A particular question functionality

A particular question functionality

by Nicholas Burgess -
Number of replies: 18

Hello fellow MOODLEr's!

My colleagues and I have been working frantically with designing quiz questions over the past few weeks. We are currently trialing a LAN dedicated to MOODLE and a Wiki and detailing SOPs and documentation to prove how affective and fantastic this software is, to hopefully officially upgrade the LAN and stand it up for the remainder of the school.

We've worked closely with Cloze type questions utilising the {1:SHORTANSWER} and {1:MULTICHOICE} special coding and has worked a treat. However, the boss has approached us with a particular thought...

What we'd like to do is this - For example, within a question is firstly a sentence and within this sentence would be various words selected as the SHORTANSWER questions to be answered by the student. The second part of the same question are two radio button options or in this instance 2 x {MCH} options.

Upon selecting one of these radio buttons will depend on whether further information is required to be selected or entered and appears below these MC buttons?

The idea is if the student selects the first of the two MC options, this would then be prompt them to answer the third section of the overall question and doing so byt selecting the options available to them from the MC drop down/short answer questions. If the student selected the second of the two MC options, nothing appears below.

Or, the third section of question options are already visible (when the question is loaded on their screen), but say if the student selects the first of the two MC options, the third section of 'short answers' and 'multichoice' are visible/editable whereas if the student selects the second of the two MC options, it greys out and cannot be answered?

Below is the question formatting so far -

Write your question here...

Answer:   {:SHORTANSWER:=Answer goes here}

Reference:   {:MCH:=Option 1~=Option 2}

***When Option 2 is selected, the below will appear OR if Option 1 is selected, the below greys out***

Publication:   {:MULTICHOICE:=Number 1~=Number 2~=Number 3}

Chapter:   {:MULTICHOICE:= Letter A~=Letter B~=Letter C}

 

I look forward to your responses and here's hoping I have made sense. If not, please comment on the section that's not understood and I'd be most happy to elaborate.

Regards, Nick.

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In reply to Nicholas Burgess

Re: A particular question functionality

by Tim Hunt -
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You could build a question type like that if you wanted.

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In reply to Nicholas Burgess

Re: A particular question functionality

by Joseph Rézeau -
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Hi Nicholas, are you sure that, for this type of question the Quiz activity is the most suited? In other words, is this question meant to test the student's knowledge, or is it more of a survey type of question?

It would help if you gave us more real-world examples of what you want to achieve.

Joseph

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: A particular question functionality

by Nicholas Burgess -

Hi Joseph,

I am not entirely sure re if the quiz activity is most suited but yes the question is meant to test the student's knowledge. From what I think you're saying, there seems to be another way? The possibility of creating this type of question in a program outside MOODLE and importing it across later... Ideas?

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In reply to Nicholas Burgess

Re: A particular question functionality

by Joseph Rézeau -
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It would help if you gave us more real-world examples of what you want to achieve.

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: A particular question functionality

by Nicholas Burgess -

Below is the question formatting so far -

Question 1:

It would help if you gave us more real-world {:SHORTANSWER:=examples} of what you want to achieve.

Publication:   {:MCH:=Publication 1~=Publication 2}

***When Option 2 is selected, the below will appear OR if Option 1 is selected, the below greys out***

Publication:   {:MULTICHOICE:=Number 1~=Number 2~=Number 3}

Chapter:   {:MULTICHOICE:= Letter A~=Letter B~=Letter C}

 

Does the above help?

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In reply to Nicholas Burgess

Re: A particular question functionality

by Joseph Rézeau -
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Hi Nicholas,

This still does not look like a real-world question, sorry. And it still does not appear like a question to test the student's knowledge of some subject.

Joseph

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: A particular question functionality

by Nicholas Burgess -

Please comment on the functionality of the question I am seeking rather than directly criticising the approach of testing my student's knowledge.

The testing method is irrelevant here, it's the question functionality itself. Thanks.

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In reply to Nicholas Burgess

Re: A particular question functionality

by Ray Morris -

The testing method is irrelevant here, it's the question functionality itself.

 

First:

it very much appears that you are making the same error which causes me the most grief of any error that I make.  Effectively testing the student's knowledge is the ONLY thing that's relevant.  Code, by itself, is strictly useless.  When I'm focused on what I think the solution might be, to the point of saying that the whole purpose of the code is irrelevant, I'm well on the path to spending way too long doing it wrong.  I do that occasionally.  I often need to be reminded to step back and look at what I'm trying to accomplish rather than assuming I have the right solution, which just happens to not work.

 

Second:

In order to help best help you with HOW to do something, we need to know WHAT you're trying to do.  Let me ask for your help with something.  is this solution to the equation right?:

157.79 centimeters

Obviously you can't help me with the right solution if I don't tell you what the problem is.  So tell us what the problem is, if you want us to help you with the answer.

 

Third:

In this thread you've essentially said "Please help me, I don't know how to do this. ... I know what I'm doing, and I don't have to explain it to you.  Just shut up and do what I tell you, because I know much better than all of you fools!"  That's a logical contradiction, and therefore wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

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In reply to Ray Morris

Re: A particular question functionality

by Nicholas Burgess -

I thought I was clear with my first post, as there is a reply from a poster re creating the code for the question, but I am unsure of this. I do not wish to argue with you or anyone.

Within a question is firstly a sentence and within this sentence would be various words selected as the SHORTANSWER questions to be answered by the student.

The second part of the same question are two radio button options or in this instance 2 x {MCH} options. This is where the student would select the appropriate MCH radio button which would be the answer to a reference or article or publication or book.

