Hello
Since upgrading from 1.9 to 2.2.4 we have been getting regular reports of quiz answers being marked 'wrong' even though they are correct (see attachment). Since this is a quiz where punctuation and spacing do make the difference between a correct and incorrect answer, we check VERY carefully when students report quizes being marked incorrectly.
Anyone else experiencing this? Any suggestions? Since I am fairly new to Moodle any help is appreciated.
Susan
Hello susan,
Looking carefully at your screengrabs, I see something strange in the student's response : there seems to be a change in the baseline between the first character and the others characters in the response.
I wonder if there is a hidden HTML tag (or something like that) in the student response ? This would explain why the response is marked wrong. Can you look at the page sourcecode to see if my guess is correct or not ?
After that if I am correct, you will have to find why some students include strange things in their responses .
Hi Susan,
This is a really weird kind of answer. What type of question is it: short answer? numerical? Rather than a screenshot it would be useful if you posted the complete actual question text and expected answers.
Joseph
EDIT.- Hi Jean-Michel; not yet on the beach?
Yes Joseph is right, I was thinking it was shortanswers questions but it would be good to give us the question's type.
Also my idea to look at the page sourcecode will permit you to see more easily if the student response and the question right answer are really the same or not.
Sorry, I should have included this when I originally posted. The Quizzes are short answer:
| Notwithstanding section 1.1.4 of the code, employees shall not be exposed to airborne concentrations of chemical agents or noise in excess of the levels specified in Tables 2-1 and 2-2, or where not specified those listed in the 1994-1995 edition of the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists' book entitled "Threshold Limit Values and Biological Exposure Indices". Referenced material shall be made available to the OHSC. |
and what the student's response looks like in the background is:
| Attempts | 1, 2 |
|---|---|
| Started on | Thursday, 2 August 2012, 03:35 PM |
| Completed on | Thursday, 2 August 2012, 03:38 PM |
| Time taken | 3 mins 1 sec |
| Grade | 0.00 out of a maximum of 10.00 (0%) |
| Step | Time | Action | State | Marks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2/08/12, 15:35 | Started | Not yet answered | |
| 2 | 2/08/12, 15:38 | Saved: 2-4/2.1.1. | Answer saved | |
| 3 | 2/08/12, 15:38 | Attempt finished | Incorrect | 0 |
I have gone through the administration settings including the filters (tried turning HTML Tidy off) and haven't found anything that allows me to edit how the system generates automatic feedback in quizzes or changes the system behaviour.
I have gone through the course where the problem was first identified and the period shows up at the end of the system generated feedback for ALL short answer questions in ALL the course quizzes; I also created a short answer question in another course and the period shows up at the end of the feedback there as well so it looks like the problem is not restricted to an individual question, quiz or course.
We recently upgraded to 2.2 from 2.0 and we have lots of short answer qu, so this problem is very relevant to me. So I've looked at our imported questions. From what I can tell, the "feedback" is just the statement of the correct answer (it's not added feedback) and a period has been added for correct sentence structure, the period is not being evaluated.
I reproduced your question on our Moodle site and it worked without a problem consistent with the statement above. Note that even with an extra space after the text it also worked (a problem I had to deal with in another LMS)
Right, the dot at the end of the "The correct answer is" line is a full stop, and it is required by make this a gramatically correct sentence. I am not inclined to remove it.
One could argue about whether the correct answer should be enclosed in quotes (e.g. The correct answer is: "2-4/2.1.1".) but then what about if you were asking about C programming, and the question was someting like "What is the C styntax for a string constant containing the word 'frog'?"
Luckily you don't have to live with what I think. To change things, go to Site administration > Language > Language customisation. Edit the language pack you are using, open the qtype_shortanswer file, and alter the string correctansweris. See http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Language_customization for more details.
Tim "Luckily you don't have to live with what I think. To change things, go to Site administration > Language > Language customisation. Edit the language pack you are using, open the qtype_shortanswer file, and alter the string correctansweris."
Great, that solves the problem.
Joseph
(off topic) Joseph: do you speak American English (period vs full stop)? Or were you using period because you were responding to someone who does use American English? Just curious, sorry
Mary "Or were you using period because you were responding to someone who does use American English?"
Yes I was. Well-spotted, Mary. I normally speak (or rather write) British English.
Joseph
ah that's ok then
I confirm that Joseph not only writes but speaks excellent British English - though not with the same accent as you, Mary.
