to Philip Anderson

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Hi Philip,
Do those lessons contain at least one "question page" (with a multiple choice or short answer question etc.) AND does each lesson flow guarantee that the students will go through at least one page containing such a question? The lesson module only records attempts for such "question pages".
Many users have been misled by this Lesson behavior.
Joseph
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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Chris Collman -
Picture of Documentation writers
Thanks Joseph and Phillip,
I tweaked Lesson FAQs to include the excellent tip. Lesson FAQ "the lesson was completed but it does not record".

Chris
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Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Ro Eng -
I have been reading the comments on this site.  I am also trying to figure out why some of our 'students' grades do not show up.  I have noticed one item, that I would like to eliminate as a possible cause and am hoping someone here can confirm.  I have noticed that some of our lesson creators use 'questions' instead of branch tables or non question options to create portions of the lesson.  Example:  I have a topic of a Privacy officer and it appears that the lesson creator just wants the student to read and go to the next page.  Well, the private officer was created in a multiple choice page type and then ther are no real jumps (or answers).  Can this create issues?  My concern would be..no answer and so the quiz technically is not completed.  But, now having said all of that, we do have a few people who get 100% on the quiz and then about half of the other studens are not showing up as have taken the quiz at all.  Any thoughts?
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In reply to Ro Eng

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

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

Rhonda "Well, the private officer was created in a multiple choice page type and then there are no real jumps (or answers)."

What does this mean? Who is that "private officer" person? What do you call "no real jumps"?thoughtful

It would be easier to understand the problem if you posted here the exact contents of that "multiple choice page" that you are talking about.

Joseph

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Philip Anderson -

Hi Joseph,

Thanks for your reply.  Yes there are multiple question pages and the lesson is linear, i.e. the students must go through the question pages.  I actually discovered this behaviour (not recording attempts if questions aren't answered) myself while attempting to figure out how lessons work and what was going on.

I suggested to the teacher that maybe his students had closed their browsers without answering any questions but he is adamant that the students answered all the questions and got to the end of the lesson.

Philip.

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In reply to Philip Anderson

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

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

I suggested to the teacher that maybe his students had closed their browsers without answering any questions but he is adamant that the students answered all the questions and got to the end of the lesson.

Well, it's very easy to check that. Logged in as admin or teacher, go to the course where those students did the lesson and have a look at their log entries. You will see exactly at what time they entered the lesson, which pages they visited and at what time, and when they reached the end of the lesson. See an attached example.

Joseph

Attachment image00.jpg
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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Philip Anderson -

Joseph,

I exported the log for the teacher to check and he has filtered on those students he knows did the lesson.  There is activity in the log confirming that the students did indeed progress through the lesson, but these entries are not represented in the Reports tab for the lesson.

See attached image for example.  Students Ball and Martin are clearly shown working through the lesson on 16th March in the upper image which is the course activity log.  All pages marked "AND", and "OR" contain questions and subsequent pages cannot be accessed without students answering those questions.  In the lower image, only one incomplete attempt (from the previous day, the 15th) is shown for Ball.  Martin does not show up at all on the Reports tab.

So clearly Moodle has recorded the fact that they proceeded through the lesson in the course log, but not recorded their attempts in the Lesson Reports!

Any idea why this might be?

Thanks.

Philip.

Attachment reports.png
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In reply to Philip Anderson

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Joseph Rézeau -
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Those logs do not show any "lesson end" action (as in my screenshot)...
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Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Philip Anderson -

Sorry, I should have mentioned that the image I posted is just a small section of the log.  (The report image is also cut-down.)  The actual log is quite long, but I can confirm does contain a "lesson end" event for student Martin (who does not show up at all in the lesson report).

Although there is no "lesson end" event for student Ball that I can find, this student should still be listed as "Not completed" because he has answered several questions (see my previous post), however he isn't.

Attachment reportsa.png
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In reply to Philip Anderson

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Joseph Rézeau -
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Philip,
Instead of displaying the logs for all students, could you please display the log entries for just one student (e.g. Martin), and so a screenshot showing that student's complete navigation in one lesson, from lesson view to lesson end?
Other than that, you might do a backup of just that lesson (with or without student data) and send it to me (to my e-mail in my profile) so I can examine it on my local moodle install.
Joseph
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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Philip Anderson -

Joseph,

Screenshot as requested.  This is everything in the log related to student Martin for this lesson.  Again, notice the multiple "Lesson start" events.

I'll look into backing up the lesson and sending it to you.

Philip.

Attachment reportc.png
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In reply to Philip Anderson

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
I was a little confused at first, because your log table shows timestamps in chronological order. I am used to displayed inverse chronological order (most recent events first). Anyway, now I notice for Matint on March 16 at 12:56 a "lesson view End of cluster" action. Might that be the reason for the problem? I never ever use lesson clusters myself, I still do not quite understand how useful they might be.
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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Philip Anderson -

To be honest, I'm not sure.  I've not got much experience with lessons myself.  This lesson was created by one of our teaching staff, not by me (I'm a Moodle admin).  I emailed you a copy of the lesson earlier - if you get a chance to look at it and find any problems, please let me know.

Thanks.

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In reply to Philip Anderson

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

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

Philip,

I've installed the lesson you sent me on my local Moodle installation. I've logged in as student and gone through the entire lesson, also went again through the lesson and quit after answering a few questions. The Lesson Report tab shows my various attempts as expected. (see attached screenshot #1)

Actually, putting an "end of cluster" as the last Lesson "page" OR putting a Jump to "end of lesson" in the last question OR branch page are all equivalent, as far as I can see.

