Moodle in English: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Thursday, 16 June 2011, 4:58 PM

Following this thread, I have done a new version of the JME Molecolar Editor question type for Moodle 2.0x

This question type is a variation of the shortanswer question type with a java applet to let the student enter a molecular structure using the SMILES language.

I have already posted a first draft version in the above thread but this one has some improvments (read bugs corrections )

Additionnaly I have asked Peter Ertl (Novartis), who is the JME editor author, if he is still OK to include his copyrighted work in this question. He kindly renewed his authorization and send me the latest version of the editor that I included with all documentation and support files.

Unfortunately this made the zip file size jump to 160 Ko wich is too large to be posted in this forum. I don't know how to post it.

In the meantime interested Moodlers can just send me a message with their email so that I can send them this zip.

Please be aware that I understand nearly nothing about chemistry and molecules so please no questions about that. I am only a poor math teacher !!

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Tim Hunt - Thursday, 16 June 2011, 6:27 PM

Nice work jean-michel!

Now you can do the Moodle 2.1 version

Seriously, Moodle 2.1 beta should be released some time today, so now would be a perfectly reasonable time to start updating question types. Some brief notes on how to do it at http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Developing_a_Question_Type

The best way to distribute contrib plugins these days is using an account on github. For example http://github.com/timhunt. There are variour Moodle 2.1-compatible question types there. Of course, that requires at least basic knowledge of git. The github getting-started help is good. Once you have your code there, you automatically get downloadable zip files like https://github.com/timhunt/moodle-qtype_ddwtos/zipball/master

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Thursday, 16 June 2011, 8:17 PM

Hello Tim,

Thanks a lot for your kind words,

I know it will sound strange to you, but I never succced in using any other tool that a text editor to do my (very tiny) coding work.

Some years ago I managed to learn the very minimum about CVS to be able to do some commits to the Moodle CVS but it was a very frustrating and unpleasant experience. So I ended uninstalled my CVS client, and promised me I will never use it again !! Later, I tried to read some texts about GIT for beginners but it was like it was witten in chinese or Klingon, so I stopped.

Do you imagine, I was even unable to download a snapshot of Moodle 2.1 dev from git !! it only hanged my small laptop computer. There must be some strange curse about versioning systems and me !! Fortunately Joseph Réseau send me a zip file and I was able to install a Moodle 2.1 test server. Fortunately also I have no problem using the tracker, so if I find bugs, I will report them

For people like me it's very infortunate that the dev version is no more available on the download page.

I am now old and in a few years I will retire from teaching so I guess I am too old to change now.

I will certainly do a JME version for Moodle 2.1 but I don't think I will be able to commit it anywhere. Sorry.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Tim Hunt - Friday, 17 June 2011, 12:15 AM

The dev version not being on the downloads page was a mistake, which got fixed earlier today!

These days I can't imagine doing any development without version control. The ability to undo any change is a life-saver but it is up to you what tools you use.

If you email the question type to me, I can put it in git.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Friday, 17 June 2011, 2:19 AM

Before sending you the jme questiontype I would like to do a change I always wanted to do : remove a lot of code duplicated from shortanswer.

It will be a lot easier to maintain, and less code lines mean less occasions to introduce bugs .

I am rather slow to understand things. For instance, I only realized now, looking at the other questiontypes in 2.1, how to correctly use parent::get_per_answer_fields and array_splice to insert the needed "Insert from editor" button with very few lines ! Another block of duplicated lines removed.

As soon as this work is done, I will send it to you.

Thanks a lot for your links. Very interesting. It doesn't seems very complicated to port jme or dmr to 2.1. In fact if I understand correctly, the only real work is the renderer.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Tim Hunt - Friday, 17 June 2011, 4:21 AM

Sure. Send me a version whenever you like, and I will keep the version in git up-to-date. The whole point of a version control system is that it can store many versions

In 2.1 you should be able to inherit almost everything from shortanswer, so yes, most of the work will be in the renderer.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Friday, 17 June 2011, 7:25 AM

Yes, you are right,

I find QE2 is fantastic !

