Pass / Fail management

Pass / Fail management

by Pauline Dumont -
Number of replies: 13

Hi,

I am using Moodle 2.4 and here is my scenario:

  • I have a course with at least 2 sections, let's take 2 for this example.
  • The 1st section is a graded activity, either a quiz (with a limited number of attempts) or a face to face activity graded by the teacher.
  • The last section contains a certificate.
  • The certificate will only be available to the student if he has passed the graded activity. (This is configured and working correctly)
  • The certificate activity is marked as complete when the student has displayed it (working well too).

My need is:

  1. The course should be marked as complete (or even as passed) when the student has displayed the certificate.
  2. The course should be marked as failed when the student has failed the graded activity, i.e. not reached the defined passing score (and has no more attempts in the case of a quiz). In this case, the certificate will not be displayed at all.
  3. Once the student has failed the course, the system should keep track of the failure and display it in the reports.
  4. Once the student has failed the course, he should have the right to enrol to it again, but he would need to retake it from the start, i.e. from the first activity.
  5. Imagine that this time the student passes the course, then the system keeps track of the "pass"as well as of the "fail" statuses and displays both in the reports.

Would you be able to help me with steps 2 to 6?

For the moment I am blocked by the fact that the scores and completion statuses of the activities are remembered by the system. Even if the student unenrols and re-enrols, he does not have the right to start again with the course.

Also, When the graded activity is marked as failed, the course is not marked as such, it stays "in progress".

 

Thanks so much in advance for your guidance!

Pauline

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In reply to Pauline Dumont

Re: Pass / Fail management

by Pauline Dumont -

Hi everybody,

would anyone be able to help me with this? I imagine this is quite a basic requirement when Moodle is used by a company.

Or would there be any  documentation available that I could refer to? I have searched the moodle site but I didn't find what I needed but maybe I missed something...

 

Thanks a lot in advance,

Pauline

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In reply to Pauline Dumont

Re: Pass / Fail management

by karan gurani -

HI everyone,

I have similar requirement.

Keeping course/quiz attempted in different category (with gradings)

 

 

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In reply to karan gurani

Re: Pass / Fail management

by Pauline Dumont -

Hello,

sorry to insist, but if someone could give me some guidance, it would really help.

Or if I have missed anything in the philosophy and should see things and find the info I need another way, just don't hesitate to explain that to me, I'm still new at using Moodle.

 

Thanks a lot in advance,

Pauline

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In reply to Pauline Dumont

Re: Pass / Fail management

by Salvatore Junior Iaccarino -

Hi!

I'm quite fresh myself in the use of Moodle but maybe I can help you with that.

if I understood correctly, then you could try something like this:

1. graded activity 1 (let's say exam), pass mark 90% [to be selected in Grades>Simple view>edit]

2. certificate (only accessible if the previous activity grade is between 90 and 100)

3. [hidden. only visible if activity 1 grade is less than 90] graded activity 2, same pass mark

4. [hidden. only visible if activity 3 grade is above 90] certificate

go to "Completion Tracking", in 'Activities Completed' select Aggregation methods>Any and then tick both certificates. this way should any of the two certificates be issued, the course will be marked 'completed'.

through "grades" you will keep track and record of the passes and fails.

I hope it help. I will anyway keep thinking on it...

 

 

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In reply to Salvatore Junior Iaccarino

Re: Pass / Fail management

by Pauline Dumont -

Hi Salvatore!

Thanks for this solution.

I get the idea, this is tricky but it can work.

However and unfortunately, this would be too complicated for a company-wide usage of the tool. It would not be clear and user friendly enough for the admins, teachers and students.

I thought a LMS would provide an easy way to track the courses that students have passed and failed. In my previous company's system, the list of courses that a student had passed/failed was called the student's learning history, by opposition to the student's learning plan, which was the list of courses that the student was supposed to follow in the future.

I also thought that a normal (default) behaviour would be to allow any student to register again in a course that he had previously failed in (possibly with the approval of his manager).

Isn't this a basic need for schools and companies? I am very surprised to be the first to ask this question. I really have the feeling that I am missing something...

Thanks again for your help Salvatore.

Should you or anyone else have any other idea, please do not hesitate to propose it, I am still looking for a solution.

Pauline

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In reply to Pauline Dumont

Re: Pass / Fail management

by Pauline Dumont -

Hi there,

I'm sorry to insist but this is really blocking for me in the launch of Moodle.

Any suggestion would be very welcome!

 

Thanks again!

