Moodle in English: Moodle Lesson Jump to Same Page

I use the Moodle Lesson extensively in multiple courses as a timed, graded activity with multiple choice questions. There is feedback for all of the incorrect answers and the feedback directs the student to select another answer. The maintenance is defined to stay on that question (an incorrect answer jumps back to the same question page) until the student does select the correct answer. The correct answer also has feedback with the feedback reaffirming why that answer is correct and some additional information that may be needed in a future question. The maintenance for the correct answer then allows the student to go on to the next question by jumping to the next question page. If the student chooses the correct answer initially, they get a point. If they choose an incorrect answer first, they get zero points. I have presented this activity nationally and regionally at several professional conferences and one eLearning regional conference and received numerous compliments on the instructional design and how students aren’t just moved on to the next question.

A couple of months ago, we had a Moodle upgrade and this functionality no longer works. Students choosing a wrong answer are automatically jumped to the next page. This is problematic as they aren’t encouraged to think their way through wrong answers until they ultimately choose the correct answer. The Moodle site administrators at my university suggested that I create a complex branching tree for each individual question using duplicate question pages for each of the four incorrect answers. I understand a primary purpose of the Moodle Lesson is the ability to create such branching activities; however, originally, any individualized remediation in my lessons was included in the feedback for each incorrect answer rather than actual branching.

If we try to allow students multiple attempts at a single question, they’re awarded points up until they’ve used the maximum number of attempts allowed. If we allow the option to try a question again, after answering incorrectly, the student has two options: “Yes, I'd like to try again” and “No, I just want to go on to the next question.” If students click on the "No, I just want to go on to the next question,” they wouldn't necessarily have to determine the correct answer before moving on, which means they could miss essential feedback.

Creating a duplicate (or triplicate, etc.) of each question is a laborious task and I am reaching out to the Moodle community to see if anyone has any other solutions to restoring the functionality that we used to have. After the recent upgrade, in order for the Moodle Lesson to have the same functionality, I need to create duplicate questions (for hundreds of questions in a number of lessons) for each incorrect answer so students can then choose another answer.

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Re: Moodle Lesson Jump to Same Page

by Chris Collman - Friday, 22 January 2016, 11:25 PM

Hi Susan,

What version of Moodle did you run and what version is your upgrade?

I like the way you are using lesson questions. In my opinion,they should work as you described. I would be frustrated by "work arounds" as well. Especially on a Lesson I have fine tuned over the years, which worked perfectly, thank you very much.

I think it is a setting in the Lesson module which has changed during the upgrade. Did you look at them closely, especially the Flow Control section? It sounds like the max number of attempts is set to 1. In that case, a student selecting any wrong answer, would jump to the next question in the edit order.

The max attempts prevents a student from being in an endless loop on the same page if they continuously answer the question incorrectly. I think the standard Lesson code allows 1 to10 attempts but not unlimited attempts.

You might want a higher number than 10, but it is better than 1 Hope this helps.

Chris

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Re: Moodle Lesson Jump to Same Page

by susan galindo - Saturday, 23 January 2016, 7:18 AM

Hello Chris,

Thank you for responding. It was my understanding that we were using version 2.9 prior to the upgrade and after the upgrade, I was told that the version was "2.9.2.plus something".

The Flow Control section has the same options as before and before the upgrade was set to 1 maximum number of attempts. A student selecting a wrong answer was not directed to the next page because the jump for the wrong answer directed them to the same question page (using the question page title). Even though the maximum number of attempts was set to 1 attempt, they remained on the same page until they chose the correct answer which jumped them to the next page. I was told by our Moodle administrators that the previous functionality that we were using was based on a bug. Is it possible for the Lesson path to be followed and the jump be made to override the maximum number of attempts? I guess what I am trying to say, if this was a "bug", it worked for us and we would like it back.

If the Lesson follows the Lesson path, how is this an endless loop? If you have a Lesson Question with 4 answer options, and 3 of them jump to the same page and one (the correct answer) jumps to the next page, this is not an "endless loop". We call this learning to think critically.

We tried increasing the maximum number of attempts. We found when increasing the maximum number of attempts to 10, a student could answer incorrectly the first time, incorrectly the second time, etc. and then answer correctly on the tenth attempt and get a point and get pushed to the next question without seeing critical feedback.