I now have a working jme question type for Moodle 2.1, and there is nearly nothing in the files. I removed nearly everything, nearly all is inherited from shortanswer.

I hope a lot of Moodlers will be able to create a lot of variations of existing question types (wich was certainly not an easy task with the 1.9 - 2.0 QE version).

For instance, I plan to do variations of oumultiresponses with different grading schemes (I use this french software and a scanner for some exams and it has quite a lot of interesting grading schemes for MCQ so it would be interesting to adapt these schemes for Moodle)

Again a big thank you for this work.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Tim Hunt - Friday, 17 June 2011, 2:15 PM

Thank you!

One of the original goals of the changes was to make it easier to create question types. Along the way I has started to worry that all the complexity that it was necessary to add had obscured that original goal. So your feedback, as one of the first few people to seriously look at the code, is the best feedback I could have got.

I look forwards to seeing many more question types.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Velson Horie - Friday, 17 June 2011, 3:21 PM

JME is a good molecular editor for higher level chemistry. But it assumes a considerable knowledge of chemistry and even tells the student how many bonds that an atom should have. For the beginner in chemistry, that is a process the student should have to work out and learn.

For low level chemistry, e.g. 13-16 year old, a (graphical) programme is needed that will enable the student to input the wrong number of bonds on atom, without the software doing automatic corrections.

I have asked and JME cannot be dumbed down. Moodle needs to be able to deal with graphical representations of knowledge (and ignorance).

Any alternatives?

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Joseph Rézeau - Friday, 17 June 2011, 4:32 PM

Velson:

Moodle needs to be able to deal with graphical representations of knowledge (and ignorance).

What would a graphical representation of ignorance look like, I wonder. A blank screen?

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Tim Hunt - Friday, 17 June 2011, 5:24 PM

Sorry no. The JME qtype is cool. Other cool qtypes will appear when someone has time to make them. I don't know of one like you describe yet.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Friday, 17 June 2011, 9:28 PM

As I said I know nothing about molecules (and nearly nothing about java applets programming) so I can only try to make a question type if you point me to a good tool to input molecular formulas.

I am in fact not the creator of the JME question type, I have only upgrated it to successives Moodle quiz versions since I think 1.7 (or 1.6 I don't remember exactly)

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Jeff Forssell - Monday, 20 June 2011, 5:05 AM

I like a Scott Bonhams java question type PAD, Physics Applets for Drawing. It has not been made into a Moodle plugin but questions have been successfully imported as Scorm and results could be recorded. They are pretty geeky to create but have a lot of possibilities including guiding feedback. The VectorPAD type should be able to create some direction bonds of different types. But it will take some inventiveness.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Monday, 20 June 2011, 9:52 PM

Tim,

While tidying the code of JME and Dragmath questiontype for 2.1, I wanted to move the inline javascript to an external file.

I was under the impression that all I had to do was to create a script.js file inside the questiontype folder and that was all.

But it doesn't seems to work. What am I doing wrong ? Do i neeed to change the version number of the plugin or anything else ?

And before you ask, yes I went to Administration Development and purged all caches, but maybe I miss something obvious, it's the first time that I work with a script.js file in a Moodle plugin.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Tim Hunt - Tuesday, 21 June 2011, 12:26 AM

To get the JS used on the page you need to use a method like $PAGE->requires->js_init_call somewhere, I think.

Hmm, except that looking at https://github.com/timhunt/moodle-qtype_ddwtos/blob/master/renderer.php it does not seem to be necessary. I'm confused. Who wrote this sytem anyway

I suggest you use a look like Firebug to try to work out what is actually happening now with your code.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Tuesday, 21 June 2011, 3:11 AM

Well it's in fact looking at ddwtos code and reading "If your plugin needs custom CSS of JavaScript, you can just add files called styles.css and/or script.js in the plugin folder, and they will be included automatically on any page of a quiz (or other place) where your question is attempted." in the question type plugin howto in the docs that I tried that

But I just added $PAGE->requires->js('/question/type/jme/script.js'); and my scripts began to work !!

And if I read the code correctly this is exactly what questiontypebase.php do

So why does it works for ddwtos and not for jme ??