The third part is triggered by the 2nd subsection radio buttons, depending on which one the student selects will display the further input required and this input would refer to a selection of drop down menus for selecting a volume, or chapter, or section, or paragraph of the publication, or book, or article etc.

The MCH options will test the student's knowledge by affirming which publication they recall the line from the first part of the question.

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In reply to Nicholas Burgess

Re: A particular question functionality

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Yes, we all get what you are trying to build, as far as I can tell.

But we are all sitting here wondering "is this proposed technical solution really going to be the easier solution to Nicholas's pedagogic problem?" and we are all sceptical. Plus, most of us are interested in a good pedagogic problem (how can we best teach / assess this bit of knowledge?) and so we are slighly disappointed that you are not prepared to discus the particular pedagogic context with us.

Anyway, how to write a new question type plug-in for Moodle? Documentation is here: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Question_types, but to really understand it, you will probably also need to analyse how the existing question types work. There is a lot to learn.

Then there is the issue that what you are proposing has not been done before, so even though we think it is possible within the framework that Moodle provides, there is still the chance you would hit some road-block that we haven't thought of. Hence our concern about whether writing a new question type is really the best choice. Hence our desire to try to help you solve your pedagogic problem in another way.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: A particular question functionality

by Ray Morris -

> Then there is the issue that what you are proposing has not been

> done before, so even though we think it is possible within the

> framework that Moodle provides, there is still the chance you would

> hit some road-block that we haven't thought of.

 

This.  It looks like you're likely to run into unforeseen problems unless the problem is reworded in order to see it differently.  

A simpler, more general way of accomplishing the goal, with less chance of hitting unforeseen problems, may to look at it as "chained questions" or "a series of questions".  That is, instead of saying the same question has three parts, recognize that it's really three questions. 

If (answer == 'coffee') {

    nextquestion = 'cream or sugar?'

} elseif (answer == 'tea') {

    nextquestion = 'sweet or unsweet?'

}

 

Of course maybe that wouldn't work either.  Hmm, here's an idea, maybe if you posted a sample question it would help us confirm our understanding.

 

 

 

 

 

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In reply to Ray Morris

Re: A particular question functionality

by Nicholas Burgess -

Ray,

Agree re unforeseen circumstances. With the majority of our exams, the students have up to 100 questions over a 4 exam sitting. To break up the "1" question into "3" chained questions may confuse some, hence our thought for a new type of question.

Sample Question 1:

Gather and check instruction and demonstration objectives and seek assistance if required (A selection of the words would be selected as a SHORTANSWER)

Is the above statement identified in a publication or assessment tool criteria document? (The student would have the option here to select either 2 multichoice radio buttons, publication or assessment tool criteria document)

Publication: ___________ (Drop -down menu)

Chapter: ___________ (Drop-down menu)

Paragraph: _________ (Drop-down menu)

Upon selection of 'publication', further options appear below the multichoice radio buttons or if they select the 'assessment tool criteria document', nothing happens or nothing is triggered below the multichoice questions). The publication multichoice will prompt three drop down menus and the student would select the appropriate publication from one list, the chapter from another and the paragraph from another.

I hope the example clears it up. Thanks.

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In reply to Nicholas Burgess

Re: A particular question functionality

by Ray Morris -

For some reason, that sample makes it more clear to me, even though I thought I was beginning to understand what you were trying to achieve. Looking at it now, it seems to me that it wouldn't be all that hard to make the question work, and work pretty reliably from the students' perspective, but the interface to create such questions might be more difficult. If you're okay with hand editing a template question, that might work.

 

Knowing what you want to achieve, I went back and re-read your initial post to see what you actually asked, to try to actually answer your question.  I didn't see a clear question, so I'm going to assume the question is "how can I achieve this goal?"

A simple, somewhat hackish way would be to have a simple new question type, probably based on short answer, in which Moodle doesn't know anything about the structure of the question.  As far as Moodle knows, the question is just some HTML. That HTML would contain some simple Javascript to manipulate the dropdowns.

For that approach, you'd probably build a working sample of the dropdowns independent of Moodle, that integrate it by having the script set the answer Moodle sees as a concatenation of the answers from each dropdown like this:

publicationanswer-chapteranswer-paragraphanswer

 

Probably better would be to use Cloze and some add some Javascript to hide or disable the drop down menus until they select "publication".

 

It occurs to me that thousands of other people have quizzed on the same thing, where you respondent has to list book, chapter, verse.  The answers are typically something like "Psalms 23:4" or "John 13:34".  Have you looked at the format some of them use?

 

On a side note, the name "Javascript" is intentionally misleading. Java and Javascript are like car and career - completely unrelated.  It's Javascript you'd use here.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: A particular question functionality

by Nicholas Burgess -

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your reply. I completely understand the intense process it must be to create a question plugin from scratch, and it seems what we are trying to achieve does not exist. That's fine.

The type of question we are wishing to establish is to test the student's knowledge on referencing information from publications. They are required to recall statements and/or sections from publication/documents throughout their career and from the top of their head in an instance. This is the profession in which we work.

I can see your point about whether writing a new question type is really the best choice, it may not be.

It's probably the case where this type of question requires Java? Is this possible? mixed

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In reply to Nicholas Burgess

Re: A particular question functionality

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Writing a new question type is not *that* hard, particularly once you know what you are doing. Learning to write your first question type is a bit more work.

What you are proposing would require some JavaScript (not Java) and that is no problem.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: A particular question functionality

by Marcus Green -
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But even for an experienced question type creator the timescale would probably be weeks rather than days.

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: A particular question functionality

by Nicholas Burgess -

Further to my last, the idea behind having for example, 2 x MCH options, is when the first radio button option is selected, it triggers the 3rd sub question to appear below. If the student selects the second radio button option, nothing is triggered to appear.

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