Quiz

You are correct about editing a question that has been used in a quiz.  You can edit a question that has been used in a quiz.  You can also chose as to whether you want the quizzes regraded or not.

This ability to edit questions used in a quiz is a necessary feature for me.  I am by no means perfect and I have made mistakes in my questions before.  I've needed to edit questions before (particularly short answer) to add a correct answer.  I've also needed to edit a question to eliminate a false positive.

While you can't edit what questions are in a quiz, you can edit the questions themselves.  That has saved me on a number of occasions.

@Emma,

I don't think that's a good idea. Please let's not have one more setting on the already cluttered question editing screen!

Joseph

The other useful feature of categories is adding multiple random question from a category into the quiz. I will admit I don't fully follow some of the database conversation here, but that is a powerful I use often and would be kept around if any changes to the question bank are made.

PK

Hi Tim and others,

I think the separation of quizzes and questions was a good design decision, and not much needs to be done to make it work like a decent question repository that could potentially be shared across platforms.

In my current vision there would not be any change in the way random or randomsamatch questions work. They still pick questions out of a category.

Now, Tim, get back to enjoying your holiday and stop looking at the forum!

Tim,

I see you are back from your holidays so can you expand on your wiki and git versioning point?

The reason for keeping versions of wiki pages is that a page might be defaced or have content overwritten by another user.

But I don't understand why wiki type versions of questions are needed. That would over complicating things.

As far as I can see, Moodle just need

• a quiz module which lets tutors create quizzes without having to think about question repositories, and
• a question repository which works as a question repository without having to know about the quizzes which are using its questions

The quiz module doesn't currently support this, but the infrastructure is there so it could quite easily

On my Moodle there is only Teacher A, no Teacher B here as I am the only teacher so Tim's scenario is unrealistic !

I don't know what the "natural and expected behaviour" is for other teachers but when I make a change to a question I definitely want to have the choice between at least 2 main behaviours

- I consider my change as an "improvement" to "Super question" and I want it both in the question bank and in all quiz using it

- I am in fact creating a new "version" of "Super Question" and I don't want it to be modified in existing quiz, I only want the change in the question bank. This is for instance what happend when I change a question about statistics to include more recent data

So even for a single teacher only there are already several scenarios.

Paolo, one of the main lesson I have learn on this forum is never to assume that everyone uses the quiz module as I do !

IMHO we definitely need some kind of question versioning  but with a good interface hiding complexity  from the user.

I don't think we need to "keep it simple" only that it "seems simple" to the user to do what he wants to do.

Hi Joshua and Jean-Michel,

Thanks for your input.

It is a question bank model or repository model which I am trying to encourage Moodle to adopt for its quizzes.

I believe we can't have it all ways without introducing unnecessary complexity.

Imagine you were using a question repository outside of Moodle

Would it be reasonable that the questions you copy from the bank stay in the state that they were when you copied them?

Well that is the way I think it should be.

Would it be surprising if the questions were updated when the questions in the question bank were updated without a manual sync?

I think it would.

Perhaps a nice-to-have may be an automated push feature which updates the question which have been copied from it

Or perhaps you could have the option to use questions directly from the question bank so changes made would be reflected in your quiz (as I still imagine random question types would work).

But both these solutions come at the price of adding complexity.

Joshua, the situation with a single teacher (or perhaps collaboration with just a very few teachers) is simpler than the situation with many teachers perhaps even on different campuses. For the most part I agree with you: shared questions are for sharing and, within that context, updates are bound to have an effect.

If I create a question and it's just plain wrong - but I don't spot the error and nor does anyone else until a student complains - then there is an imperative for that question to be corrected in every instance. This cannot happen if another teacher has made copies - and therein lies one of the danger of copies.

Another question might be improved with more recent science or world events or whatever. Here a choice as to whether to adopt those changes would seem useful.

In software versioning I am often told that a new version exists. I can check what the changes are before accepting or declining the new version. If a question is just plain wrong I cannot see the problem of pushing the change through - after all, why share if you don't like the benefits of sharing? If the question isn't wrong but somehow improved then I'd appreciate the choice.

If you share/collaborate there is a reasonable expectation of informing participants. Software can do this to some extent but team briefings/updates would also seem an essential feature. Three management functions are helpful:

a) this question is wrong and all instances will be updated

b) this question is wrong and if you have made copies they must be updated

c) this question is improved and you can consider updating it

a) requires a "push"; b) requires people communication and c) is possible only with versioning.

Ric