Lesson

You are correct in saying that feedback is enough of a communication to the student on whether or not they got the question right or not.

However, you are forgetting the biggest dumb oaf in the room -- Moodle itself, which is odd since it's right there in the sentence you quoted. And Moodle needs to know which options for answers are right and which are wrong. There's a crucial difference between those two pieces of information, but they're both related to the problem here.

There is behavior coded into Moodle -- color coding of the feedback, for instance -- that assumes that Moodle is somehow aware of what is and is not a correct response to a question. Somehow the instructor has to TELL Moodle what is and is not the correct response, or Moodle will not know.

Furthermore, let's say I have an instructor who does not have time to create custom feedback for QPs, or does not want to take the time or whatever. If Moodle KNOWS the correct answer, it will deliver generic "That's correct" / "That's incorrect" responses. If it does not know what the correct answer is, how can it behave appropriately? 

And I consider the rightness/wrongness of a question to be inherent to its structure, and certainly not something that should be cast off as secondary. What type of learning environment would it be with loads of polling questions that have no right or wrong responses? How would you check learning, or more importantly, how would you structure a system that can help YOU check learning? You would make questions, and you would tell the system which answers are correct answers and which answers are incorrect, something that the Lesson QPs do not easily allow me to do. 

And I take SERIOUS umbrage with your insinuation that "Custom scoring: NO" is an obvious solution to this issue. I recognize that you have correctly pointed out a setting that address the issue I am experiencing but it is not accurate that you have illuminated any aspect of Moodle's behavior that makes any sense at all; you have simply explained a lack of functionality by pointing to an illogical setting. 

Furthermore, your assertion that "The Custom scoring: No setting prevents you from changing the default score values for the Answers in your MCQ questions" is flawed. In fact, this option seems to obliterate the default score values that are already there AND act as an answer key for Moodle, regardless of whether I want to change them or not.

When you decide to create a multiple choice question, the default score values that appear in the score boxes are 1s and 0s. The Moodle coders, though they have not said as much explicitly, put the "1" in the "Answer 1" Score box, and the rest as zeros, and expect you to put the correct answer in "Answer 1".  But you are able to move it around if you want.

In other words, the 0/1 score schema IS THE DEFAULT. And, as I said, if that's how I'm telling Moodle which are the correct answers and which are the incorrect answers, that's fine. I will accept the DEFAULT here because that is how it seems to behave.

If I've accepted the DEFAULT scoring (as a way to tell Moodle which is the right answer and which is the wrong answer ONLY), then I still do NOT want "custom" scoring -- I want the default -- hence the "No" in that option.

But why should Moodle then erase the DEFAULTS if Custom Scoring is set to "No"? Why should it then make the score for all of the answers "0" and still behave as if the Answer that had "1" originally (because a "1" appeared there originally, and was there when I clicked "Add a Question Page") was the correct answer and all the others were wrong? -- you can tell that Moodle still knows because it still does the green/red color coding correctly and would still show the correct default feedback if you have not put any feedback in.

Okay.

I have figured out some details on Moodle's behavior that has lowered by blood pressure. Not knowing, as they say, is the worst part.

Situation #1: Custom Scoring is set to "NO" (ie, my current situation).

Moodle, in this instance, does not care what is in the score boxes beside Answers in multiple choice questions. Moodle will delete any default scores you put in there. I thought it was saving that information and then using it without showing it to you in order to determine behavior like green-color coding (right answers), and when to show two buttons (one that says "Yes, I'd like to try again" and one that says "Continue") (for wrong answers).

It turns out that this behavior, when custom scoring is set to "no," is governed by your Jumps. If you have a single answer with a jump to "Next Page," Moodle assumes that that is the correct answer, and all the answers that say "This Page" are incorrect answers.

If this is how you've organized things, it will correctly color code your feedback for correct answers.

However, when the user selects a wrong answer, it will now present them with two buttons, one that says "Yes, I'd like to try again" and one that says "Continue." However, in this scheme, BOTH buttons take you back to the Question Page to try the question again. Continuing on, in other words, is not an option. 

If you have Custom Scoring set to "No" and then make all of the jumps set to "Next Page" hoping that when the student gets the question wrong and sees the two buttons that the "Continue" button will instead take them to the "Next Page," Moodle will no longer recognize which answer is correct and which are wrong. It will suddenly color-code ALL feedback green, and only present you with a "Continue" button that will correctly take you to the next page, but will no longer provide the user with a friendly option to try the question again if they want.

You might say that the setting "Provide option to try a question again" is a way to deal with that. That way lies madness -- or, more specifically, that way lies "remember all that feedback you spent time writing? Well, the student will never, ever see it because of this setting."

Situation #2: Custom Scoring set to "YES"

Moodle will use the "Score" in the answers to determine what is the right answer and what is the wrong answer. 

In this instance, a score of "1" or greater results in green color coding of your feedback and a single "Continue" button. A score of "0" results in two buttons instead of one, and the "Continue" button will jump to whatever jump you've set that answer to.

As Joseph has correctly pointed out, this is the behavior I want.

I maintain, however, that this is not "custom" scoring, but "default" scoring, and that a process to communicate right and wrong answers to the Moodle system that was a little (or a lot) more straightforward would benefit everyone.