Quiz Reading Time Before Attempt

Quiz Reading Time Before Attempt

by Nicholas Burgess -
Number of replies: 12

Hello,

I have had a good read through the forum and it's possible that my school are the only kind to have such a preference.

I am happy in understanding that you can specify times when the quiz is accessible for people to make attempts, before the opening time the quiz will be unavailable to students, they will be able to view the quiz introduction but will not be able to view the questions and quizzes with start times in the future display both the open and close date for students.

At the attempt of the quiz, the student is displayed with the introduction and we are looking at whether on the start of the attempt, an option be where a 5 minute or so reading time is available to the student. Whilst this is occurring, the student would be unable to enter any answers.

Thanks.

PS - We are using MOODLE 2.5+

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In reply to Nicholas Burgess

Re: Quiz Reading Time Before Attempt

by Tim Hunt -
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I am struggling to understand why you, or perhaps more importantly your students, would want that.

I mean, as a matter of good exam technique, when I do an exam (and I have been an OU student recently) I will spend the first few minutes of the exam (I am thinking of traditional paper exams) reading all the questions, but that it my choice, and I may well jot down notes while I do so. I am sure I got that from what I have been taught about exam technique, where I am pretty sure the rule I was given was to spend the first 5 mins of the three-hour exam reading the questions. But it does not necessarily take me exactly 5 mins to read the questions. Depends on my reading speed and the questions.

So, by all means teach your students good techniques for approaching assessment, but don't think that technological locks and keys will be anything other than deeply irritating in this situation.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Quiz Reading Time Before Attempt

by Kim Styles -

The provision of reading time is a common  practice in well designed and administered assessment Tim, particularly where this is a time constraint on providing answers. Universities commonly have a reading period, or a reading and noting period before writing in an examination is permitted. This allows students to acclimatise to the surroundings and the task, removing at least one level of stress.

I assume from your reply that you do not have answer to the question. Provision of a viewing period within the time constraints would not seem an unreasonable option in Moodle.

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In reply to Kim Styles

Re: Quiz Reading Time Before Attempt

by Tim Hunt -
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Well, that just shows what a big and diverse place the world of education is. You, sitting in a university in Melbourne this this is a common practice. I, who have been listening to what people want in the Moodle quiz for 7 years, and reading about educational technology, have never even heard of the idea before.

Anyway, not currently available in Moodle.

Perfectly feasible to implement. All the necessary infrastructure is present in the back-end of the quiz system, but putting all the pieces together would be a non-trivial amount of work. So, as is the way in Open Source, it will happen when someone wants it badly enough to make it happen.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Quiz Reading Time Before Attempt

by Douglas Broad -

Speaking as a quiz writer, although I can appreciate diverse needs, the quiz controls page is already pretty complex.  Adding this feature would further complicate it.  If implemented, it should be as a plug-in only so that those of us who don't want to use that feature wouldn't need to see it on the control pages.

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In reply to Douglas Broad

Re: Quiz Reading Time Before Attempt

by Tim Hunt -
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Are you using Moodle 2.5 yet? That has some improvements to the forms system that makes insanely complicated forms a bit more manageable.

(You can try it on http://demo.moodle.net/ if you don't yet have 2.5 and want to see what is comming.)

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Quiz Reading Time Before Attempt

by Douglas Broad -

Not yet.  I believe our college is on as late a version as any in North Carolina (2.4.3).  My development platform(at home) is 2.4.5.  I'm afraid to move to 2.5 until my school does in case the incompatibility becomes too great to upload course content.  Aside: I have installed Stack (at home) but haven't developed any questions yet.

As for the quiz forms, 2.4.5 isn't that bad but I appreciate the work that went into 2.5 (from reading about it).  I guess if settings can be hidden at the site or course level it offering these kinds of features (read before take) wouldn't be a problem.

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In reply to Kim Styles

Re: Quiz Reading Time Before Attempt

by Joseph Rézeau -
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Kim "Universities commonly have a reading period, or a reading and noting period before writing in an examination is permitted."

I've never heard of a "reading period" for exams in all my career as a university lecturer in a French university.

Joseph

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In reply to Kim Styles

Re: Quiz Reading Time Before Attempt

by Nicholas Burgess -

Kim,

I'm glad I have your support and I thank all who have commented. The "reading time" is an important addition to the way we teach and specifically allows the students to raise any points with the instructor such as reclarification of a question, for example.

It seems from who have commented feel if able to be developed, a plugin would be preferable rather than making it a standardised feature.

Though still relatively new to MOODLE, to have this type of feature developed what is the best practice to seek its potential popularity for it to be implemented?

Thank you.

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In reply to Nicholas Burgess

Re: Quiz Reading Time Before Attempt

by Tim Hunt -
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I am not sure if it is possible to implement this functionality as a plug-in. It needs to change some things at the core of the quiz. I think it needs to be done as a customisation to the quiz code.

The only sort of plug-in that might work is a Quiz Access Rule, but I don't think they have have enough flexibility to implement this. Of course, and alternative would be to change the core of the quiz just enough to give access rules more flexibility, and then implement the rest of it as an access rule.

To get this done, there are basically 2 options:

  1. Add the feature request to the tracker, and wait until someone in the community decides to implement it.
  2. Pay someone to implement it for you now. The someone would be either a Moodle Partner (all three of the Partners with a base in Aus, CatalystIT, Pukunui and NetSpot, have good development services) or a freelance developer like Jamie Pratt (who has done a lot of quiz-related work).
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In reply to Nicholas Burgess

Re: Quiz Reading Time Before Attempt

by Paul Nijbakker -

I too have never heard of a reading time for quizzes during which students are not allowed to answer questions. We just include the time in the running time of the quiz and advise students to use some time to read through the questions without enforcing it.

A simple workaround, before the modification is implemented, could be to have, for example, a PDF of the questions in the quiz (This would, of course, only apply if there are no random questions in the quiz). Link this PDF to the description of the quiz and restrict access to the quiz to 5 minutes before the quiz itself opens. That way students can access the description and with it the questions 5 minutes before the actual timed quiz opens.

There is never a guarantee, however, that students do not start jotting down answers as soon as the see the questions.

This workaround decreases the usability of the quiz since the questions can be more easily circulated. Also, if you have the Reminders plugin active students could get their hands on the quiz description and with it a link to the questions three days in advance of the exam date.

Rgrds,
Paul.

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