Clusters

Clusters

by Michael Shea -
Number of replies: 5

Latest version of Moodle 2.8 something.

In the options on the Jump list for Cluster, Moodle docs says there is one for Random Question within a Cluster.  I don't have that option, I have Random Question within a Content Page, or Unseen Question within a Cluster.  Having selected one of those, when I return to the Cluster edit screen the Jump box has reverted to Next Page.  The jump showing in the condensed list of pages for the cluster is the first question of the cluster. 


Will Random Question within a Content page work if all of the cluster content is question pages?

రేటింగుల సగటు: -
In reply to Michael Shea

Re: Clusters

by Mary Cooch -
Documentation writers బొమ్మ Moodle HQ బొమ్మ Particularly helpful Moodlers బొమ్మ Testers బొమ్మ Translators బొమ్మ

Hello there. I think you are talking about the Lesson module so I am going to move this discussion to the Lesson module forum.

In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Clusters

by Mary Cooch -
Documentation writers బొమ్మ Moodle HQ బొమ్మ Particularly helpful Moodlers బొమ్మ Testers బొమ్మ Translators బొమ్మ

Hello Michael. Apologies for the late reply (by me) to this question. Did you manage to resolve it in the end? I am planning on updating and clarifying the lesson cluster documentation this week so hopefully that might help you.

In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Clusters

by Michael Shea -

Hi Mary

Thanks for the response.

No, it never got resolved.  The problem was a missing item on the drop-down list of options, details of which escape me at present - I think it was that it offered a random selection from content pages but not from questions, although the whole point of a cluster is to cluster question pages.  It seems to work by selecting the page option.  Mind you, since then we've upgraded to 2.8 so it might now be OK, but we have finished creating the course so it will be the next course in which we'll discover any changes.

In reply to Michael Shea

Re: Clusters

by Jean-Michel Védrine -

Hello Michael,

The cluster jump should be set to "Unseen questions within a cluster", this is the default when you create a cluster page and you should not change it or the cluster will not work.

It is true that cluster only work for questions page not for content pages and to my best knowledge it has always been like that even in Moodle 1.9.

Even more if you put  a content page between the cluster ad end of cluster pages it will alter the cluster working, this is because content page mark the beginning of a subcluster (see https://docs.moodle.org/28/en/Lesson_clusters#Sub-Clusters) so you should not do that if you don't want to use subclusters.

As I said to Mary the intended purpose of a cluster is to present a group of question pages in a random order to all students. No more no less

And I can add that the subcluster intended purpose is to present only one question page in a group of question pages to the student

So for instance if you have

Q1, C1, Q2, Q3, B1, Q4, Q5, Q6, EB1, Q7, EC1, Q8 (this example is extracted from the documentation)

where C means cluster, B means content page (that were named branch tables in Moodle 1.9), EB means end of branch and EC means end of cluster

  • all student will see Q1 as first question and Q8 as last question
  • all students will see Q2, Q3 and Q7 but we don't know in which order
  • each student will see only one question picked at random among Q4, Q5 and Q6 and we don't know at what moment it will be shown to them between Q1 and Q8
  • All students will see exactly 6 questions
  • neither C1, B1, EB1 and EC1 will be displayed to student (Yes the content page B1 will not be displayed !)
Last thing, unfortunately in Moodle 2.8.4+, your problem when editing a cluster page that the jump is changed to "Next page" and the cluster is broken is still not fixed (it is already fixed in the future Moodle 2.9) but hopefully it will be fixed this week or next one because the fix is currently in integration (you can look at MDL-48897 to follow the integration process and know when it is closed).

Note to all Moodle users: if you are interested in using clusters and subclusters in your lessons it is mandatory that you upgrade your Moodle to a very very recent release because I found numerous bugs while working on them.