Manual grading and correction of quizes?

Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Mathias Larsson -
Number of replies: 26

Hi there new Moodle-buddies!

I have a question for you (regarding moodle 2.5), i´m totally stuck with this...

I Want to create a quiz where students reads questions and put thier answers in a textbox below, as easy as possible. When a student finnished all his/her questions a notification will go to the enroled teacher of the course. The teacher will see the students answers in a list and he/she would have the possabillity to comment and manually correct every question in the quiz. In the end of the quiz the teacher would also have a possability to write an overall comment and a overall grade. When the teacher is finnished a notification will go back to the student. Is this basic kind of quizes hard to setup, i can´t find a good way to do it? Please is it somebody out there who can help me with this?

Thanx in advance!

Mathias

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In reply to Mathias Larsson

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Mathias Larsson -

(EDIT) I know that it´s possible to make ESSAY-questions, but it would be fine if the teacher could correct a full test of... let´s say 10 ESSAY-questions from one specific student. As it it  now, you only have the possabillity to correct question 1, 2, 3, 4 from all finnished test - it´s confusing for the teachers. For me it´s better for the teachers to correct one full test at the time from one student, then move to the next student and so on... Any clue?

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In reply to Mathias Larsson

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Keith C -

The way I would do this is use a forum instead of the quiz module.  There are different ways to use the forums for things like this.  I know it's intuitive to think you would want the quiz module but you have to think about the user requirements.

 

You can use a Q & A forum and make it such that students can't see each others posts if you like.  Then post each essay question as one of the questions in the forum.

If you use groupings you would also be able to provide feedback on individual essays where the students can't see each others feedback.  The slight drawback here is the feedback does not appear on the grade reports of the students.  However it works very nicely I do similar things in my computer programming course.  I then just have to rate each post for the grade and include the forum grade in the grade category for the assessment.  In this fashion I am able to work on one specific problem at a time from all the students....

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In reply to Mathias Larsson

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

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

You can grade all the questions by one student from the review page for the student's attempt, however it is a bit clunky (lots of pop-up windows).

At the OU we made a 'Grade by student' quiz plugin, that is like the standard Manual grading screen, but shows all teh questions by one student, rather than all student's attempts at one question.

We have not released that add-on to the community yet. We probably could, but that would involved my getting a manager to decide it is OK to do that, so don't hold your breath.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Derek Chirnside -

Tim, this would be great if you could ask a manager.

The problem we have is a single student sits a test late, then it's a lot of clicks to manually mark the quiz.

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

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

Before Christmas, I did eventually remember to ask for permissions, any got it. Unfortunately, then I was too busy to get the code onto github. Then I decided that updating all our question type plugins had to take priority, since people are relying on them and need versions for Moodle 2.6.

However, I have now pushed the code to https://github.com/moodleou/moodle-quiz_gradingstudents. The add-on will also appear at https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=quiz_gradingstudents once it has been approved.

I hope you find this useful.

Note, you need different versions depending on which Moodle version you have. v1.0 (git tag) is for 2.4 and 2.5. v1.1 (same as master at the moment) is for 2.6+. It is only a one-line difference. The nasty quiz maintainer changed an API.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Mathias Larsson -

Thanx alot for your replys. I Will take a look at The forum tweak. I would be very happy if i could get a copy of that quiz-plugin Tim. I'm really stuck at The moment. I can't belive this standard type of quizes not supported in Moodle. 

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In reply to Mathias Larsson

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Keith C -

The Quiz module was never designed for grading though.  It's something where Moodle should be doing the work...I would imagine they put those essay questions in there because people asked for them but they seem pretty useless to me.  The forums actually work quite well once you get it all straight ...

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In reply to Keith C

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Keith C -

Oh another thing I should mention that is nice about the Forums idea is you can use the search feature to search on a lot of different parameters and pull up what you want...so if a student comes along later and does work after you are done grading you can just search for that students posts only and grade them right on one page!

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In reply to Keith C

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Mathias Larsson -

Thanx Keith!

i Will take a closer look at the forum function. Could you please explain step by step how i should set up a forum to work as a quiz?

a big thank you!

/Mathias 

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In reply to Keith C

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Derek Chirnside -

Tim, is Keith's comment true?  "The Quiz module was never designed for grading though"

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

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

I thought it was a bizarre comment, but since I did not really know what it meant, I did not respond.

If you look at the history (http://docs.moodle.org/dev/History_of_the_Moodle_quiz_and_question_bank - I guess I should update that page to include the last 18 months some time) you will see that the quiz was first added to Moodle in version 1.1, at which point it only supported automatically graded questions.

Manually grading was added by Mark Nielsen just after the Moodle 1.5 release, initially just for essay questions, but then shortly before the 1.6 release (and shortly before I took over as quiz maintainer in 2006) it was extended so that any question could be manually graded.

When I re-wrote the question engine in 2009-2010, which went into the 2.1 release, preserving the feature of letting any question be manually graded was very much part of the design, and thinking about it (in addition to the difference between the old adaptive mode on/off) was one of the things that helped me work out the concept of question behaviours.

