I use the quiz module extensively for homework. I like to give students an unlimited number attempts on each quiz. Right now, the quiz module lets you add an open date and a close date for the quiz. Does anyone know if a third date is possible? I would like to have a third date where I could specify a due date for the quiz. That way, if a quiz is submitted after the due date, but prior to the close date it would be marked as late. I believe someone posted this same thing as issue MDL-4309, but I am not sure if the patch will work with Moodle 2.x. I am currently using 2.1 and I think we will be upgrading to 2.3 soon. Can anyone tell me a way to track late quizzes withouth constantly checking time stamps to see when they were completed? Will the patch that is listed in MDL-4309 work with versions 2.x? Is there a similar patch for versions 2.x? Thanks!
There have been some changes to to the Timing options for quizzes in Moodle 2.3 - I wonder if any of that will be useful to you? See Timing here http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Quiz_settings
I read through the documentation, and it doesn't appear that anything in 2.3 will do what I am looking for. Once our tech department upgrades us to 2.3, I'll definately check it out.
How would you expect Moodle to "marked as late" the quiz? What effect would that have?
The simplest thing, which you can do right now, is:
- Put the due date in the Quiz introduction text.
- After the quiz is finished, look at the subit time in the quiz reports (you can sort on that column) to identify the late ones.
Tim-
Thanks for the reply. I currently use your suggestions. What I do when I want to check the quiz scores, is look at all the quiz scores at the due date and record what each student got. In order to score late quizes, I have to go to the Course>Quiz>Results>Grade page and sort the quizes based on the completed time. Once they are sorted, I manually lower the scores (I have to use a different program for my official gradebook, so I apply the deduction when I type the grade into my official gradebook).
The problem with this method of grading late quizes is that I have to keep checking every so often to see if anyone has submitted a late quiz since I last checked the scores. So what would correct this problem would be:
- Make it possible so that the instructor gets emailed when a new quiz is submitted only after the due date. (Instead of getting emailed after every quiz - I am assuming this is how the emailing/submission thing works - I have not explored this feature yet).
Other features that would be nice would be:
1. Have Moodle tell the student when they submit the quiz late that it is late and show the deduction applied to the score (if any).
2. Have something indicates the late quiz scores in the graebook and/or grade reports (shade the score a different color, use a different text color for the score, etc)
3. Allow an instructor to set a penalty based on how late the quiz submission is.
I know that his might be a lot to include, but I think these things would be very useful to many users. I have found that the quiz module is an excellent way to give students instant feedback.
If the feature of penalty points for late submits were to be implemented in Moodle, you need (and logic) for thee dates (or more) might make some sense. I too can see some benefit of having a due date and a close date, but I would want to be able to specify something like a 50% reduction in points if submitted late, but before a quiz closes.
However, this method violates my position that a due date is a due date. I too use "unlimited attempts" and almost always give students two weeks. The better students start early, but then the "poor" students always start late (like 2 hours before due). I find that it is better to train students to understand the idea of a due date.
So, if we start allowing students to submit late, why would that not want more time after the "close" date. And then more time, and more time.
I know everyone's teaching scenario can be different, but I have found it is much better to pace a student through a course, and not accept late assignments. For those very few really special cases, I can provide a "user override", and then adjust the points manually, if needed.
To satisfy your needs, Moodle should have the ability to keep adding due dates, as many as one wants, with a separate penalty percent associated with each date. This could be interesting.
You might want to add this as a feature request in Tracker.
'Due date' + 'overdue submission with penalty' is not foreign to real life situations. Many bills have a due date after which you can still pay but with "penalty" (or late payment charges). One may sometimes have a very good reason to prefer a late charge over the due date. This too is part of the idea of a due date.
Rick-
Thanks for the reply. I think the idea here is to make Moodle as adaptable to as many situations as possible. I bet a lot of instructors would benefit from having a due date in addition to a close quiz date. I could add this issue to the tracker, but I believe that it is already in tracker as MDL-4309. I urge anyone who would like to see this implemented to login to tracker and vote for MDL-4309.
Here is an illustration of the a conceptual work. It uses an auto graded pseudo question that defines a list of deadlines with negative fraction and the mark for the question takes the negative mark of the latest deadline before the actual grading time.
