Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Ryan James -
Number of replies: 15

After finding it laborious to enter questions into the quiz format, I ventured into the 'discovery' of Hot Potatoes. This is such an easy way to create quizzes and upload them that I thought all of my wishes have been answered. Now, as I am reading the posts, it seems that many are only using HP for exercises, but not real grade related quizzes.

I teach a large number of classes in a university in Budapest, Hungary. All of the classes and quizzes are in English. Moodle is administered by the university, but assistance is only available in Hungarian, which is useless to me. Each of my classes has from 5-11 quizzes a semester, so I need something I can upload quickly. Until now, I have been typing my quizzes in WORD and then copy/pasting them into the quiz module. This is so very time consuming and I cannot access it until the course is open for registration at the beginning of the semester. Other forms of formatting to upload to the quiz module seem to be beyond my abilities.

Ideas? Suggestions? Guidance? All appreciated. I would love to get all of my courses settled over summer break and then quickly upload them in September when the registration begins and I can access them.

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In reply to Ryan James

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Glenys Hanson -

Hi Ryan,

In fact, you can have the best of both worlds: ease and comfort of preparing your tests locally in Hot Potatoes and the advantages of using Quiz for testing. You can import most Hot Potatoes exercises easily into Quiz with just a few clicks.

If you present your Hot Potatoes exercises through the Hot Pot Module (Moodle 1.9 & 2) or through QuizPort the grades will be recorded in the Moodle gradebook. However, I find Quiz is better for a real test.

Here's a tutorial on How to make a multiple-choice exercise function like a traditional test

Cheers,
Glenys

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In reply to Glenys Hanson

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Ryan James -

Thanks for this info. I looked at our Moodle, but cannot find a version number anywhere. In the list of "Activities" that can be added, there is no module called Hot Pot or QuizPort. The options are Hot Potatoes Quiz or Quiz.

Are Hot Pot and QuizPort some external program that works with Moodle or something in a version we don't have?

Ryan

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In reply to Ryan James

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

> Hot Potatoes Quiz

In that case you are using Moodle 1.9. Please ask your Moodle administrator to enable the HotPot module.

If you are the Moodle administrator, you can enable the HotPot module on Moodle like this:

  1. login as Moodle adminsitrator
  2. on the site page, navigatate to Site administration -> Modules -> Activities -> Manage activities
  3. click the closed eye icon on the "Hot Potatoes quiz" row

QuizPort is another activity module for Moodle 1.9, but I suggest you start with the HotPot module and get comfortable with that before you think about moving on to the QuizPort module.

regards
Gordon

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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Ryan James -

Thank you! I sent an e-mail to the admin. Life here is slow. Requests have to first be translated into Hungarian and they they need to figure out how to do it, is it worth it, etc.

I have come to realize there are many components that are not turned on and have yet to be successful in getting them turned on.

Here is hoping.

Thanks again, Ryan

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In reply to Ryan James

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Ryan James -

Okay, I am getting frustrated. When I asked which version of Moodle we were using, they wrote back "we are using this version, you can see on the website of Moodle: http://moodle.org/" basically not telling me a thing.

They also said that Hot Pot is Hot Potatoes, but they will have to try to turn on QuizPort.

So here is where I am at. I watched the tutorial for turning the activity into a test in the Hot Potatoes Jquiz module. However, I did not want students to be able to have multiple guesses and did not want them to get any feedback on wrong answers. I went into the configurations and deleted the responses for all things I did not want to us. I set the questions to show one at a time. However, when I tested it, after answering a question with either the correct or incorrect answer, a small black box comes up, but it does not proceed to the next question.

When I click on the box, it closes the quiz and goes back to the editing page.

Ideas as to what I am doing wrong?

Ryan

Attachment Quiz.JPG
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In reply to Ryan James

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

> I did not want students to be able to have multiple guesses
> and did not want them to get any feedback on wrong answers

Sounds like you want to make a test. JQuiz is not the right tool for that job. I suggest you import the JQuiz exercise into the Moodle question bank and then create a Quiz module activity.

Hot Potatoes exercises are intended as self-exploratory learning activities where learners *do* get feedback on wrong answers, and they *can* have multiple tries to find the right answer to each question.

all the best
Gordon

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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Ryan James -

Strange, this is the response I receive prior about using Hot Potatoes as a quiz, so this is what I was referring to. Now you are saying it cannot be used as a quiz?

