Interactive behaviour should be publicised more

Interactive behaviour should be publicised more

by Jean-Michel Védrine -
Number of replies: 12

Thanks Tim,

I will create a tracker issue, but it's only a minor problem.

Yesterday I implemented "hints with parts" in formulas questions.

I must say that until yesterday I hadn't really understood how the interactive behaviour worked, and in fact it's your explanations in answers to Oleg questions in the "Adapting preg question to the new question engine" that helped me.

If you are collecting unsefull bits of your answers to our questions in the forums to improve documentations, you should really add what you wrote :

In interactive mode the number of tries allowed is the number of hints in the question definition + 1. So, a question with 2 hints gives the students 3 tries.

Because, before reading that, I hadn't understood ! I am sure it's written somewhere but I must have missed it.

So now formulas questions are working in interactive mode also :

 As you see it's not perfect : the marks should no appear under each subquestion as the question is in not complete state, but I know I still have work on my question rendered.

I was forced to overwrite the default num_parts_correct renderer method as the default string with teh word selected is not adapted to formulas (it's more suited for matching or multichoice questions)

But I am quite satisfied with the results : the hints text are displayed and the "clear incorrect responses" and "show the number of correct responses" feature are working and I find them very cool with formulas questions.

May I point that IMHO the interactive behaviour is not described and "promoted" as it should, because I think it's a very interesting behaviour and a lot of teachers would be interested if they knew it more. As it is new, it should get some "advertising" both for users so they know it exists, and for developers of questions types so they look at supporting it well.

I think interactive is even more interesting in the case of questions with parts.

For training, I begin to think it may be a lot better than adaptive mode. But I must admit that when I read the description in the docs for the first time, I din't saw at all the interest and potential, so maybe others are like me ?

Thanks you (an the OU) for giving us features like this one.

As I read somewhere you are going on holidays in september I wish you happy (and relaxing) holidays. We will try not to create too much tracker issues while you are away big grin.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Jean-Michel Védrine

Re: Formulas question type fro Moodle 2.0

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hello Jean-Michel,

Like you did, I found out about the link between the number of Hints and the number of tries allocated to the student - in interactive behaviour mode - by trial and error.

I expect the interactive behaviour will be most useful for SHORTANSWER question types (but not only, of course). However, I see one shortcoming of the interactive / Hints system, as it is currently implemented. The successive hints are totally disconnected from the contents of the student's actual answer, which makes it difficult for the teacher to provide relevant Hints. I would like to see real examples of such questions and Hints - maybe taken from the OU's questions bank - if that is at all feasible.

I suggest that better, relevant, hints and feedback messages can only be based on an analysis of key-words etc. in the student's actual answer, as provided by the 3 question types which provide this type of analysis, namely:

@Tim, this would probably deserve to be moved to a new discussion thread.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Formulas question type fro 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

As well as the generic hint, intereactive mode also shows the bits of feedback that are specific to the student's answer. For example with the shortanswer question, suppose you have answer patterns:

Answer - fraction - feedback|
Moodle quiz - 100% - That is correct.
Moodle* - 50% - You are right that the answer is part of Moodle, but you need to identify the right part.
* - 0% -  That is not right at all.

And hints

1. Try again.
2. Try looking on Moodle Docs for the answer and then try again.

Then suppose that the student enters these responses, the feedback shown is in italics:

1. Blackboard

That is not right at all.
Try again.

2. Moodle forum

You are right that the answer is part of Moodle, but you need to identify the right part.
Try looking on Moodle Docs for the answer and then try again.

3. Moodle quiz.

That is correct.
... followed by the general feedback ...

It would be great to spend more time explaining to people what the quiz is capable, but I doubt I will get around to it myself, so if anyone else wants to try, please my my guest.

My colleage Phil did make http://labspace.open.ac.uk/mod/quiz/view.php?id=437794, which was one attempt to show by example what is possible.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Formulas question type fro Moodle 2.0

by Jean-Michel Védrine -

Now that Tim has created this thread for interactive behaviour, I will try to explain how I intend to use it (remember I teach maths).

I will make hints using progressive disclosure of the solution : this first hint will only reveal the first step of the calculation, the second will reveal some more and so on.

It's very easy to enter such hints : I start by writting the full working solution as I would for the old feedback field, then using copy and paste, I paste parts of it in the various hints. I then ajust the content of some hints providing more explanations, ...