Additionnaly without this call firebug says that my js functions are undefined.

Anyway my scripts are working.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Tim Hunt - Tuesday, 21 June 2011, 5:34 AM

When you send me the latest version of the code, remind me of this exchange, and I will try to work out what is going on (and then update the developer documenation, with luck.)

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Daniel Neis Araujo - Thursday, 28 July 2011, 4:33 AM

Hello,

here at my University we're migrating to 2.1 next semester and would like to know if there is already somewhere to download JME question type for Moodle 2.x ?

Thanks,

Daniel

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Monday, 1 August 2011, 6:02 PM

Hello,

New version of the JME question type for Moodle 2.1 is finished and working

But before releasing it I wanted to add some Unit testing.

This is not really usefull because a JME question is just a shortanswer question with an added java applet tool to construct answers and also the rules that all comparisons are case sensitive.

But I see 2 benefits to doing this :

- I begin to learn SimpleTest wich would be usefull when doing more complicated questions types in the future

- It will be easier to test in future upgrades that nothing is broken in JME's code.

But the problem is that I know nothing to molecules !!

So I would need an example of a rather prototypal JME question to include it in the tests with

a name
a question text (not too long if possible)
a general feedback
a right answer with a feedback
a wrong answer with a feedback
a partially right answer with a feedback and the corresponding fraction of grade (between 0 and 1) you think we should award for that answer

This is again not really necessary because my test are already running with a question that have nothing to do with molecules but I think it will be smarter to have a question on molecules for the JME question

I have an example extracted from the original doc of the first version in the modules &plugins database :

Please supply the structure of cyclohexane

But I don't think it can have a partially right answer so it is not interesting for me.

Can you help me ?

The version will be posted as soon as I have a good question for my tests (I hope this will motivate you to find a good question !)

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Stefan Raffeiner - Saturday, 20 August 2011, 7:50 PM

Hello,

i would like to use jme for moodle2.1. I will send you some questions from my moodle1.9 installation in a private message. But I don't know if they contain all information you need.

Thank you for your work!

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Ian Hunt - Tuesday, 30 August 2011, 2:54 AM

I'm new to Moodle, but have lots of experience with JME as I am an organic chem instructor and we used JME in another LMS.

cyclohexane is C1CCCCC1

A partial right could be just hexane.... CCCCCC

Note that this should be case sensitive too in order to distinguish it from benzene, c1ccccc1. Are the JME qu really case sensitive ? If so, they are not working for me (yet?)

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Tuesday, 30 August 2011, 4:23 AM

Oops,

I have forgotten about the need to publish this question type !!

I will do it.

By default the answer is case sensitive , currently there is no interface to permit the teacher to change that, but it would be very easy to add a dropdown menu in the question creation screen to choose between case sensitive/ insensitive as all the code is already here (this is because this question reuse a lot of code from shortanswer question where this setting is already present. The only thing I have changed is that in shortanswer the deafult is case insensitive and in JME the default is case sensitive.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Ian Hunt - Tuesday, 30 August 2011, 5:32 AM

Hmm... my JME questions are not acting as case sensitive... for example it seems to be treating benzenes (i.e. c1ccccc1) and cyclohexanes (i.e. C1CCCCC1) as equal answers. Is there a setting I need to change or is this a "surprise" ?

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Tuesday, 30 August 2011, 2:04 PM

Hello Ian,

On what version of Moodle (and JME) do you have this problem ?

It sounds as a bug, and should be easy to correct (only 1 line change !)

All versions of JME should be case sensitive by default. The only "new" feature of the 2.1 version if that you have the choice to change that if you ever want to.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Ian Hunt - Wednesday, 31 August 2011, 4:04 AM

Moodle 2.0.3 and JME v2004.10

I believe we downloaded the newest version of the question type since it was done within the last 10 days

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Wednesday, 31 August 2011, 11:11 PM

Hello Ian,

Thanks you.

After verification, there are at least 3 problems in the version I posted for Moodle 2.0

- I made a mistake and the comparison is done case insensitive !!

