Lessons - MySQL storage of student answers

Lessons - MySQL storage of student answers

by Ron Raney -
Number of replies: 5

Moodle 2.5.2+

Hello. I am using the Lesson module in a course that I created. I have a question about the different question types available from within the Lesson module. I am using multichoice pages, content pages and essay pages for my lessons. I have gone through these lessons logged in as mock students and now I am trying to find my answers in the MySQL database. Basically, I cannot find data for the attempts or answers for the multichoice and essay questions. If anyone can tell me the tables to query for these types of questions I would appreciate it. I get empty sets when I querymdl_question_attempts and mdl_question_multichoice. I think mdl_lesson_attempts has some of the answers for multichoice, but I'm not sure.  I don't see mdl_question_essay anywhere. I really want up-to-date information about the structure of the Moodle database. A lot of the documentation that I have found is out of date or just not helpful. Basically, I am interested in knowing more about exactly which tables hold the data that students enter in the Lessons. 

 

Thanks!

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ron Raney

Re: Lessons - MySQL storage of student answers

by Joseph Rézeau -
Core developers की तस्वीर Particularly helpful Moodlers की तस्वीर Plugin developers की तस्वीर Testers की तस्वीर Translators की तस्वीर

Hello Ron,

The students' answers are saved in the useranswer field of the (mdl_)lesson_attempts table.

screenshot #1

Just out of curiosity, why do you need to know the contents of those tables? Are you planning to add a new feature to the Lesson activity?

Joseph

EDIT.- Please note that some of the students' answers are serialized. For instance, an essay with student answer "hello world!" would be stored as this string in the useranswer field:

O:8:"stdClass":6:{s:4:"sent";i:0;s:6:"graded";i:0;s:5:"score";i:0;s:6:"answer";s:19:"<p>hello world!</p>";s:12:"answerformat";s:1:"1";s:8:"response";s:0:"";}

which, once un-serialized would look like this:

stdClass Object (

    [sent] => 0

    [graded] => 0

    [score] => 0

    [answer] =>

            hello world!

    [answerformat] => 1

    [response] =>

)

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Lessons - MySQL storage of student answers

by Ron Raney -

Ok thanks! It was the serialized data that was throwing me off. That must be the essay answers. I will have to learn how to "un-serialize" unless exporting does that for you. 

I am using Moodle as part of a study - not for education per se. We are randomizing individuals as part of a web-based smoking cessation program. The data must be collected and exported for analysis - since it is for research purposes. Moodle is a great fit for our needs. We decided to use a Virtual Learning platform because it allows us to present material, ask questions, and access all kinds of information about the participants. I hope that answers your question. I am not really into modifying Moodle yet. I've only really modified the themes and added snippets of code. And I am trying to develop queries to get the data out of the database on the back-end. I'm sure I will use the front-end options, but I want to have my bases covered. The "email graded essays" hasn't been working for me - it draws an error or doesn't actually email me anything. I haven't really troubleshooted that yet. Another problem for another day?

Thanks for your help!

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ron Raney

Re: Lessons - MySQL storage of student answers

by Lynette McDougal -

Hey Ron

I'm just wondering if you are still working on your Moodle Lesson and how you are handling it.

I have been put in charge of formatting a Moodle course for research purposes. The materials include fundamental engineering concepts and simulations. Throughout the lesson, students are asked essay questions (and a few multiple choice questions) as an attempt to capture their understanding of the materials. Ideally I'd like to be able to download (in a spreadsheet) all student responses for data collection purposes. I can easily download all responses into a spreadsheet for a Moodle Quiz activity, but I can't seem to figure out how to do this for a lesson activity. 

Your situation seemed similar to mine, so I thought I'd start here.

Thanks.

Lynette

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Lynette McDougal

Re: Lessons - MySQL storage of student answers

by Linda Bussell -

Hi Lynette,

I'm trying to do the same thing. Did you ever find the answer to your question?

Thanks,

Linda

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Linda Bussell

Re: Lessons - MySQL storage of student answers

by Jean-Michel Védrine -

Hello Ron, Lynette and Linda,

I think the right solution to this problem would be a button to download students' responses to lesson essay questions with a select menu to choose the file format for the download.

Something like this:

download lesson essay responses

But please note this is just an image I have made to show how it could look, I have not yet written the needed code to add this feature.

And even if this feature is integrated into Moodle in the future it will go in a future version, it will not be backported to older versions.

Unfortunately, for now I have other more urgent things to fix in the lesson module for instance MDL-43386 and MDL-45679 are IMHO really needed. It would also be good to have a way to give time/date extensions to individual students (this is MDL-7315 and MDL-27042 and is in fact the most voted tracker issue for the lesson component but it needs quite a lot of work)

I am a teacher so I work on the lesson module in my free time and my goal is to solve one or more lesson bug per week but so far I am quite satisfied of the results even if I have not started to work on the most complex issues मुस्कान .

Unfortunately the number of open issues for the lesson module is quite big!

Average of ratings: -