So, one can certainly say now that the quiz and question engine are designed to support manual, as well as automatic, grading.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Keith C -

Yes.  I did not mean it wasn't meant for grading I meant it was designed to be an interactive experience in which the student would get immediate feedback--some of which would be their grades.  I understand the design has incorporated these things now as manual grading but I am not even sure the effort makes sense.  It's more that the people developing the courses are making requests for these things so the development is going in that direction--but the people making these requests are not systems people they are just going on what makes sense to them.  Then Moodle is being developed with a modular development team.   

What I do is keep things the quiz module can handle itself using the quiz module.  If I am to manually grade something I do it with an assignment or a forum.  It might make sense that the language of "quiz" or test implies writing in a traditional sense but this is not a traditional way to deliver a course and the people are going to adapt it's just a question of how long it takes I guess.  But this whole discussion begs some big questions:

Why would you want to take something that has the capability of providing immediate feedback to students and remove that capability by asking an instructor to interact before the feedback is given?  How do students understand the feedback when it is only given partially and awaits instructor feedback?

 

In my opinion, designed manually graded items provided through the quiz module are contrary to the high-level goals of the module itself and should be delivered using different activities that aim to meet the goals of manually graded items.  I think putting them in the quiz module is like trying to put a round peg in a square hole.

I hope my strong opinions did not offend anyone I'm just trying to add value to the conversation and the application as a whole.

 

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In reply to Keith C

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Joshua Bragg -

Keith, yes the automatic grading feature is wonderful. But I think you are missing the other main point of the quiz: It mimics a test or a quiz that you might give face to face in a classroom.  You can put all manner of limitations on the a quiz attempt that you simply cannot put on forums or assignments (time limits, random questions, passwords, allowed IP addresses for invigilated exams).  I remember many tests and exams through the course of my education where I had timed essays to write.  Most often these were in English and History classes. 

Also, in the case of tests, I would not want to provide feedback to one student while another student still has to take the test.  That is asking for the students to cheat.  If you're worried about students getting partial feedback then just block the delivery of feedback until the quiz has closed and you've had time to write the feedback.  

I understand where you're coming from.  Most of my use of the quiz module is really in the form of an interactive homework checking system similar to WebAssign and others.  But you're missing that the quiz module can be used for an entire range of use cases, from proctored final exams to formative practice work.

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In reply to Joshua Bragg

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Keith C -

Josh;

I hear you on all those things.  I think where I am coming from is questioning combining the two things together into one quiz.  And then when you break out essay questions into separate quizzes why use the quiz module at all when there are better approaches.

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In reply to Joshua Bragg

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

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

Interesting discussion.

Actually there are two distinctions here:

1. The medium used for the quiz? Do students read the questions on paper and put their responses on paper, or do they see the questions on-screen and enter their response with keyboard and mouse.

2. Are the responses marked by human or computer.

All 4 combinations are possible. (Remember these http://www.fotolia.com/id/39241911.)

So, you could say that the fundamental thing in Moodle is the on-screen bit, not the computer marked bit.

However, the computer marked thing is very important, because it opens up a new possibility: Giving the feedback instantly, when the student still has the thoughts about the question fresh in their mind. And that opens up new new possibilities like the Interactive behaviour, where if the student is wrong, we don't just tell them the right answer, we give them the opportunity to fix their own mistake.

So, computer marking is important, but it is not the only thing. You may want a computer marked exam where the feedback is still done in the old way: Everyone gets the feedback (if any) at the same time well after the quiz is taken. In this case the computer just saves you a lot of work shifting bits of paper around.

There is a spectrum between a quiz, which in the extreme case is a lot of short questions, and an assignment which in the extreme case is a single long essay. Yes, there are different tools in Moodle that let you choose how to do things at all points along that spectrum. One thing that the quiz gives you is the statistics report. That is some psychometrics to help establish the validity of your assessment. If that is useful to you, it is an argument in favour of the quiz.

Anyway, I think this shows there is sufficient case for the quiz to support human marking as well as computer marking, although of course it is not correct for teacher to use the quiz for every activity.

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In reply to Keith C

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Derek Chirnside -

I have had a little dabble at working on this grader view question in April.  I set up a tracker item here https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-39229 Tim closed as a duplicate of the one here: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-31581

I wrote it up in this thread: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=211536 

What happened was that I tried a bit of actual marking, it was very scrolling intensive and a very busy screen and I was curious if the OU had a better inhouse interface.

There are several related issues that we have come up against here.

  1. There is no grading view that allows you to mark a single student's quiz on one page - the only option as Tim describes the click intensive option marking each question one at a time.  OU has a cure.
  2. Sometimes what we want is a "short free response" question - to distinguish from the Moodle short answer (which has no element of free response).  Essay question is the closest.  But if we use the essay question, the marking interface is a very full page, repetition of the question, difficult to mark comfortably.  I hypothesised a minimalist view here
  3. The feedback issue.  I see that this is really the province of the assignment module, so I didn't raise it.  I know exactly what I'd like in quiz: the opportunity to respond once per quiz to a student.  But I thought this was mixing the metaphor, and I'm sure Tim will regard this as feature creep.

