How do I export questions from one lesson in a course to another in the same course?
Hi Sue
In the absence of a reply from any of the real experts here, I think I can safely say that unfortuntaely you can't. The questions in a Lesson cant be imported from any Question Bank questions you might have created (wish they could!!), they have to be created afresh for each Lesson. The only possible workaround is to "duplicate" the existing Lesson and use the duplicate as the basis for the new lesson in which you want the questions. But that will only work if youre drawing the questions from a single Lesson, since you cannot merge Lessons either.
To "duplicate" say, Lesson X in Course Y, you need to have another (real or dummy course), Z, into which you import Lesson X, and then re-import the Lesson back to Course Y.
The other (not really an) alternative is to use the Quiz module to deliver the questions, in which case you have the freedom to use the Question Bank. But of course that means students are chopping and changing from Lesson to Quiz.
(Off topic: Clumsy, ay? It always stuns me that what seems to be the most used Module in the world's leading Course MS is so woefully inadequate!)
Good luck!
Geoff
Geoff is right, there is no possibility to export question pages from the Lesson activity. It is however possible to import questions from the Quiz questions bank into a Lesson.
I expect the lack of that export/import feature can be explained by the very nature of Moodle's Lesson activity, which is fundamentally different from the Quiz activity.
In a Moodle Lesson, the flow of Question pages is controlled by the student's answers or choices. This means that in "normal" use (if there is such a thing as "normal" in this context), each question derives part of its meaning from its immediate context: the question(s) preceding and the question(s) following it. When you keep this in mind, it would ("usually") not make much sense to draw questions from a bank, in order to import them into a Lesson activity.
It would be interesting to hear from the original poster why precisely she needs to "move" questions from one Lesson to another. And to specify how she would "link" those questions one with the other in the new Lesson.
Joseph
I'm unsure I'm understanding you, Joseph. When a student answers a question, his/her answer con only be 1) Correct, 2) Partially correct and 3) Wrong. With this in mind, lesson flow logic can make appropiate decisions to take student to one page or another, and those decisions are independent of question contents.
I mean question logic can be (ant ought to be) separated from lesson flow logic. In this way teachers should be able to move questions around, and have a question bank, to reuse questions between various activities, not just quizzes.
In fact I vaguely remember reading some time ago that for Moodle 2.0 rewritting question code completely was planned to separate its code from quizzes, rendering code more "orthogonal", to allow question usage in various parts of Moodle, a feature I think is still not possible. Am I wrong?
@Orestes and Geoff (and OP)
Of course in my previous post I was being a bit "dogmatic" about the "normal" use of the Lesson activity.
However, I tend to disagree with Orestes that "question logic can be (ant ought to be) separated from lesson flow logic". In my pedagogy, a Lesson (and a Quiz) need to be constructed with relevant questions which follow one upon another, and certainly not questions chosen "at random". That's why I have no use for the "random questions" feature of the Quiz activity, for example.
Of course I'll have to admit that there are other views in this matter.
@Orestes: The feature you are alluding to has cropped up from time to time over the years in these forums but nothing has come out of it. For quite a few years, unfortunately, the Lesson module no longer has an active maintainer, unlike the Quiz module, where Tim Hunt is very active. The Lesson module is almost an "orphan" in the Moodle development strategy - at the moment.
Joseph
Joseph, that's one interesting issue because very often I use the same lesson in another course with different students.
So, we have to adapt the lesson to the new "class". lesson's should have a menu similar to the quiz, because we can mix the parts in another adapted way.
Weel, I do it in two ways (not completely satisfactory). I use MOODLE 1.9. Perhaps someone could share another ways to do it.
1. In one lesson, I create one deadzone with the group/endgroup option, where I keep all the parts that I don't want to use in that particular lesson. Whenever you make the backup, you can remix the parts.
2. If we use shorten lesson's, we can mix it by showing or hiding in the lesson, but this need a well defined context/documented for the lesson's; if not you just don't know why and for what type of students you use it.
I hope this is helpfull.
Joseph,
The reason for using a question from one Lesson/topic in a second Lesson/topic has to do with the way the professor teaches the course. In the first lesson, he wants to cover general information, and then in the second drill down into the concept deeper.
This could also be helpful in a review activity to begin a topic. We don't use the decision tree type format to decide which question comes next based on an answer. He just uses the lesson format to walk users through a lesson. Are we using the wrong module?
Thank you all for your help. I really appreciate being able to turn to the community for support. Wish I could do more to pay back.
Sue
Thank you for your feedback. I posted on behalf of one of our professors, so I do not have an answer except to say that scaffolding would be a good reason to bring questions from one lesson to the next. I will ask him.
Dear Joseph
Funny, I'd never noticed that "Import questions" option in Lesson. I was basing my answer to Sue on the inability (at least in 1.9) of importing questions from the Bank when one sets up a Question Page within Lesson.
also: In 1.9's "Import Questions" I still dont see any obvious option to access the Question Bank. I only see twelve options for importing questions according to various formats ("GIFT Format" etc). Was access to the Bank a feature introduced in 2.0?
BTW: another simple scenario where one might want to shift questions from Lesson to Lesson is where one is (essentially) just splitting or merging Lessons. This is something Im always doing in new iterations of my course.
Another BTW: Im very impressed by the prodigious and highly informed advice you give give in this forum. It's a great service for the rest of us!
cheers
geoff
Hi Geoff,
You are right, in the Lesson activity there is no option to directly import questions from the questions bank. The indirect procedure is as follows:
- In the Questions bank, group into one category all the questions you want to use in one Lesson activity.
- Export that category of questions (Moodle XML format) and save that XML file.
- Go the the Lesson where you need those questions.
- (Moodle 1.9) On the Edit lesson page, select Expanded view.
- Click on the Import questions link at the place where you want to insert questions.
- On your computer, select the XML file you previously exported from the questions bank.
- That's it!
PS. Thanks for the kind words of appreciation, Geoff!
Dear Joseph
Many thanks for the very clear explanation of how to do the importing.
cheers
geoff