Quiz and question banks

@Carly,

Which version of Moodle are we talking about? And which type of (sub-)questions do you have in mind?

Joseph

The fact that Moodle checks that the student has answered all parts of the question before grading anything is probably a feature. It stops the student from accidentally submitting the question when they have forgotten to fill in one of the boxes.

For Cloze questions, short answer sub-questions

A.- in Interactive with multiple tries behaviour I'd prefer the following display scenario:

1. Student starts quiz. (input box currently has a white background)
2. they type in their answers, (on that white background)
3. they click 'Check'. At this point:
   1. the background color of the incorrect answers changes to Red.
   2. the background color of the correct answers changes to green
4. Here the student has to click on Try Again and
   1. the background color of the incorrect answers changes from red to white
   2. the background color of the correct answers remain green
5. Now the students know exactly which of their answers were incorrect and need to be changed
6. Student clicks Check again. Now the colours sort themselves out.

B. in Adaptive behaviour

1. This is more tricky, because we do not have a step 4 as above which would "re-initialize the incorrect answers' background to white.
2. One possible solution would be - using javascript, I expect - to automatically "re-set" the background color to white when student clicks inside an incorrect answer box with the aim to change his previous answer.

C. Some remarks about Cloze vs "other questions" in Moodle.

1. I understand Tim's reservations when the student re-type their proposed correct answer in a box with a red background.
2. However, I am of opinion that the advantage of clearly displaying the correctness/incorrectness of each individual short-answer sub-question answer in a Cloze question largely outweighs the drawback of not showing that information at all.
3. Tim talks of "a desire for consistency" (between the Cloze question and the "other" questions. I disagree, because a Cloze question is very different from the other, ordinary questions, it is like a whole quiz in itself, and may (should) have its own "rules". I do realize that from a purely programming point of view this is problematic. But we must consider here the end-user's (i.e. the student's) point of view. When a student has to fill in a Cloze question consisting of a text with 20 gaps, it does not help them much to get a "Partially correct" message and no visual clue as to which of their gaps were correctly filled in or not!
4. One may argue that students do have a way to find out which of their answers were correct and which ones were not. Hovering over the gaps will show a feedback tooltip, with the Mark for that answer and, if the question creator profided a feedback message, that message will be displayed as well in the tooltip. That is helpful, of course, but still does not have the visual impact that background coloring would provide. Also note that hovering does not work on the new mobile devices (phones and tablets).

In conclusion, I would say that there is no easy answer to these display problems, because the Close question is really different from the other questions. The best way to find out about what is really needed for the end-user (the student) would be to conduct a scientific observation of real students' behaviour when using this type of question in Moodle. Any takers?

Joseph

Hi,

I'm upgrading from 1.9 to 2.5 and use a lot of Cloze questions for language learners.

In 1.9, my students could "submit" the page to get some instant feedback about their answers (see picture attached), which was great. However, it appears that in 2.5 this is not possible.

I really loved this feature. Is it possible to bring it back?

The reason is that I get email notifications when the student clicks "submit all and finish" (on 1.9), so that I can check their quiz and manually adjust their grades as necessary. This meant that utilising "submit page" was great, because I did not receive notifications every time a student checked their own answers. My quiz is set up more like a  tutorial, which is the way I like it. It is not a summative test.

I don't wish to receive notification every time a student "finishes attempt" on 2.5, even if they are just checking their answers.

Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Tish

www.yes-ielts.com

Pierre is right, the problem is with Moodle 2.1 and later versions.

Joseph

Hi,

     sorry to be out of sync with 1.9.15 ;-(

A valid Syllogism used in a bad situation become a Sophim

Thanks for yours comments,

Bernard

@PIerre,

I quite agree with Erin that this behaviour of the Cloze question looks strange.

In a Cloze question with several sub-questions, if a student leaves one or more blanks un-answered, they get this message "The submission was invalid, and has been disregarded without penalty." This message does not make much sense to the student. But I do not immediately see what wording would be better.

Also, as pointed out by Erin, when a student leaves one sub-question unanswered, they can hover over all the answered blanks and see which ones they got correct and which ones they got incorrect. A winning strategy for the student would be to answer all sub-questions except one, check the answered sub-questions for correctness, modify their answers until they get 100% correct.

Why not simply make the Cloze question consider that any unanswered question is incorrect, i.e. consider any unfilled-in blank as filled in with "garbage" or any unselected choice in a MCQ sub-question as having an incorrect choice selected?

I do realize that the Cloze question is a totally different type of question from the other questions in Moodle. It is not a "real" question, but a "group of sub-questions". One cannot expect it to behave at the same time as an individual question and as a whole quiz in itself, which is what Erin is wanting to do. I can only reply to Erin what you said a while ago:

Pierre Pichet
Monday, 12 March 2012, 7:03 PM
Unless you have very specific reasons to use cloze question, it is best to use individual questions where you have a more complete control of the different steps and a more detailed output.

Joseph

Thank you for your responses. As another person on a forum mentioned, I am really trying to make this work in CLOZE because of the context that this kind of question allows for. I have made it in the past where each blank was its own question, but then the students ask me if they have to put all of the answers in the one blank, or are otherwise confused. I may have to resort back to this though, as students are beginning to tell other students about this issue.

Here is (an abbreviated version of) the question:

Two students are discussing what people in school are like. Complete their conversation with the correct forms of the verb ser.

JULIA: —Juan {1:SHORTANSWER:%100%es #~%0%*#Juan is the subject} muy artístico, ¿no?
PACO: —Sí, dibuja muy bien. Pero no {1:SHORTANSWER:%100%es #~%0%*#Juan is the subject} deportista.
JULIA: —Verdad. Pero Marta y Vanesa {1:SHORTANSWER:%100%son#~%0%*#Marta and Vanesa are the subject} muy deportistas. Y también {1:SHORTANSWER:%100%son#~%0%*#Marta and Vanesa are the subject} trabajadoras; estudian por muchas horas todos los días.

Could it be because of the * ? I saw a post somewhere about that, but I didn't really understand what it was saying.

Thank you for your help!

Erin