I hear what you are saying Keith.  But I think using a forum in this way is probably just as much of a hack as trying to use the essay question to do short free response answers.  I'm not quite convinced yet about the forum approach.  smile

I'm hoping Tim's OU manager will release the code.  

-Derek

 

 

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Keith C -

Derek;

I completely agree with you!  After I added my idea about the forum I thought, in this users case, they probably are better off with assignments.  I use the forums a lot and what I really think is beneficial is the students can see each others work.  I can easily make it so they can't see others work until they submit and they also can't edit their posts.  So I see the work they submitted and then I require them to work together to arrive at solutions.  It's a great learning process in the course I am teaching...and it would apply to essay work as well.  Essentially I am having the students complete workshops.  Some day the workshop module may replace this process but it is not able to right now.  I also could see a wiki being used this way were it gradable.  It all depends on the nature of the material I guess....

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Joshua Bragg -

Tim, I have said this before but I'll say it again.

You've said before that you try very hard not to abuse your position as quiz maintainer to force Moodle to move towards what the OU wants.  While I respect that, I wish you would abuse your position some.  There are a number of "reports" and other things that would do well to be included in standard Moodle.  This grading report is a prime example, as is the edit dates report and the group editing report. 

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In reply to Joshua Bragg

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Mathias Larsson -

Interesting diskussion and a huge thanx for the time you spent on my issue. So if we get back to my original question about how to handle a quiz like i want to do, what should i do? I really want to put all the questions in the questions bank for futher use in other courses so i dont think the forum is the best thing for me to use. Thank you anyway Keith!

Derek - The dropdown grading list is possible to get that code or is it totally closed?

And is it any chance to get Tims plugin?

I´m a bit confused right now.

Thanx again!

Mathias

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In reply to Mathias Larsson

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Barbara Taylor -

Mathias,

Our faculty like having essay questions in with MC.  The system grades the MC and they grade the essay questions.  They prefer to grade one essay question at a time so they can grade in the same mindset instead of bouncing all around.  The Results in 2.5 make it much easier to grade the essay questions.  You can show one student at a time or set a different number of students at a time.  You can set them to be in random or alpha order.  There is a box for comments and a box for the score.  Our faculty like it because they can grade one essay question and then come back to grade the others without having to grade them all at once.  

Barbara

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In reply to Barbara Taylor

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Derek Chirnside -

Barbara, just out of interest.  Looking at the actual use of the quiz with essays of your faculty.

  1. How many "essay questions" do your lecturers have in a quiz?  Is it just one?
  2. Do they ever uses essay questions as 'short answers'?
  3. Your comment: "They prefer to grade one essay question at a time so they can grade in the same mindset instead of bouncing all around"  True,  I think this will be the general usual best practice.  However, what happens if one student gets run over by a buss and has to sit the quiz the next day?  Isn't it better to have Both options?

Educationally, free form short answers I find really good for some of our teaching.

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Mathias Larsson -

Derek wrote -"Barbara, just out of interest.  Looking at the actual use of the quiz with essays of your faculty.

  1. How many "essay questions" do your lecturers have in a quiz?  Is it just one?
  2. Do they ever uses essay questions as 'short answers'?
  3. Your comment: "They prefer to grade one essay question at a time so they can grade in the same mindset instead of bouncing all around"  True,  I think this will be the general usual best practice.  However, what happens if one student gets run over by a buss and has to sit the quiz the next day?  Isn't it better to have Both options?

Educationally, free form short answers I find really good for some of our teaching."

How can we together develop a plugin/addon who put all Essay-questions/answers from one student?

 

 

 

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In reply to Barbara Taylor

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Mathias Larsson -

I know what you mean Barbara but in my case it´s a total diffrent teaching situation. The students study one by one 100 % on distance. Whe have no classes, every day we have new students who start different kind of courses. All results from our student will be corrected and graded manually from question 1-X. So my opinion is... for 100% distance induvidial courses this quiz-system does´nt work satisfactory. Some small tweaks and it would be good for me (and ofcourse others too, read about this issue on other websites) also. Thats why I have to develop my own plugin, Tim already have a working plugin but unfortunatly I can´t get it.....

 

Thanx for answering Barbra!

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In reply to Joshua Bragg

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Mathias Larsson -

I totally agree with that!

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In reply to Mathias Larsson

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Derek Chirnside -

OK, Tracker item: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-43310

"Provide manual grading view for all questions for a single student".  If this is of interest to you, feel free to vote.

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Manual grading and correction of quizes?

by Bhargava S -

HI Tim,

 I am a new moodle developer. I have a requirement wherein a teacher is to receive notification, whenever a quiz with questions needing manual grading is submitted, to the effect that the teacher has manual gradings pending.

Would you or anyone else be able to spare time and guide as to how to go about ?

Using Moodle 2.8.5


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