Usability questions about quiz in Moodle 2.0

Usability questions about quiz in Moodle 2.0

by Oleg Sychev -
Number of replies: 5
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Trying new version of quiz I found out some good things and some that maybe not so good.

Are this additional page with summary of the quiz attempt before ending it necessary in all cases? It is certainly very useful to notify student about any questions he forget to answer, but what purpose it has in non-adaptive quiz if all questions are answered? It's still one more page reload.

There are also two things associated with it that could be reported as bugs (Tim, tell me if you want it done):

1. In non-adaptive mode "marks" column shows zeros irrespective of responses. It shure shoudn't show real grades since student still could change responses, but in any important (say exam) quiz it quite scaring! It's much better to hide it at all in non-adaptive mode - imagine student about to finish an attempt and see a column of zero marks smile

2. If you choose at least one choice in the match question it is displayed as "answered". I guess answered is the state when you choose all choices, not in just one. Student may choose easy ones, than go to the other questions and forget to return to the match one. I think the state should be "partially answered" or, failing that, "not answered" until all choices are made.
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In reply to Oleg Sychev

Re: Usability questions about quiz in Moodle 2.0

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
In a non-adaptive quiz, how can you tell easily if you have answered all questions? The review page tells you.

1. Is a bug. Please report it in the tracker.

2. This is a limitation of how questions work in Moodle at the moment. There is no way to tell if a response to a question is complete, just that the student has entered something.

We learned this when implementing the summary page at the OU, and it was one of the issues I took into account when changing the state model in the new question engine. See Development:Question_Engine_2:Design#New_list_of_states_that_a_question_may_be_in.

The new state model has two states: complete and incomplete, which is what you want to know.

Currently the two states are OPEN (when the attempt is first started) and SAVED when the student has entered anything.

So, we will have to live with issue 2. in Moodle 2.0 and look forwards to Moodle 2.1.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Usability questions about quiz in Moodle 2.0

by Oleg Sychev -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers
Tim wrote "In a non-adaptive quiz, how can you tell easily if you have answered all questions? The review page tells you." - I tried to tell you that this page could be omitted by software if all questions are answered. That's not easy but possible, maybe for 2.1
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In reply to Oleg Sychev

Re: Usability questions about quiz in Moodle 2.0

by Oleg Sychev -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers
Overall expression of the new quiz editing interface: it's looking quite nice, but niceties took more place then ever and useful information have less place for it.

Question bank panel is too narrow, so many question names are truncated. Panel with quiz questions often try to show you too much (especially about random question, I can't think without horror about our quizzes with 10-20 random question - I used to be able to see even 15-question quiz without scrolling when editing it, I'm afraid I can't see even 10-question one in 2.0).
And there are no controls to lessen that information (I certainly could do well without several questions from the category, a link to the category is enought) and get an overview of the quiz on one screen. It seems that the one designing this interface tend to think regular quiz authors get as large professional monitors as graphic designers...

On the random question familiar edit icon vanished and transformed into the "configure question" link, while other questions retains original icon. What's worse, if the font is large enought, edit icons for the questions in the quiz panels isn't visible at all (at least in Google Chrome) - they are going under another elements, you still could see them lessening the font size).


It's seems that quiz editing interface becomes more a nice picture to look on and admire, but quite inconvenient and aggravating tool for everyday work. I'm afraid there pass quite a time before new interface get polished and convenient, and in the meantime we should work with our quizzes somehow.

Could we have a link to an old interface? (i'm quite serious) Please? I could even promise to show new interface on all demonstrations to impress people, leaving old one only for work. smile
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In reply to Oleg Sychev

Re: Usability questions about quiz in Moodle 2.0

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Have you tried switching to the 'order an paging' tab of the new interface?

I take your point about the narrowness of the question bank display. One thing that has been suggested is a nice tooltip that shows the whole question on hover. What do you think about that?
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Usability questions about quiz in Moodle 2.0

by Oleg Sychev -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers
Switching to the 'order an paging' tab gives more slim view, but I lose the ability to see and ajust grade, and also to edit random questions (because of the inconsistency described above) - retaining an ability to edit other ones.

I still think that there is no need to print some questions from category for random ones (link to the category is enought), but if some people really need this than I want an ability to switch it off (to the less detailed view) so I could get overview of the quiz. Some checkbox like "detailed" or "summary" which will hide question text (for normal question) and question list (for number) in summary mode, that should be easy.

I also think that (summarising from other post):

1. Situation with editing random question is inconsistency, maybe a bug (it also makes grade element take more place needed for a "configure question" link).

2. situation with edit icons going under other HTML elements (actually one point from them remain visible and if you are very carefully point mouse you even can get tooltip - I guess HTML tuned so one left column of the icon is visible under all circumstances) is definitely a bug. Maybe it should be moved down to the preview icon, which is never lost, or HTML should be tuned more correctly so the icon will be visible in whole).

3. Narrownes of question bank display coming from the blocks on the page. If question bank could overlap them under some conditions, that would be a lot wider. Navigation block use overlapping when docked, maybe question bank should be docked too? (or maybe it could push blocks down when visible).

P.S. Personally I think that placing many areas with bright colors on page with so many controls is a bad choice (look at qa.moodle.net). On the old page with plain coloring control icons (and even gray buttons) were almost highlighted, it was easy to find them. Now eyes are lost in many colored areas and control icons look bleak, unimportant and get lost (except the list of the questions in quiz, it is perfectly colored with gentle accentes on some areas but no more). Bright colors are good for an Intro pages, but I'd prefer a gentle coloring on the place crowded with small controls and information icons. This, of course, partially depend on the theme, but I think that there are overall bright and gentle coloring classes, and this is not really theme issue unless these classes are specific for this page.
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