In this illustration the question defines 4 deadlines:
- 6 Aug 2012 17:00 (the quiz official due date) with fraction -0.3 which will result in a deduction of 3 marks for submissions after this deadline and before the next deadline.
- 6 Aug 2012 18:00 with fraction -0.5 (deduction of 5 marks)
- 6 Aug 2012 19:00 with fraction -0.7 (deduction of 7 marks)
- 6 Aug 2012 20:00 with fraction -1 (dedution of 10 marks)
Quiz attempt
Submission review
Itamar-
Wow! Thanks for postig this! This would be similar to what I am (and I think others are) looking for. It does appear that this would require the instructor to put in the deadlines for each question (do the penalties in your example only apply to question #1?). While this could be useful for many applications, I am wondering if it would be possible to put in the deadlines once and have them apply to the whole quiz. That way the student submits the whole quiz, and the fraction penalty applies to the final overall score. It would also allow the student to answer all questions, and not get "shut out" of any questions.
The other thing that I would be curious about is, would it be possible to report the late quiz score in red or something else to indicate that the quiz was late? Using your example, would it be possible for the 30.00 out of 100.00 to be reported as late to the student as well as in any gradebook or grade report that the instructor sees?
This is a wonderful example! Is this something that you or someone is currently working on? Thanks again!
Intrigued by your query I've drafted the code today.
As you can see in the illustration, the quiz totals to 10 marks which come from question 2. The "Duedate question" (question 1) can only "contribute" negative marks, or deduction of marks. This applies to the overall quiz score as that score is the sum of marks of all the questions in the quiz. So in this example Q 2 is answered correctly and contributes to the quiz score full 10 points, but b/c of late submission 7 points are deducted from the 10 and the final mark is 3/10. The instructor needs to add only one instance of a "Duedate question" to the quiz to achieve this effect.
It should be possible to devise a quiz report plugin which would highlight a lateness component in the quiz score. The standard display of final score in the quiz review or the gradebook is insensitive to particular questions and so cannot show this information without hacking.
That said and done this illustrated solution is a workaround rather than a proper solution. A proper solution should probably extend the quiz settings. It just that the latter may take much longer to get implemented. Until then something like the "Duedate question" may offer a quick way to get fairly close the desired effect.
OK...I think I understand how this works. So let's say I want to have a 15 question quiz. I make Q#1 the duedate question and then questions #2 - #16 are my actual curriculum questions. And as long as the quiz is submitted by the due date, the duedate question does nothing. Am I correct on this? This duedate question would be extremely helpful!
I am curious, how does one add a duedate question to a quiz? Will it be in the list of question types when creating a question? Or is is imported into the question bank and you simply add it to the quiz like any other queston? I suppose if it is imported through the question bank, then I don't need my admin to add the code.
How easy is it for someone to change the parameters of the duedate question?
Will you be posting your code somewhere?
I agree with you that this is a workaround and that a proper solution would be implemented into the quiz settings. But until that gets implemented, I would definately use the duedate question.
Thank you so much for creating this and for your replies!
Correct.
A Duedate question would be added just like any other question, that is, click the create question button, select the type, proceed to fill out the question definition form, etc.
The code of the example is just a proof-of-concept stub and was written as a quick extension of a larger component rather than an independent question type. As such it is not releasable. But it is suggestive that a releasable question type plugin is feasible.
Itamar, how would this question work if the quiz needed to be regraded?
Insofar as there is no api for making a question non-re-gradable, it would have to be locked (by setting) before regrade.
Do you think this would be easier to "set in motion" then to have the quiz module modified to include a due date in the quiz settings?
I've messaged you about that.
I agree that this would be a good feature, and I understand the concept of a due date and a "drop" date. This reminds me of my property taxes. They are due on a date, but the "delinquent" date is always one month later (the day the county can place your house on the market, I guess). I always ignore the due date and pay the week before the "delinquent" date.
Although this scenario is similar, I think that the difference is the concept of a "penalty", which is really what I like. A penalty would remove the few emails that I get asking for an extension because the student's xxx died (for xxx, you can substitute: mother, father, brother, sister, dog, cat, car, car battery, friend, etc.)
I placed my vote for MDL-4309, and I added my own thoughts to this issue on Tracker.