- the applet and button is activated even in review

- I forgot to include the latest version of the JME applet

I will make a corrected version for Moodle 2.0 at the same time I release the version for Moodle 2.1

in the meantime users having a problem with case insensitivity can just change the line

return $this->compare_string_with_wildcard($state->responses[''],
$answer->answer, true);

return $this->compare_string_with_wildcard($state->responses[''],
$answer->answer, false);

in the question/type/jme/questiontype.php file

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JME Molecular editor question type bug for Moodle 2.0?

by Ian Hunt - Friday, 2 September 2011, 5:41 AM

I think I found a bug with the JME editor since I am getting different SMILES strings from the applet in the qu editor and the preview mode. I was working on alkene stereochemistry questions, and noticed that the editor applet does not encode alkene stereochemistry while the preview mode does... (simple example being cis or trans2-butene, picture of more complex example attached (preview left, editor right).

In our JME install I had added the keyword to turn on the stereochem feature (autoez) and so I was surprised that this was not happening in the editor mode.

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Re: JME Molecular editor question type bug for Moodle 2.0?

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Monday, 5 September 2011, 7:27 PM

Hello Ian,

I am not sure I understand all the problem because as I said, I teach math, not molecules !

But as I unerstand it the problem is you are observing a difference between preview and quiz view. True ?

Have you edited the options of the jme applet ? If yes you should be aware that you need to do it in 2 places in the jmelib.php file one in jme_write_javamolecular_editor and one in jme_string_javamolecular_editor.

So for instance the autoez need to be added in 2 places not one.

Am I right in thinking this can be the cause of your problem ?

The current management of options is not very good. I want to find a solution to this problem before releasing version for Moodle 2.1.

I don't know if question types can have settings. No current type that I know have a setting.php file. I will try to make one and see if it works.

If it don't work, I need to find another way so that people only need to change options in one unique place.

If your problem is different, please can you provide all details so I can try to reproduce and fix

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Re: JME Molecular editor question type bug for Moodle 2.0?

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Monday, 5 September 2011, 7:59 PM

In fact in Moodle 2.1 it is possible to add settings to a question type (opaque questio type has complicated settings for the STACK servers so something so simple as a string is not a problem).

So I will ad a settings page and it will be enought to type options here so they will be used for the applet both in question preview and in quiz display.

I will look if it is possible to backport this to the version for Moodle 2.0 too.

Default value of the options string will be empty unless all JME users tell me I should put something in options by default.

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Re: JME Molecular editor question type bug for Moodle 2.0?

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Monday, 5 September 2011, 8:12 PM

Here is how the settings of the JME applet options will look in Moodle 2.1 :

jme settings

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Re: JME Molecular editor question type bug for Moodle 2.0?

by Ian Hunt - Monday, 5 September 2011, 11:13 PM

This looks like a good way to establish the settings.

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Re: JME Molecular editor question type bug for Moodle 2.0?

by Ian Hunt - Monday, 5 September 2011, 11:08 PM

I wasn't aware that there were two instances for the settings. Yes that would explain the difference (since the drawings were being processed by two different versions of the applet). We are new to Moodle in the last few weeks and I am still very much discovering it. Thanks for the help.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Ian Hunt - Tuesday, 13 September 2011, 10:23 PM

I've been trying to find the latest version of the JME question type for Moodle 2.0.... is it posted ? Or can I get by email ? (irhunt@ucalgary.ca)

Thanks

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Stefan Raffeiner - Sunday, 25 September 2011, 1:16 AM

almost similar question: I'm looking for the version for moodle2.1

can I download it somewhere?

thanks

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question type for Moodle 2.0

by Thomas Korner - Wednesday, 14 December 2011, 10:46 PM

once again the same question. I can't find the question type for 2.x. It is neither in the old database (linked version is rather old) nor in the new one.

Thanks in advance

Thomas

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Ian Hunt - Friday, 1 June 2012, 8:40 AM

After a year of using Moodle, I'd like to suggest a couple of upgrades to the JME qu type. I'm not a skilful enough programmer myself:

1. The "insert from editor" button would be better placed below the drawing window. At present, it can sometimes disappear off the RHS of the screen

2. Can the "insert from editor" button be removed by automatically making the drawn answer be the "active" answer when submit or next is pushed? This would mean no need for the text box itself.