Of course this process can't be adapted to all subjects but for subject involving a calculation or a reasoning like maths or sciences it seems a great improvement over the old feedback because with feedback students can only get the full solution as a whole. Now we can give them some elements so that they can try again. I think this will be a lot usefull to some of my students that can't even start doing anything to answer questions.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Jean-Michel Védrine

Re: Formulas question type fro Moodle 2.0

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hi Tim and Jean-Michel,

Many thanks for your responses to my post re the potential shortcomings of the "Interactive behaviour" question behaviour in the context of a SHORTANSWER question. I can quite see the point of "progressive disclosure" of a maths problem solution as described by Jean-Michel.

And of course I agree with Tim that the "specific feedback" messages such as attached to each partially correct OR totally incorrect answers will be displayed to the student upon entering the said answers, and will work in conjuction with the "Hints" messages.

In the "Interactive behaviour" question behaviour mode, the wealth of possible messages to the student (specific feedback, general feedback and Hints) is obviously a progress over the pre-moodle 2.1 question engine features. But it means that the teacher (question creator) will have to carefully write all those messages so that they are a real help to the student towards achieving the correct answer(s) to the question.

In my previous post I wanted to stress the limits of hints or feedback not based on a detailed analysis of the student's answer, and to remind moodlers who might be interested in that kind of analysis of the current 3 question types available (as 3rd party plugins) that make such analysis possible.wink

Joseph

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Jean-Michel Védrine

Re: Interactive behaviour should be publicised more

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

I split this into a separate thread as suggested.

The fact that you learned from my exchanges with Oleg is why I like answering questions in forums, and hate it when people ask me questions by private message.

I am only having a short holiday, a week in Suffolk starting on Friday. I am really looking forwards to getting away for a bit and relaxing. I'm even thinking about leaving my laptop at home surprise.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Interactive behaviour should be publicised more

by Pierre Pichet -

"I'm even thinking about leaving my laptop at home"

This is a mandatory condition to a real relaxing holiday that is most than necessary after the last very intensive months...

Pierre

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Jean-Michel Védrine

Re: Interactive behaviour should be publicised more

by Matt Fedorko -

Jean-Michel and all,

I was humming along, converting a quiz to interactive with multiple tries in 2.2.3 (Build: 20120514). All of these questions were already made without hints. I originally added two hints. The number of tries became 3, as we've all realized. I then decided to remove a hint. 

Before I go on, I should point out that I have been adjusting the "Settings for multiple tries" to be 100% / the number of tries. So for 3 tries, the "Penalty for each incorrect try" would be 33%. 

So I got rid of one of my two hints, and changed "Penalty for each incorrect try" to 50%. 

Unfortunately, my question still has 3 tries. I tried removing both hints, so it should be only 1 try -- still 3 tries. I tried changing the "Penalty for each incorrect try" to 100%, with no hints -- still 3 tries.

I'm at a loss. I'm about to just recreate the question from scratch and put in the single hint. I've checked to make sure the hint windows have nothing in them (HTML window is blank), but I have no other way of telling Moodle I want only 2 attempts other than filling out those hint boxes, do I?

This is a numerical question, by the way. 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Matt Fedorko

Re: Interactive behaviour should be publicised more

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

I just tested, and it works fine for me. I made a question with hints. Then edited it and removed the hints, and they really were deleted from the database.

I suspect the problem is to do with what is blank? The HTML editor may look blank to you, but it may be submitting something like an empty <div> which makes Moodle think there is something there. The relevant test is done by html_is_blank in lib/moodlelib.php. I have to say that the way it is implemented seems pretty robust, so I don't think there is a problem.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Interactive behaviour should be publicised more

by Matt Fedorko -

Thanks for the response, Tim. I should've mentioned in the first post that I had successfully removed hints from questions in that very same quiz prior to running across that problem.

However, I tried quite hard to fix that question and could not. I checked in the html editor's html view many times -- no errant tags of any kind. I ended up creating the question anew and have not had problems since then. I only posted out of fear that I was about to have to do that with 25 questions.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Matt Fedorko

Re: Interactive behaviour should be publicised more

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

I wonder if it depends on which web browser, or which version of Moodle (and hence which version of TinyMCE) you are using?

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Interactive behaviour should be publicised more

by Matt Fedorko -

This was all under Chrome. The version of Moodle is in my first post. 

I wish, now, that I had not deleted the troublesome question, and could go back to that particular question. On Friday I will try to take 5 minutes to attempt to replicate the problem.

Thank you for your time, Tim.

Average of ratings: -