Two problems since upgrading to 1.4.3

Two problems since upgrading to 1.4.3

由Steve Menear發表於
Number of replies: 11

I have encountered two problems with the workshop feature since the Moodle environment was upgraded to version 1.4.3. Has anyone else encountered similar problems?

The first issue is cosmetic. The sixth tab (for status of the worskhop) does not have a real label and appears to be redundant.

The second issue is problematic. I repeated some tests I did a couple of weeks ago. It appears that students are no longer being presented with peer submissions to grade. Even after I switch the status to allow submissions and assessments, or even just assessments, nothing appears in the student's list to assess. This is true even if every other student in the class has submitted his work.

Does anyone have any suggestions to help fix the problem?

Thanks.

Steve

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In reply to Steve Menear

Cosmetic issues since upgrading to 1.4.3

由Nic McPhee發表於
I too have noticed the apparently redundant sixth tab after a recent upgrade to 1.4.3.  There also seems to be a cosmetic problem with the label on the Over Allocation drop down in the Administration page.  It now has "setoverallocation" as the label over the drop down (by the yellow question mark circle) instead of whatever "real" text used to be there.
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In reply to Steve Menear

Peer assessment allocation problems since upgrading to 1.4.3

由Nic McPhee發表於
It appears that students are no longer being presented with peer submissions to grade.

How many students do you have in your test workshop and what do you have the over allocation set to and the number of expected student submissions?  I'm currently running a test workshop with four students.  I initially set it up so that each student had to assess one other student, and the over allocation was set to 1, and no one ever got anything to assess.

I changed the number to assess from 1 to 2, and then one student got 2 submissions to assess, two got 1 to assess, and the last got no new ones to assess.  In the end this led to four new assessments, which were allocated evenly, one per submission.  Growing suspicious, I upped the number to assess from 2 to 3, and indeed got additional assessment assignments (1, 2, 1, and 0 respectively).  Notice that this means that the fourth student has had no submissions to assess, while the first and second have 3 and the third as 2.

All this suggests that there are at least two different bugs in the workshop code.  First, it looks like the number of required assessments is in fact off by one:  Requiring 1 got none, requiring 2 got an average of 1, and requiring 3 got an average of 2.  This may be related to the fact that in my test workshop I've required the assessment of one instructor submission and self-assessment, so it's possible that the code in (incorrectly) counting either of these in its count of assessments assigned/done.

Second, it looks like the overallocation code is broken in some way, since a distribution of 3, 3, 2, 0 shouldn't be allowed if the requirement is 2 with an overallocation of 1.

It's possible that these problems only show up with very small workshops, or maybe they're just easier to see when you only have four students.
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In reply to Nic McPhee

Re: Peer assessment allocation problems since upgrading to 1.4.3

由Nic McPhee發表於
I've posted bugs about these two issues [2368, 2369] with essentially the same info as reported here.
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In reply to Nic McPhee

Re: Peer assessment allocation problems since upgrading to 1.4.3

由Martin Dougiamas發表於
Core developers的相片 Documentation writers的相片 Moodle HQ的相片 Particularly helpful Moodlers的相片 Plugin developers的相片 Testers的相片
What version of Workshop are you running?  You can see the number in Admin >> Configuration >> Modules 
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Peer assessment allocation problems since upgrading to 1.4.3

由Nic McPhee發表於
Version 2004060401 (presumably whatever you get when you update to 1.4.3).  I'll add that info to the two bug reports.
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In reply to Nic McPhee

Re: Peer assessment allocation problems since upgrading to 1.4.3

由Martin Dougiamas發表於
Core developers的相片 Documentation writers的相片 Moodle HQ的相片 Particularly helpful Moodlers的相片 Plugin developers的相片 Testers的相片
Thanks for posting the bug reports.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Peer assessment allocation problems since upgrading to 1.4.3

由Steve Menear發表於

Martin,

Forgive me for not knowing how procedures work in the Moodle community. I am facing a difficult decision due to these workshop problems, and I need to know what to do.

I have just started an important trial of my courses, and I have 50 active students. I have held off moving to the peer assessment phase of the initial workshop, but I can do so no longer. To make a decision, I need some information:

1) How long does it normally take for problems like this to be fixed in a main-line release? Specifically, can I hold off for one or two more days, or is more time needed?

2) Is it possible to revert back to the previous version of Moodle without affecting user data? Most students have already uploaded files to the workshop, and I don't want to lose their work. Also, I have many discussions active in forums, and I can't afford to lose this data by reverting to an earlier software release.

Thanks for your input.

Steve

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In reply to Steve Menear

Re: Peer assessment allocation problems since upgrading to 1.4.3

由Martin Dougiamas發表於
Core developers的相片 Documentation writers的相片 Moodle HQ的相片 Particularly helpful Moodlers的相片 Plugin developers的相片 Testers的相片
Someone with Workshop knowledge and motivation needs to look at the source, find the problem and supply a patch.  Personally I can't work on solving this problem, but if someone supplies me with a good tested patch I can get it into the main code.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Peer assessment allocation problems since upgrading to 1.4.3

由Nic McPhee發表於
No problem.  I wish I had time to learn the code and contribute, but that's just not feasible until at least the summer.

Thanks again for a great tool!
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In reply to Nic McPhee

Re: Peer assessment allocation problems since upgrading to 1.4.3

由Steve Menear發表於

For my test, I used eight student accounts.

I am running two classes right now, and each has over 20 students. Based on your analysis of the situation, do you think it is safe for me to move to the peer assessment phase of a workshop, or should I wait until the problem is fixed? As a non-technical person reading your post, I get the impression that I may be safe because of the number of people in each class.

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In reply to Steve Menear

Re: Peer assessment allocation problems since upgrading to 1.4.3

由Nic McPhee發表於
My guess is that you can switch, look at the assignments (log in as a few of the students and see what they've been asked to assess), and then switch out if it looks bad.  (You may want to do this at some point when the students aren't likely to be looking, if such a time exists.)

If everyone has submitted, see if you can leave the overallocation set to 0 and still get assignments.  In theory that should give you a uniform allocation and life will be good.  If people aren't getting enough but seem to be getting a uniform number, try increasing the number of required peer assessments in the workshop setup page and see if that fixes it.

If not everyone has submitted, then you may want overallocation at 1 to ensure that everyone gets assigned things to assess.  Be careful, though, to check that everyone is being assigned at least the required number of assessments, though, since I'm suspicious of the allocation code at our site.

If people aren't getting a uniform number then you need to be very careful since that bug could unfairly affect student grades.  You could either back out and wait for a fix or proceed but weight the evaluation part of the workshop very low so students who aren't assigned enough assessments aren't penalized.  That's not optimal, especially if you wanted to reward those students who did all their assessments vs. those who didn't, but it's not really fair to penalize students because the code didn't assign them enough assessments.

I've never lost any data or submissions, but I've never read any of the workshop code and can make no promises.  I would certainly do a course backup before you step into these waters so you can do a restore if things look scary.

I should also say that Ray gave me a patch to a problem in September in a day or two of posting it (thanks Ray!).  The downside is that I don't think it completely resolved the problem.  I also don't have any idea if any of the people who are actively involved in development on this module are reading at the moment.  If they're away for a week or two (which is certainly reasonable) then waiting may not be a very good strategy.
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