3. Can the last drawn answer be reloaded if the user goes back to the qu ? (note this structure loading is a feature of the regular applet = "depict" function)

4. Related to 3, can the submit answer be revisualised when reviewing answers ?

For the future, if 3 and 4 can be achieved, then I think it should be possible to use a similar process to draw molecules as part of the question itself.

Thanks!

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Friday, 1 June 2012, 3:23 PM

Hello Iam,

About your suggestions :

1 should be easy to do
about 2 and 3, I was thinking of that and this is exactly wat Jamie Pratt has done in his "patterm match with JME editor" question type (see it here). But the only problem is that you need to do that using javascript and my javascript programming skills are not very good . But I will try to have a look at Jamie's scripts and figure how he has done it.
For the next 3 weeks all my time is devoted to end of academic year exams but after that I plan to devote a lot more time to Moodle coding .

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Saturday, 2 June 2012, 1:20 AM

Hello Iam,

I have done a first version trying to implement ideas 2, 3 in jme question type using work done by Jamie Pratt in pmatchjme.

Can you test it (please don't use on a production server !) and suggest changes and improvements ?

Some comments :

- don't forget to add JME.jar in question/type/jeme/jme/ subfolder (it is not included so that the zipfile will not exceed allowed max size)

- I only tested this in Moodle 2.3 but I see no reason it should not work in Moodle 2.2 (but not sure for earlier versions of Moodle 2.2 !)

- there is a problem if a student or a teacher review an attempt made with an earlier version of jme because the data necessary to "reload" the answer in the editor is not present in the database. This is because it is not possible to imput the answer as a SMILES string in the editor, we must use the jme form and this one was not saved in previous jme versions. Unfortunately there is no easy way to solve this as I can't found any code to do the SMILES -> jme conversion. But even in those cases the situation is not worse than it was before this work.

jme.zip

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Ian Hunt - Sunday, 3 June 2012, 6:32 AM

Wow, that was fast...

The person who maintains our Moodle server is away for a few days so I will not be able to test it right away. We are also still running Moodle 2.0....so it may take a day or so for us to get to the right configuration.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Ian Hunt - Wednesday, 1 August 2012, 5:11 AM

Well, we now have a Moodle 2.2 test site up and running now and based on some quick beta testing, the new functionality I had asked about seems to be working. Great work Jean-Michel!

To summarise, this means the Insert from editor button is gone and the last drawn structure or the submitted answer automatically appears in the applet.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Ian Hunt - Thursday, 2 August 2012, 12:36 AM

I got a chance to do some further testing today of this new version of the JME questions (on a Moodle 2.2 set up). The problems I have encountered are not directly related to the recent updates, but go back to qu option settings, something I'd had a problem with in a previous post. I can't make the qu settings such as "autoez" take effect. I can set them via the site admin route, but they are not being implemented when the questions are used. I tried to look for the jmelib.php file to make the edits there but the file names seem different in this version.

So it appears/seems that any JME questions created with older editor have to be recreated as new questions to make the JME question options function. is this expected ?

Further, that being the case, I can deal with it, but I have never been able to get the "noxbutton" option to function.

Thanks!

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Ian Hunt - Friday, 3 August 2012, 5:34 AM

More testing today on the new JME version and here is what I believe I am seeing....

1. I can set JME options via the Site admin menus, but those actions (esp. autoez and polarnitro) only impact the editor side of the system. They don't impact in the preview mode or as far as I can tell in the quiz mode. This means questions that use these features (e.g. alkenes) don't work since the submitted answer (e.g. CC=CC) can never match the system answer (e.g. C/C=C/C)

2. The JME options set via site admin menus are applied to any 100% new questions created after those options are set. That is, those options are not applied universally retroactively to any questions that were created prior to that change.

3. The "noxbutton" option remains a mystery... However, based on some other non-Moodle sites where I use the JME applet, it might be that it just does not work period and it is not a Moodle specific issue.