@Scarlet : there is no such thing as a specific "end page" in the Lesson. Only "end of cluster", "end of branch page" or putting a Jump to end of Lesson as one of the options in one page. (see attached Lesson edit screenshot #2).

Just one thing, your lesson was set to "Maximum grade = 0", which means that no grade is given for that lesson in the GradeBook, but I expect this is what the teacher intended. It should not influence the Report tab findings.

I'm sorry I can't help you solve this "mystery".

I have already voiced a number of times in this forum the concern that Moodle's Lesson module, although quite useful for a variety of learning & testing activities, has an extraordinarily complicated interface, with countless interactions between all of its settings and I think at the moment no-one completely understands how it's working. I'm sure our friend Chris will agree on this, and he is doubtless the one who has the deepest understanding of the Lesson module.

I guess we have to do with this tool as it is, for the moment.

ATB

Joseph

Attachment image01.jpg
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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Philip Anderson -

Thanks for trying Joseph.

I've had another look in the Moodle database and couldn't find anything at all related to the missing attempts.

I doubt there's a way to recover them, unfortunately.

Thanks for all of your help, though.  It's appreciated!

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In reply to Philip Anderson

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Alice Keeler -
This was a big problem for me....... lots of hair pulling. Now I finally have it.

I now make a branch table and the first jump is to continue to the lesson and the last jump is to END LESSON.

At the end of my lesson I have an END OF BRANCH that takes the student back to the table of contents.

I believe my moodle allows guest access if you want to check out my lessons.

http://ohsmoodle.cusd.com/course/view.php?id=84
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In reply to Alice Keeler

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Chris Collman -
Picture of Documentation writers
Thanks Alice,
So you have followed a best practice by always showing the student the way out, with an End of Lesson jump on a button (or answer in a question). This solved your problem.

Do I understand that if the student answers all the questions correctly in a Lesson, but clicks on the breadcrumb to go back to the homepage of the course, they get a fat ZERO? However, if the student can get to the mythical end of lesson page, via a jump or because the "next page" is the last page in the edit view, then the score is recorded?

Thanks to all of you for your efforts in helping in trying to get to the bottom of this kind of problem.

I am thinking about the documentation and have run out of time to test it (lazy?).

Best Chris


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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Philip Anderson -

One more thing I've noticed, not sure whether it's relevant, is that there appear to be multiple "lesson start" events in the log for many students (see attached image, again cut-down from actual log).

More info. on our setup: We're running four application (front-end) servers connecting to one database (back-end) server for load-balancing purposes.  The servers are all Linux-based.

Attachment reportsb.png
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In reply to Philip Anderson

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Lynn Scarlet Clark -
Philip,

We had a similar problem with some students, until we realised that some were not working through the lesson and actually go through and past the 'end of lesson; page. That is, on your last page when you built your lesson you should have a final jump to 'end of lesson'. This is the page that says you have finished, what your scores are (if shown) and a 'continue' link. It is crucial that learners visit this page or the lesson will not be marked as completed.

Some students skip this - if they know where the end page is and just use their browser/bookmarked links to return to the course page/wherever. We discovered we were particularly at risk of this because we have chosen to show the lesson menu, which means learners can jump backwards and forwards through the lesson and it's obvious where the final page is, so they go straight back to the course home and miss out this end of lesson.

Could your learners be missing out this page as they work through?
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In reply to Lynn Scarlet Clark

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Philip Anderson -

Scarlet,

I've actually attempted the lesson myself, under a student account.  From the way the lesson is designed, it is impossible for a user to pass any of the question pages without answering those questions.  And from what I've learned about Moodle lessons, answering even one question will result in a "Not completed" entry appearing in the lesson report.  There is no lesson menu, so students can't skip pages.

While the course activity logs (see screenshots) clearly show, for example, student Martin progressing through the lesson (and therefore answering questions) there is absolutely nothing about this student (not even a "Not completed" flag) in the lesson report.

In other words, regardless of whether Martin actually completed the lesson, we know he answered question pages, and therefore should appear at the very least as "Not completed" in the lesson report, which he currently doesn't.

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In reply to Philip Anderson

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Lynn Scarlet Clark -
Hi Philip, I must not have made my point very well. I was not refering to whether student can skip question pages, but this END page. I appreciate my suggestion may not be right as a solution in this instance, but this END page is very important to the reporting of the whole lesson. It doesn't matter if they have completed every question page or not if they are not able to click on this end page it will do some odd things to the reporting.

I agree that it may still not be the reason that Martin is not showing as 'not completed' but it could be worth trying to complete the lesson and miss this end page out to see if it comes up with the same reporting results for you. Apologies if I am wasting your time but I did have a similar experience and this was the reason in our case.
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In reply to Lynn Scarlet Clark

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Philip Anderson -

Hi Scarlet,

Sorry for the misunderstanding.  You are certainly not wasting my time - I wouldn't consider any avenue of investigation a waste of time.

I've checked the end point of the lesson and it is not set to "jump to end of lesson".  I have notified the lesson's creator that this is a possible cause of the issues.

Thanks to everyone who has helped.  If there are other possible causes of this problem, please let me know.

Thanks again.

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In reply to Philip Anderson

Re: Lesson attempts not showing up

by Sue M. -
I was having this same issue, until I turned off the "allow practice" option and set it to "no."

I think what was happening was that they would take the test and it would shuttle it into some 'practice limbo' instead of showing test results.
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