Pauline

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In reply to Pauline Dumont

Retaking conditional activities Pass/Fail

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Following a request by Pauline the OP, I have moved this to the General Help forum and have rephrased her question in the hope some grading and conditional activities experts might be able to help with  the later part of her desired course behavioursmile

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In reply to Pauline Dumont

Re: Pass / Fail management

by Floyd Saner -

Pauline,

Wow, this is quite a challenge!  A primary difficulty is the possibility for a student re-enroll in the course and start over again with activity completion records reset - très difficile!

I believe it is not possible to automate this process, although it might be possible with some manual interventions. With so many conditions and possibilities, any contrived work-around will likely be very complicated and confusing. 

One possibility I thought of is for the student to enroll with a different account.  But that creates a host of problems with record keeping and emails.  I quickly trashed that idea.

Another simple solution is to duplicate the course and have students who fail the first course enroll in the second course. How many times can a student re-enroll?  If only a second attempt is allowed, this might be a workable solution.  You could create a custom report to pull out all the course records you need.

I'll keep thinking about this.  Sometimes solutions pop into my mind after a couple days.  What types of graded activities do you use?

Regards,

Floyd

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In reply to Floyd Saner

Re: Pass / Fail management

by Pauline Dumont -

Floyd to the rescue again, thanks a lot!

Well, I gess in the context of a company, the aim of training and grading is not to make a final selection of the competent people, but to evaluate people's level and make sure they grow in competency. When people fail with a graded activity, it means they need more time, more information or more coaching before they follow the course again and pass it.

Tracking the completion, the success & failure of the employees helps the company evaluate the time (=cost) spent by the employees in training, their competencies and also the quality of the training (too many failures may lead to review the content/duration/trainer of a course).

 The graded activities can be

- an online quiz completed in Moodle by the student, or

- a paper quiz completed in a classroom session. Technically in Moodle, it is thus the face to face session itself, on which the teacher assigns a grade to each student.

 

The fact here is that the LMS will be maintained by the Training Centre people, who are not really pc minded, and who need to have quick and efficient processes and a clear view on the courses they maintain. As there are a lot of courses and of students, duplicating the courses may work, but after a while, the risk is that the catalog of courses becomes a mess to navigate in as a student and to maintain as an admin or teacher.

To answer your question, there is no limitation to the number of times the students can re-enroll. As long as their manager and the Training Centre agree, they can try again.

Also, it may be that some trainings need to be followed several times in time. For instance, a regulation course will be updated as soon as the regulation evolves and peolpe will need to retrain to remain up to date. But this could be a good reason to create a new course, in order to keep track of the different versions of the training.

Regarding the reports, I have just installed the configurable reports plugin and I'm starting playing with it.

I hope this helps. Thanks agin for your help!

Pauline

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In reply to Pauline Dumont

Re: Pass / Fail management

by Floyd Saner -

Pauline,

Your situation is different from that of most educational institutions.  One of the criticisms of Moodle is that it is more suited for academic use than for corporate training use.

You may want to look at Totara, which is an extension of Moodle that has features designed for corporate use.  There are many Totara Partners in Europe, two have offices in Belgium, www.vision.be/ and www.xylos.com.  Ask them if Totara will meet your needs.  Your Moodle courses (and beautiful certificates smile ) should easily port over to Totara.

-Floyd

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In reply to Floyd Saner

Re: Pass / Fail management

by Pauline Dumont -

smile Definitely!

 

Actually, we have considered Totara and would certainly have gone for it if it was free. Unfortunately, we do not have any budget for this project, so we went for Moodle because it was free and configurable. Don't shoot the messenger, I'm now just the chemist (or should I say alchemist?) in charge of customizing the tool so that it suits our need...

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In reply to Pauline Dumont

Re: Pass / Fail management

by Christian Herman -

Tracking previous attempts may have to be done outside Moodle.  Moodle is strictly a Learning Management System.  It manages learning content but isn't intended for use as a human performance data repository.  In educational institutions, once a course is complete the final grade data would be exported to a core registrar system for permanent record keeping.  You may have to create a similar workflow.

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In reply to Pauline Dumont

Re: Pass / Fail management

by Guillermo Madero -

Hi Pauline,

Have you considered using the SCORM activity?

Once opened, a SCORM object starts at the beginning, or if the user has previously accessed it, it can then point to the last lesson taken. It can also track the progress status of a student, etc. The results of any tests inside the object are sent back to Moodle, so until the student has succesfully completed her or his assignments, the completion status for the Moodle section in question would not be set.

The behaviour of the object, or any other particular functionality, would depend on the authoring tool used to create it.

Cheers!

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