Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Nicola S. -
Number of replies: 17

I recently upgraded from Moodle 2.4 to 2.5.

After attempting my HotPot Quiz, some students (approximately 10-20%) found that their grades were not recorded.  I checked the logs and there is "HotPot attempt" but no "HotPot submit".

It doesn't seem to be related to the browser (some used Explorer and some used Chrome).  However, for one student, it didn't work in Chrome, but did work in Explorer.

For some students, they were able to do one HotPot and get a grade, but the other one didn't work.

Any help would be really appreciated!!

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Nicola S.

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Nicola S. -

By the way, I believe I have this version: mod_hotpot_moodle25_2010080362

--> public_html/moodle/mod/hotpot


   

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Nicola S.

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Hi Nicola,
first, might I suggest that you upgrade to the latest version of the HotPot module: 2010080365

Then, we need to keep a close eye on your students. Ask them to report to you immediately if they think a HotPot grade was not recorded. If anyone reports a missing HotPot grade make a note of their version of events. If possible, ask them to repeat the HotPot and this time stand behind them and watch.

Please let me know what you find out.

regards
Gordon

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Nicola S. -

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for your reply.  I upgraded to the latest HotPot module as you suggested.  It helped (a bit), but unfortunately not enough.

I tried it myself as both me (role as a student) and as a separate "Test Student" in several browsers.  Here are the results:

Firefox (latest version) - OK

Explorer 8 - OK

BUT

Explorer 10 - not OK

Chrome (latest version) - not OK

I can't figure out what the problem is!  Any ideas?

Thanks!

Nicola

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Nicola S.

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Thanks for the extra info.

Am I right in assuming that you were doing the same HotPot every time?

Also, could you describe what happened that makes you say some of the results were "not OK"?

thanks
Gordon

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Nicola S. -

Hi Gordon,

Yes, I did the same HotPot every time (actually I did the same 2 or 3 each time, to be sure).

When I say "not OK", I mean that the grade was not recorded (even though I clicked on "check" and got a score).   I get the "Are you sure you want to leave this page" message, that says "The results so far been saved...", but no grade. 

I'm guessing it's some sort of incompatibility with the newer versions of Chrome and Explorer, but I'm not sure...

(About half my students used Chrome and half Explorer - most had no problems - with the slightly older HotPot module that I was using previously. I'm assuming they had older browser versions, but I'm not sure, since I just asked them about the type of browser.)

Thanks,

Nicola

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Rosemary Camilleri -

I am experiencing the same problem as Nicola S. Unpredictably, some of my distance students' Hot Pot grades fail to appear in the gradebook, nor does a blue progress check appear. I can access the student's participant record and see their attempt/score.  So I go into the Moodle gradebook and enter students' grades there.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Rosemary Camilleri

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Nicola,
could I come and try the HotPot that you tried?

Or could you set it up on my server, so that we can both look at it together?

thanks
Gordon

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Nicola S. -

Hi Gordon,

I will email you a username and password to get onto my site.  Thanks!

Rosemary,

How do you access the participant's score from the participation record?  If I look at the log, I can see an attempt, but no score.  Nothing appears on the Quiz overview.

Thanks,

Nicola

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Nicola S.

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Hi Nicola,
thank you for giving me access to you Moodle site.

I tried the "Articles" HotPot, as a student - you can see my score of 100% was correctly recorded.

I tried the HotPot again and this time I answered a few questions, clicked the check button, and got a a message saying my score so far was 7% but that there were still unanswered questions. Then I deliberately clicked on the link at the top of the page to go back to the course page. I got the message asking whether to stay on the page or navigate away. I chose to navigate away. When I went back to look at my score for that attempt, it was 0% - not 7% as I might have hoped.

From this, I would say that it seems that the score is not recorded if you navigate away from the quiz before completing all the questions. You do not need to answer every question correctly first time, but any questions you do not answer correctly, you need to keep going until you do answer each question correctly. This is the way HotPots work.

The HotPot is only finished when all questions have been answered correctly. Only then are the results sent back to the server.

In the past, it was possible for the browser to send the results so far if the student tries to navigate away from the page before the HotPot was completed. Perhaps this functionality is broken now on some or all browsers. We could that that more.

However, I am pretty sure that if users complete the quiz, i.e. keep going until they find the correct answers to all the questions, then the grade will be recorded.

regards
Gordon

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Glenys Hanson -

Hi there,

Just to emphasise what Gordon has already written: I had lots of problems with scores not being recorded correctly until I got it through to the students that they had to find all the correct answers to finish an exercise. This is logical for what are intended to be learning exercises, not tests.

I also found it helped in JQuiz for students to get a "smiley" when clicking on the final choice (by default the question mark remains). Students don't get a score, but they are sure that they've found the correct answer. If they look over the finished exercise and note the correct answers they should see a pattern - if the exerecise has been designed for that.

I never managed to convince Martin Holmes of my logic, but he showed me how to do it anyway:

In jquiz6.js_

Find:

//Show the feedback

ShowMessage(Feedback);

//New for 6.2.2.1: If you want to mark an answer as correct even when it's the final choice, uncomment this line.

