Now available: "find questions by text search" plugin

Now available: "find questions by text search" plugin

by Ray Morris -
Number of replies: 8

There is now a plugin available to find questions in the question bank by searching the text.  For example, you could find all of the questions (and answers) that contain the word "chocolate".  This works in the Question Bank interface and in the quiz editing interface where you select questions to add.






It can be found in the Plugins directory as local/ Search Questions.


Also visible in the screenshot i an upcoming plugin to find questions that haven't been used in a quiz yet, which can be useful for finding questions to add to a quiz - no need to look at ones you've already added. That plugin will be headed to the directory later when I get time to clean up the coding style (whitepace, etc.), write a README file, etc.  Also coming soon is a plugin to find questions by Tags. That's also working, but needs style cleanup, a readme, etc. Volunteers accepted for that polishing work. smile



Average of ratings: Useful (9)
In reply to Ray Morris

Re: Now available: "find questions by text search" plugin

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

Ray, looks interesting.  I am going to look at this plugin soon.

One need that I have is to search my question bank for unused questions, and then delete them.  I would like to do this by category, by Frontpage, and by System.  I would really like to clean up my moodle's question bank.  Maybe your utility does this, but if not, can you suggest another method?

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Now available: "find questions by text search" plugin

by Ray Morris -

Rick, I am attaching a zip file of our used/unused question plugin which should make deleting unused questions very quick and easy.  On the standard question bank page, you'll see a new dropdown where you can choose "only unused questions".  You can then tick the checkbox just above the question list to "select all", then delete using the button at the bottom of the page.


These plugins work with Moodle 2.7 and 2.8. Please understand this plugin has only been used by one organization so far. It works for us.  It has not been extensively peer reviewed and tested.  Therefore, you may want to spot-check the results before doing the bulk delete.  You may want to run a backup of your question bank first. 


Average of ratings: Useful (4)
In reply to Ray Morris

Re: Now available: "find questions by text search" plugin

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

Thanks much.  For the next week, I am very busy getting my courses up and running for this semester.  After that, I will be able to take a look at these add-ins.  I have some experimental moodles where I can give them a try.

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In reply to Ray Morris

Re: Now available: "find questions by text search" plugin

by Ahmed Ibrahim -

Thank you Ray,

I was  just searching for such a plugin like this yesterday

Many thanks to Rick also, who told me about this plugin

I installed it locally and it is working

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In reply to Ray Morris

Re: Now available: "find questions by text search" plugin

by Germán Valero -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

I just installed the 'Search Questions' plugin for my Moodle 2.7.4 local server and it looks nice and works as expected. But it has two hard-coded English language strings, and I think it would be better if they were declared as variables, so that they would be available for translation at AMOS (https://lang.moodle.org). The strings are:

Text search
Search answers

I (not being a programmer) naively think they would be easy to change and it would improve the plugin for all Moodle sites using languages other than English.

I think this plugin is a very good improvement for the management of large question banks (fairly common in many academic Moodle sites) and would merit a discussion about consideration for inclusion into Moodle core. I'd vote for it, as it is both very useful and small smile

Congratulations to Ray Morris for contributing this plugin. I'll be looking forward to his future plugins.

And I'll click on 'Useful' for his other posts (see the Particularly helpful Moodler calculation amendments thread), because I think he deserves to be awarded a 'Particularly helpful Moodler' badge, as I (as many others will surely agree) have found his plugin will be particularly helpful for my University Moodle site smile
Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Germán Valero

Re: Now available: "find questions by text search" plugin

by Germán Valero -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
The New version of the "Search Questions" plugin available at https://github.com/MorrisR2/moodle_local_searchquestions has fixed the hard-coded English language strings issue reported above. smile
I hope this new version will soon be available at the Moodle plugins directory, so that these English language strings can be translated in AMOS.
Congratulations to Ray Morris smile
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In reply to Ray Morris

Re: Now available: "find questions by text search" plugin

by David Price -

Hi all

Is there news on a version coming out for moodle V2.9? This feature is really useful and will be critical for our moodle course


Kind regards


David

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