Unless there is something that I am missing with the upgrade, the Lesson no longer follows the specified path. Instead, the student goes to the next question because of the maximum number of attempts.

Is there anything that I can do to restore the previous functionality without making duplicate questions? I'm open to suggestions and I appreciate any responses.

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Re: Moodle Lesson Jump to Same Page

by Chris Collman - Sunday, 24 January 2016, 1:12 AM

Hi Susan,

Thanks for the further explanation. Makes more sense to me. There is going to have to be a code tweak.

I do understand that different educational methods have different requirements.

Qualifier to what follows: I do not understand the finer points of php or Moodle coding. I just tweak things and see what happens. I was able to change the 1-10 attempts to 1-100 attempts. And change the default that shows in a new lesson from 1 to 42 (the answer to the ultimate question). If someone tweaks the code, they do it at their own risk.

I would suggest that somebody tweak the /mod/lesson/mod_form.php file. I did a search for maxattempts. There is a number array being defined around line 245. I put $i= 100.

A few lines below that is a setDefault ('maxattempts', 1); line. I changed the 1 to 42. I tested my Moodle 2.91. The Flow Control Lesson settings in a new lesson reflected this change.

Frankly I do not know what the override_form.php file does, but there are similar lines there. Just to be cautious, I made the mod_form and override_form lines the same values (ie 100 and 42).

My experience says this will not change the values which were entered in an existing lesson. Because of your "bug", you did not change the default which was 1, so that is what is entered. One of your very good friends and colleagues might write a MySQL query to change all the existing lesson settings to 100 after the code tweak. Or you could go back into each lesson after the tweak and change the value

Your colleagues might know this next bit. I think the form is the way information is entered into the MySQL data. I will bet other parts of the Lesson code do not care what the Lesson setting form array happens to be, just what the actual value that is entered into the MySQL Lesson table for maxattempts.

All my instincts tell me not to disable the code that looks at max attempts. There is probably a more elegant solution but this is my dabbler one.

Chris

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Re: Moodle Lesson Jump to Same Page

by susan galindo - Wednesday, 27 January 2016, 7:07 AM

Wow! I'm a faculty user and all of this is way over my "dabbling" ability. I appreciate your efforts, but I don't have any authority to tweak the code.

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Re: Moodle Lesson Jump to Same Page

by Jean-Michel Védrine - Sunday, 24 January 2016, 7:13 AM

Hello susan,

My personal guess is that changing a lesson setting could solve your problem. Lesson unfortunately has too many interfering settings (and at least one of them is not working as it should IMHO because it has been wrongly "fixed" by somebody else)

But it is difficult to give you a precise solution without looking at what your current settings are, and how the question jumps are set.

Would it be possible to mail me privately a short sample of one of your lessons and explain me precisely how I can reproduce the problem and what would be the right working (this is needed because my time to work on this problem is quite limited) ?

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Re: Moodle Lesson Jump to Same Page

by susan galindo - Wednesday, 27 January 2016, 8:09 AM

Prior to October 2015, the lesson settings shown in lesson_original.pdf worked as previously described (we were able to jump students to the same question page until they answered correctly, with only their first answer counting for points even when the max attempts per question was set to 1).

After October 2015, this no longer worked. The max attempts now overrides the question jumps.

I've attached a PDF of the new lesson settings (lesson_updated.pdf) and a backup of a new lesson with the duplicate questions workaround (lesson_updated.mbz). I've also included one of the original lessons (lesson_original.mbz) that used to have the functionality that I feel supports a more robust learning environment where students have to think through the questions until they can answer correctly. The original lesson backup is from Moodle 2.7 when this functionality worked. The same functionality appeared to work in Moodle 2.9 up until around October 2015 (when our administrators updated us to "2.9.2.plus something").

Here's a list of what I would like (and what I used to have) from the lesson:

Timed and graded activity where students can answer questions multiple times until they get it correct.
Students are jumped to the next question only when they've answered correctly.
Ability to keep ongoing score hidden.
Ability to deliver immediate feedback for correct and incorrect answers.
Functioning HTML capabilities in the question and feedback editors. [We've had issues with the ability to add (or not) images in the feedback editors.]
Students limited to a single attempt without the ability to retake the lesson and change their answers.

lesson_original.mbz