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Glenys Hanson - Monday, May 21, 2012, 05:47 PM

Hi Ryan,

In fact, you can have the best of both worlds: ease and comfort of preparing your tests locally in Hot Potatoes and the advantages of using Quiz for testing. You can import most Hot Potatoes exercises easily into Quiz with just a few clicks.

If you present your Hot Potatoes exercises through the Hot Pot Module (Moodle 1.9 & 2) or through QuizPort the grades will be recorded in the Moodle gradebook. However, I find Quiz is better for a real test.

Here's a tutorial on http://hotpot.uvic.ca/tutorials6.php : How to make a multiple-choice exercise function like a traditional test

Cheers,

Glenys
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In reply to Ryan James

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

> Now you are saying it cannot be used as a quiz?

Strange. Which part of my previous message made you think I was saying that?

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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Glenys Hanson -

Hi Ryan,

I think there's maybe a bit of a vocabulary problem.

In ordinary English "quiz" and "test" are often used interchangeably.

Here I'll use "test" to mean "assess a student's knowledge".

"Quiz" is a native Moodle module/activity which creates various interactive quizzes (QCMs, gap fill, etc.) and is primarily designed to make tests but can also be used for learning exercises.

"Hot Potatoes" is an non-native module/activity which also creates various interactive quizzes (QCMs, gap fill, etc.) but they're primarily designed to be learning exercises (students get helpful feedback and can explore until they find the right answer).

One of the exercise types in in Hot Potatoes is called JQuiz - it produces mainly MCQs.

Hot Potatoes exercises can be uploaded and integrated into Moodle in 4 different ways :

  1. As HTML pages: the scores are not recorded in the Moodle gradebook.
  2. Through the Hot Potatoes Module (exists for Moodle 1.9 - has to be turned on by the admin & Moodle 2 - has to be added as a plugin). The scores are recorded in the Moodle gradebook.
  3. Through the QuizPort Module (exists only for Moodle 1.9 - has to be added as a plugin). This has more sophisticated ways of presenting the exercises and guiding the student through sequences of exercises. The scores are recorded in the Moodle gradebook.
  4. They can be imported into the Quiz module where they appear to the student just like other questions created in Quiz itself.

Hope that helps,

Glenys

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In reply to Glenys Hanson

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Ryan James -

Hi Glenys,

It helps in understanding, but unfortunately, it does not help my problem. Until now I have been writing my "tests" in Word and copying and pasting them into the regular quiz module. I teach classes like Race and Ethnicity in the US, Introduction to Journalism, Critical Thinking, and so on. With 9-10 classes a semester, I need to have the grades in the Moodle Grade Book for my reference later. In the meanwhile, I am teaching and grading essays.

I was hoping to save time by being able to write my tests in an easy to see format and then upload them. It seems this is not going to happen. I looked at the Aiken, GIFT, and other formats for uploading, but they are just as time consuming as copy and paste or too confusing to be bothered with.

Thanks for the help. Back to the drawing board.

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In reply to Ryan James

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

> I was hoping to save time by being able to write my tests
> in an easy to see format and then upload them

Then I suggest you write your tests using Hot Potaoes JQuiz on your computer, and then "import" the JQuiz file into the question bank in your Moodle course, so that you can add the questions to a Moodle Quiz activity to use as your "test", with only one try per question, and no feedback during the "test".

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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Glenys Hanson -

Hi Ryan,
here's a PDF tutorial with lots of screenshots:

It goes through the process step-by-step.

Apart from actually creating the quiz, all the rest will only take you 5 minutes to click through after you've done it two or three times.

Cheers,
Glenys

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In reply to Glenys Hanson

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Ola Shoubaki -

Hi Glenys,

 

Any chance of posting the link/file again - the one above doesnt seem to be working.

 

thanks

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In reply to Ola Shoubaki

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Glenys Hanson -

Hi Ola,

Must have reorganised my Dropbox files since June. Here it is again:

Moodle 1.9 Create a Quiz from a Hot Potatoes JQuiz

Cheeers,

Glenys

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In reply to Glenys Hanson

Re: Using Hot Potatoes for Quizzes

by Ola Shoubaki -

Glenys,

 

Thats excellent, thank you. Very useful! Much appreciated,

 

Kind regards,

Ola

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