Moodle in English: Units/Deadlines/Submitting/Adaptive Mode

Units/Deadlines/Submitting/Adaptive Mode

by Bobby Cowhey - Sunday, September 23, 2012, 9:59 AM

I have just begun to pilot Moodle for the Science Department (Physics in particular) at my high school. After using it for a few weeks, I have a few quirks I was hoping I could find the solutions to.

1) I often assign HW with the quiz function and a series of calculated questions. I always put the allowable units for each question, but students have begun to figure out that if they simply don't include units at all - they will always get the right answer, rather than having to worry about what unit to tack on. I'd like to require that they must put in units to get full credit.

2) When a student is absent or has an emergency and needs an extension, is there a way I can extend the deadline for just that particular student and not re-open the quiz for all of my students?

3) When the quiz closes, it would be awesome if the student's who haven't hit the submit button would have their quiz attempts automatically submitted so that they appear nice and neat on the results list. Is that possible?

4) I will set a quiz so that a student is only allowed 4 attempts (with no penalties applied), but I put on adaptive mode so that they can focus on 1 question at a time. It turns out that the students will still get full credit even if they get it right on their 14th attempt. Is there a way to fix that?

I apologize if these answers are in plain sight somewhere else on Moodle Docs but I've spent a good 2 hours looking through the pages and forums and haven't found particular solutions and/or the language is just over my head for how to program it.

Re: Units/Deadlines/Submitting/Adaptive Mode

by Joshua Bragg - Sunday, September 23, 2012, 10:51 AM

What version of Moodle are you using? I'm assuming that you're using 2.3. Some of these things have been problems in older versions but have been fixed.

1) I actually can't find this feature documented on a quick run through the docs. This is determined at the question level. There is a "Unit Handling" section on each question editing page. One of the options there is "The unit must be given, and will be graded."

2) http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Quiz_settings#User_overrides

3) This is a new 2.3 feature: You can find it here at the bottom of that section: http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Quiz_settings#Timing

4) The Moodle definition of an attempt is on a whole quiz basis rather than a per question basis. An attempt is submitting the answers to all the questions for final grading. Each answer check on an adaptive mode quiz isn't an attempt. It would probably be easier to accomplish what you want to do with Interactive mode : http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Question_behaviours
You'd want to specify 3 different hints in the questions. That way the 4th attempt would be the final one.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Units/Deadlines/Submitting/Adaptive Mode

by Bobby Cowhey - Sunday, September 23, 2012, 11:45 AM

Ah, therein lies the problem. The school IT person just retired and the new tech guy sort of inherited the site, but doesn't know much about it. I convinced him to make me an administrator because I said I would try and work on it.

I just looked up the version of Moodle that we are using and it is 1.9.8+.

So my new question is - how can I update it easily? And is it possible that everything that currently exists on the school Moodle will safely transfer over (like current courses, files, quizzes, question banks, etc?)

Average of ratings: -

Re: Units/Deadlines/Submitting/Adaptive Mode

by Bobby Cowhey - Sunday, September 23, 2012, 12:24 PM

I just read through some of the update FAQ's and can refine my question a little more.

I work at a school with about 180 teachers, but I would guess that only about 12 of us are currently using Moodle. I've demonstrated some of the usefulness of Moodle and more people are about to come on board.

I obviously want to update to the most recent version of Moodle before this happens. But I also don't want to screw up the current courses mid-semester. The Moodle Docs says that it may be best to not update at all, but just install Moodle 2.3 and then import over any course information that we do have.

I was just wondering if you could advise what would be the best/simplest/safest route to update? And is it possible to do it mid-semester, or should we wait until a school break? Thank you in advance for your advice.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Units/Deadlines/Submitting/Adaptive Mode

by Tim Hunt - Sunday, September 23, 2012, 2:40 PM

Moodle should always update, keeping all your data. Doing that is, however, complex, so you should always take a full backup first, and know how to roll back, if anything goes wrong.

The jump from 1.9 to 2.3 is very big. I don't think you should do that in the middle of a semester.

If few of your staff are currently using Moodle, but more are about to start, then starting new people on 2.3 sounds like the best way to go, otherwise they will have to learn some things twice, so I suggests you set up a new Moodle for them.

Of course, then you will have to worry about what to do with the old site, its existing users and the data it contains, later.

Average of ratings: -