I think I've found a bug, though I could be missing something else. In a very recent build of Moodle 2.0 (an upgrade install over 1.9.6), I created a scale for students to use in evaluating forum posts. I created a forms and entries for them to rate. I enrolled students in the course (and verified their receipt of email) and verified that they had permissions as students to "view scales". When students go to the forum, they see the drop-down rating scale OK, but the little gold questionmark is suppose to display the rubric and grading standards provided in the "description" component of the scale. Modest but substantial scale descriptions are confirmed to have been added to the scale which is displayed. Any suggestions to that my students could view the scales would be much appreciated.
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Hi there. Can you confirm that they were able to do this in 1.9? I have allowed students to rate forums in 1.9 but I can't remember whether they were able to see the description of the scale I set up for them - if they can, then they should be able to in 2.0 as well; if they couldn't, then some tweaking will be needed I thought the gold questionmark took you to an explanation (help file) of what the ratings were - at least it does here on this forum, if you click on it, rather than a description of the scale you made.
Mary:
Thanks for your interest. As I've looked into this, there may be a deeper weirdness or some issue of permissions setting which befuddles me.
* First, I can confirm that in 1.96, ratings did work, though at that time I used only simple scales which didn't require detailed description. The Moodle 2.0 that I'm working with is a new build as of the other day. I had imported courses to it from a Moodle 1.96 which I thought I'd successfully migrated to 2.0, though the forums and ratings were newly created in the recent build of 2.0 and are not in courses which were brought into it. I had manually created a user account, verified that it had student permissions, and enrolled it in the sample course (newly created) with which I'm working.
* I can verify that the "view ratings" should work the way I think if the following description from: http://docs.moodle.org/en/grade/scale remains true:
"Write a detailed description in the Description box (highlighted in blue) for your scale. Your students will have access to the description, and you can use this to give them additional feedback. The more details you put in the description, the more students will understand what each scale item means."
Now.. I notice new problems. I'd suggested that the GoldenQuestionMark didn't lead to the ratings. There IS a pull-down menu for students visiting the forum in my install with the right scale to 5.0… but I now see that there is no "submit rating" button (which thee used to be), and that when 'rated', no rating appears immediately on the screen of the student to verify that ratings have been recorded. In fact when Iog bacon as administrator, I note when going to the forum post for feedback that no submissions appear to the right of "average rating". I believe that ratings aren't being saved -- unless multiple ratings are stored before averaging or something.
This feels like a permissions problem of some sort. I created another new forum as administrator. At the point of creation, the settings menu where ratings are to be turned on provides it's own goldenQuestionMark, which says: "To submit ratings, users require the moodle/rating: rate capability and any module specific capabilities. Users assigned the following roles should be able to rate items. The list of roles may be amended via the permissions link in the settings block. "
Now, I can't really say that I fully understand all of the expressions in that advisory, but I did go to several areas for setting permissions. With the particular forum settings in edit mode, I clicked to the permissions tab in the settings block and got a page titled "Permissions in Forum: forum with ratings mine", and found that the listed item "rate posts" (mod/forum/rate)" included "StudentX" among roles with such permissions. No permission items relating to "view scale" appears on that page.
I also went to administration/ users/ permissions/ student and found the following:
= add ratings to items: allowed
= rate entries: allow/default: not set
= rate posts: allow/default: not set
= view scale: allow
Now, I do notice in the second paragraph back, a reference to "moodle/rating/rate capability and any module specific capabilities" and wonder if I've missed some permission setting area. I'm concerned about the "not set" on some defaults as well, and wouldn't know where to go to set defaults.
In sum, though rating scales appear for student, there is no submission button for posting those ratings or visible feedback to confirm ratings, and the golden?mark produces a suggestion of no permissions (even after cache is flushed).
Thanks Mary, for any suggestions, and thanks too for your wonderful book which gave me a sense of optimism that I might want to tackle these sorts of complexities
Hi Steve - well thanks for the thanks- we have just finished our Christmas Day here - a huge evening meal followed by a long walk in the snow (well, long to me anyway!) So I will go to my own Moodle 2.0 and test this out myself tomorrow Boxing Day) and let you know what I find. I have to say one thing though, which is that I am not sure students can see the description of the scales even though it says so in the docs- I have a memory of there being a discussion of this once on the forums but unfortunately I can't remember the outcome. Certainly though they should be able to rate posts and those ratings should be saved. I will get back to you.
Thanks Mary. I hear what you say about not knowing for sure whether documentation is documenting I think the advice of describing scales well is good, and I was hoping to put a great deal of focus on this in a rather large class. I can work around the lack of description, though the bigger problem is in confirming that I can actually get my students involved in rating as they used to be. I'm having trouble getting Workshop 2.0 to work as well. "Edit your Submissions" buttons don't appear though permissions seem set right, and so students can't get their stuff. I posted a note on that in the Workshop area, and I've not clue if the problems are related.
I've noticed another thing though on this issue of using my own 5- point rating scales, and that's in getting the ratings done by students to register in any way at all. On the example here at Moodle forums, when one pulls down a drop down menu to acknowledge a posters help, evidence of the rating having been accepted is provided with visual feedback of on the screen. In my implementation, nothing appears at all new once one has pulled down to a value. The value stays on screen in the pull-down, but does not appear in text to the left of the pull-down.
Another thing.... I've been over this over and over, and noticed a very fast flash as the page loaded which may be interesting. In addition to the text, "Rate:" and the long rectangular pull-down, a second button (more oval with the word "rate on it appears and then quickly disappears before the GoldenQuestion emerges to awareness. This reappears on every page refresh but was the devil to catch on my screen image capture program
I'm not positive, but may have solved the problem. I believe that Moodle 2.0 somehow did not like the scale which I had tailored, which involved an array to 5 point with .5 point increments. I'll verify that but may have the problem solved.
I cannot account for the situation, but no longer does that flashing icon appear. While I was problem-solving last night, it was after I had switched from my custom scale to a standardized one long part of Moodle that everything worked right. I thought perhaps there was a problem in defining the scale I was using, but now not only does rating work using standardized scales, when I switch back to my custom scale, there is visible evidence to the user that their vote is registered, and the goldenQuestionMark now leads to a pop-up window displaying the description of the custom scale as I had defined it. Beats me why it's all working. I had cleared cache a number of times, and yet once we got past Christmas, everything just started working