Should we save attempts to question in practice lessons ?

Should we save attempts to question in practice lessons ?

by Jean-Michel Védrine -
Number of replies: 6

Another post to ask people on this forum about changes in the lesson activity smile But since I started working on the lesson activity, I always wanted to associate lesson's users to be sure that what I do is what the Community wants and even if my posts don't get a lot of answers, I will continue to do so.

So this post is about changing the way lesson code works for Practice lesson. Currently for a practice lesson student's attempt to question aren't saved in the database (well in fact this is not quite true, attempts are saved, but they are deleted later in the code but that doesn't change the problem)

You can verify this easily:

  • Create a lesson with "Practice lesson" set to "Yes"
  • Login as a student and attempt the lesson
  • Repeat previous step for 2 or 3 students
  • Connect again as a teacher and go to Report page of the lesson
  • You will see "No attempts have been made on this lesson"
This has been reported several times in the tracker and there is an open issue for this: MDL-18966
Dan Poltawski recently fixed a bug (MDL-20304) that practice lessons with a non zero grade were creating a grade in the gradebook, now practice lessons grades are not appearing in the gradebook.
I think that this free the way for a change: practice lessons should behave exactly like other lesson except the grades are not reported in the gradebook, but internal grades and attempts should be saved exactly like non-practice lessons.
That would have the big advantage that teachers could monitor students progress for practice lessons.

I am unable to see if this change would cause any harm to local customizations or have a negative impact for some lesson users, so please comment ...
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Re: Should we save attempts to question in practice lessons ?

by Jean-Michel Védrine -
Hello Ron,
I think you have not understand what I was asking. Practice lesson should not be stored in the gradebook and this is clearly stated in the documentation and also in the help for this setting.
The fact they were in older Moodle versions was clearly a bug and this is now corrected in recent versions.
I am not proposing to revert this change
What I was asking is if student answers to practice lessons should be stored in the database (currently they are deleted at the end of the attempt to the practice lesson).
If my change is agreed the only difference between a practice lesson and a non practice lesson is that grades for the practice lesson will not appear in the gradebook.
But they will be available if you go to the report page of the lesson. And you will be able to see all their answers clicking on a student attempt.


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Re: Should we save attempts to question in practice lessons ?

by Stephen Bourget -
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My vote is yes to this improvement.  Reporting in the lesson module seems a bit unpredictable.  Right now attempts are only listed under the reports if one of these conditions are met:

For graded lessons:
1A. The student has completed the lesson and the lesson contains at least 1 question page.
1B. The student has started the lesson and has answered at least 1 question page.

For practice lessons:
1C. The student has started the lesson and has answered at least 1 question page.

It seems these combinations don't work:

For a graded lesson:
2A. The student has completed the lesson and the lesson does not contain at least 1 question page.
2B. The student has started the lesson and has not answered at least 1 question page.

For practice lessons:
2C. The student has completed the lesson and has answered at least 1 question page.
2D. The student has completed the lesson and the lesson does not contain at least 1 question page.
2E. The student has started the lesson and has not answered at least 1 question page.

Ideally if you fix 2C as part of MDL-18966 and MDL-48881 gets fixed (which should address scenarios 2A, 2B,2D, and 2E), then teachers will be able to see their students progress in any type of lesson.

-Steve

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In reply to Stephen Bourget

Re: Should we save attempts to question in practice lessons ?

by Jean-Michel Védrine -

Hello Stephen

There is one thing I don't understand:

If the lesson don't contain at least one question page (2A., 2B. and 2D.) it is not possible to see any progress on the "Reports" page because this page only report answers (and grades) to question pages.

IMHO to see what content pages they have seen (and if they have completed the lesson) it would be necessary to implement a brand new report based on the lesson_branch table. This seems quite interesting but I don't think we should mix this with existing reports.

This is why I hadn't commented on MDL-48881, I don't clearly understand how it could be done in the existing report.

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In reply to Jean-Michel Védrine

Re: Should we save attempts to question in practice lessons ?

by Isabelle Langeveld -

I am really happy with this question Jean-Michel,

I already found out that answers aren't saved in the Lesson if you set it to Practice. I am using the Lesson for a writing exercise. It is an exercise so I don't want grades in the grade book, I really don't even want points given for right or wrong, because in writing there is no clear right/wrong. The open questions are not graded by a teacher. The student gets Q2 in the Lesson where he can compare his answer to Q1 with 3 models. Each model shows a different response. In the next open question the student can write a new version of his answer.

After ending and saving the lesson, I want the student to be able to reread his 2 versions and I want him to be able to discuss them with a teacher, so the answers should be saved.

Now I can only do this by saying on each page: this is for practice, but they still see points.

So yes please! Save answers without sending a score/grade to the Gradebook.

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In reply to Isabelle Langeveld

Re: Should we save attempts to question in practice lessons ?

by AL Rachels -
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Hi Isabelle,

If you have the Journal addon installed, or can add it, you might want to try this type of writing exercise in it. It is a very simple module that gives students a text area to type in like an essay question, and can be set for no grade so nothing shows in the grade book. It can be set to allow editing for days - up to 14, or weeks, or no limit. The teacher is always able to see what the student has typed and provide feedback.

I have used Journals a bunch this year for writing assignments where I want the students to go back and refine there writing.

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