// if (I[QNum][3][ANum][2] >= 1){Btn.innerHTML = CorrectIndicator;}else{Btn.innerHTML = IncorrectIndicator;}

return;

}

Change to:

//Show the feedback

ShowMessage(Feedback);

//New for 6.2.2.1: If you want to mark an answer as correct even when it's the final choice, uncomment this line.

if (I[QNum][3][ANum][2] >= 1){Btn.innerHTML = CorrectIndicator;}else{Btn.innerHTML = IncorrectIndicator;}

return;

}

HTH,

Glenys

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Rosemary Camilleri -

Gordon and friends,

I have an adult student who avers that she has clicked the OK after answering every question in a Jquiz.  But I can find no record that she has even attempted the quiz.  When I use the course page's left navigation bar, click on the quiz name, and go down to "click trails," I get this error:

Coding error detected, it must be fixed by a programmer: Cannot call get_sort_columns until you have called setup.
Debug info:
Error code: codingerror
Stack trace:
  • line 560 of /lib/tablelib.php: coding_exception thrown
  • line 551 of /lib/tablelib.php: call to flexible_table->get_sort_columns()
  • line 511 of /mod/hotpot/report/tablelib.php: call to flexible_table->get_sql_sort()
  • line 1384 of /lib/tablelib.php: call to hotpot_report_table->get_sql_sort()
  • line 152 of /mod/hotpot/report/renderer.php: call to table_sql->query_db()
  • line 88 of /mod/hotpot/report/renderer.php: call to mod_hotpot_report_renderer->reportcontent()
  • line 93 of /mod/hotpot/report.php: call to mod_hotpot_report_renderer->render_report()

I am able to enter the score that this student tells me she achieved.  (These are middle-aged US nurses studying at the graduate level, and it's a pass/fail class, so I think they are probably honest.) I go back to the course page, click on the gradebook for the whole class, click on "edit" and then select the quiz/student cell and enter a new grade.

I hope this info helps.  Again, the problem occurs with very few students out of a class.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Nicola S. -

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for all your help with this.  I appreciate the time you have taken!

I have tried the quizzes in Explorer 10 and the latest Chrome and made sure to answer all the questions correctly.  When I did this, it allowed me to exit the quiz and the grade was recorded.

However, in some cases (for example listening gapfills where they have to fill in the missing words), some students just cannot get all the answers right.  It seems really unfair that they can't get any score at all just because they can't answer everything correctly.  In the past, this wasn't the case.

Also, this only affects some students who are using certain browsers, it seems. Firefox and earlier versions of Explorer (and Chrome?) don't seem to do this.

It is also rather misleading, as the browser warning message in Chrome says "Confirm Navigation - Your results so far will be saved and you can redo "XXX" later.  Are you sure you want to leave the page?"

Now I know the problem, I can work around it by getting them to send me a screenshot of the top of the screen showing the score if they can't answer everything correctly (and then manually entering the grade), and/or by putting in a hint button on the quiz.

However, it would be great if this could ultimately be fixed so that students aren't obliged to enter everything correctly just to get a score. 

Many thanks,

Nicola

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Nicola S.

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Susanna Wesson -

Hi Nicola,

In order to preserve the original rationale behind Hot Potatoes, what about using the Hybrid type question in JQuiz? This allows the student who is completely off track to find the correct answer when s/he is required to fill a gap by transforming the gap-fill question into a multiple choice question.

This is less frustrating for the student, avoids the 'hint' button which you may not want to use and will allow the student to know the right answer straight away, which is why HotPot is so useful. The number of attempts to fill the gap before the multiple-choice question appears can be adjusted if you don't want to make the task too easy.

Of course, this only applies to JQuiz, not JCloze.

Susanna

 

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Nicola S.

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

HI Nicola,
I agree with you reasoning and you conclusions. Indeed, that is precisely why I programmed the HotPot, QuizPort and TaskChain modules to try and save the intermediate results if the Moodle user navigates away from a HP exercise before al the correct answers have been found.

However, it now seems that not all modern browsers will allow a web page to initiate further actions if the user wants to leave a page. This is to prevent malicious scripts from trying to block a user's attempt to close a window. As you have found, some browsers (e.g. FF 23 for Mac) will allow the intermediate results to be sent, but others (e.g. Chrome 29 for Mac) will not.

I am grateful for you bringing this issue to my attention, and I have added it to my list of things to investigate when I have time. I don't think I can sort it out soon, but I will get to it at some point, and see if there is solution to be found.

best regards
Gordon

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Hello again Nicola, Rosemary and Suzanna,
I have found time to revisit the issue of HotPot results not being recorded when a student navigates away from the HotPot page without completing the HotPot activity (i.e. not continuing until all they have found all the correct answers).

As we discovered, the issue is confined to the most recent versions of certain browsers, notably Chrome and possibly IE too. It appears that these browsers no longer detect, or refuse to act on, a user navigating away from a page. My understanding is that this is to prevent malicious pages trying to trap you in a page.

You will be pleased to know that I have been able to find a workaround that I have tested in most recent versions of Chrome and Firefox for Mac. I would be grateful if you could download the latest version of the HotPot module for Moodle 2.x and confirm that it works (i.e. results are recorded when navigating away from incomplete attempts at a HotPot activity) in the browsers that your students use.

best regards
Gordon

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Nicola S. -

Hi Gordon,

Sorry, I just saw your reply today.  I downloaded the latest HotPot (80371) and tried it (on a PC) in the following: Firefox (latest), Chrome (latest), Explorer 8 and Explorer 10.

In each case I was able to navigate away from the page while still having incorrect answers, and in each case my grade was recorded.

Thanks so much for taking the time to work out a fix for this problem!!

Nicola

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Nicola S.

Re: Help! HotPot grades not recorded! (a few students only)

by Rosemary Camilleri -

Gordon,

Having updated, I made the same experiment on my Mac in Firefox (latest), and it worked.  Thank you very much!

Rosemary

Average of ratings: -