Have other Moodle JME users reported or noticed similar problems?

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Saturday, 4 August 2012, 12:07 AM

Hello Ian,

Thank a lot for testing this new version. As I said, I don't actually use it, so I am only relying on user's feedback to improve it and correct bugs. So far you are one of the rarest given feedback and reporting your problems. Again a big thank you for that !

For your first problem, it was my fault : I had not realized that when I "adopted" Jamie Pratt's code to suppress the submit button so that the molecule constructed by students in the applet was automatically submitted, I forgot to forward the options to the applet so they weren't applied. I think I have this corrected now, so, please can you test the new version attached to this message ?

For the second problem, I see no easy solution. What would be needed would be to "recode" the students responses but I don't know how to do it as the autoez is somewhat of a mystery for a poor math teacher like me.

For the noxbutton, it must be a problem with the jme applet itself. Maybe you can try to send a mail to Peter Ertl about it ?

jme_moodle2_3.zip

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Ian Hunt - Saturday, 4 August 2012, 2:40 AM

I'm happy to provide the feedback, the JME qu type is critical to what we do!
I've forwarded the new version to my server manager and will test it and let you know. Note that based on what I think I found out yesterday, believe that if problem 1 is fixed then problem 2 will also be resolved.

As for 3, the "noxbutton", I'm convinced it's a JME issue, not Moodle, and I emailed Peter Ertl yesterday. He's away until Aug 6th. I will update you on what I find out.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Ian Hunt - Wednesday, 8 August 2012, 2:30 AM

We got the new version installed today but it doesn't function any differently from what I can tell. Thus it seems as if the options work in the question creator editor, but they don't work in the preview mode or in a quiz.

Do you have the qu installed in a Moodle site that I could log into as a guest to test it on your site just in case it's a problem with our site ?

If it would help you, could I send you a sample question or two ?

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Wednesday, 8 August 2012, 2:42 AM

Hello Ian,

Just an idea : have you cleared the caches ? I have made changes in the javascript and all javascript is cached in Moodle so if your administrator has not cleared the caches it's quite normal nothing has changed.

Sorry I forgot to warn you about that.

If caches have been cleared and the problem is not solved I will investigate but it would help a lot if you send me some questions samples (don't forget to include what options should be set and the molecule to build because I repeat I know nothing about molecules !!)

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Ian Hunt - Wednesday, 8 August 2012, 3:02 AM

I have admin rights and was able to clear the caches.... GOOD NEWS! The problems all appear to be solved. Testing now showed the the autoez, ploarnitro and noxbutton options seem now to be functioning in preview and quiz modes. In addition, old questions are working just fine too!

Thanks for the help!

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Ian Hunt - Wednesday, 8 August 2012, 11:26 PM

"For the noxbutton, it must be a problem with the jme applet itself. Maybe you can try to send a mail to Peter Ertl about it ?"

Here is part of the reply I got from Peter: "Currently it is not possible to hide the X button. I removed this option some time ago, because it interfered with the R button display, and forgot to update the documentation, mea culpa. I will fix the docu in the next release."

So this confirms what I thought I'd found.... Our solution will be to use an older version of the JME applet since if students use the "X" button it makes it more difficult to text match the answers.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Ian Hunt - Friday, 1 March 2013, 9:49 AM

Here's another idea to improve the JME qu type that I think should be reasonably easy to implement - it's based on talking to some students today....

It would enhance the JME qu type if the correct answer could also be visualised as a structure. At present, the correct answer is only relayed to the students as a SMILES string.

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Re: New version of the JME Molecular editor question

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Friday, 1 March 2013, 1:50 PM

Hello Iam,

Yes that would be useful I think.

The problem is that it is not so easy. JME is build on shortanswer and answers are stored in the same answers table. In this table there is no field to store the structure and as I understand it it is not possible to construct the structure from the SMILES representation.

So what would be needed would be to use another linked table with an additional field (extra_answer_fields). Quite some work and many places to modify.

Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen before summer as I am already struggling to finish my work on the formulas question type.

But I suggest you create an issue in CONTRIB tracker so that I don't forget this.

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