Why not go back to the 1.9 way of doing things? It doesn't need to be a sentence.
Correct Answer: 2-4/2.1.1
It was unambiguous for my students.
Thank you Tim
We were having the same issue and it was creating all sorts of confusion for students. Your solutions works like a charm.
Susan
Could you export one of these question as Moodle XML, and attach it here, so we can see exactly what the question settings are?
Also, have you tried previewing the question, and typing in exatly the response that is getting graded wrongly. Does it fail for you?
Hello Tim
Here is the Moodle XML code for the test question I created:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
-<quiz>
<!-- question: 0 -->
-<question type="category"> -<category> <text>$course$/Default for Transitions-PSYC12_2012_Susan</text> </category> </question>
<!-- question: 1638436 -->
-<question type="shortanswer"> -<name> <text>test question A</text> </name> -<questiontext format="html"> <text/> </questiontext> -<generalfeedback format="html"> <text/> </generalfeedback> <defaultgrade>1.0000000</defaultgrade> <penalty>0.1000000</penalty> <hidden>0</hidden> <usecase>0</usecase> -<answer format="moodle_auto_format" fraction="100"> <text>A</text> -<feedback format="html"> <text/> </feedback> </answer> </question> </quiz>
The attached has the Moodle XML coding for the entire quiz where the problem was first identified.
Hi Susan,
Now that you have - at last - answered our query to post your complete question text (and expected answer text), I concur with Ian Hunt that there is no real bug in the Shortanswer question type (but there is a hitch, see below).
What happens is a combination of a) the rather weird kind of answer you are requesting of your students (if I may say so) and (as mentioned by Ian) b) the fact that Moodle adds a period at the end of its feedback line.
It is not clearly stated in the information you provided, but I guess that you are asking your students to type the complete, exact reference of the regulation that you have put in the question text. Given that those references include a number of punctuation marks, you can only - in my opinion - expect punctuation errors to be made by the students. I fail to see the pedagogic value of the exercise, but of course I am missing your context.
Anyway, to make a long story short and conclude this puzzle, to your Question 3 the student most probably answered:
2.6/2.3.3. (with an extra period)
The correct expected answer was:
2.6/2.3.3 (without a period)
The feedback message was:
The correct answer is: 2.6/2.3.3. (i.e. 2.6/2.3.3 followed by a concluding period to finish the feedback sentence)
@Tim : This story shows that the way that the "Correct answer" feedback message is displayed should not include a conluding period. Suppose the answer to a short answer question was a full sentence, with an initial capital letter and a concluding period, e.g. "The cat is an animal."
The feedback message would - wrongly - print 2 periods at the end:
The correct answer is: The cat is an animal..
Joseph
I completely concur on the period at the end of the correct answer. This has caused problems in my class too but instead with units on numerical and caluclated questions. I put units on everything but it is not proper to 5 m. when you mean 5 meters. The correct way to do it is 5m without a period. I had to include this in my start of the year practice quiz so that students could see it and know to ignore it.
OK, so it seems like there is significant difference of opinion here. We could go back to the 1.9 way of doing it.
At the OU, we hardly ever use Moodle's automatic display of the correct answer. Instead, we turn off the 'Right answer' review option, and instead get the teachers to explain the right answer in the general feedback.
Hello Joseph
I tend to agree with you regarding the pedagogic value of the quiz but wasn't involved with the course design - and even if I had been the outcome would probably have been the same since this is part of a government certification course and they want to know that students can identify specific regulations.
From what Tim says, it sounds like the simplest solution for the moment might be to turn off the correct answer. I will contact the person administering the course to see if this is acceptable until something can be done about the extra period; since this is a practice quiz, I suspect that may not be an option. As Joshua indicates, the extra period can create confusion for students in a variety of instances so hopefully a solution can be found.
Just to note that someone made a bug report about this: MDL-35003.
Hello Tim
The solution you provided in http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=208360&parent=912243 discussion resolved the problem beautifully for us:
"...go to Site administration > Language > Language customization. Edit the language pack you are using, open the qtype_shortanswer file, and alter the string correct answer is. See http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Language_customization for more details."
Susan
OK, I am convinced. Fix for MDL-35003 submitted for integration, so it should be fixed for everyone from from next week (and from 2.3.2 / 2.2.5 onwards).
MineCodeAnswers.png
17-08-2012 22-48-28.jpg
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