Hello Moodlers,
I am announcing here that we (HQ) are starting work on an update to the assignment grading user interfaces, aiming to get this improvement into Moodle 3.1. A draft spec is here: https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Assignment_Grading_UX. The implementation will be a bit exploratory - and the end result will likely look a bit different to the screen shots in that specification. Overall aim is to provide a UI that makes grading faster and easier by reducing page loads, and making things easier to find and use.
Regards, Damyon
"Using the old ‘assignfeedback_pdf’ plugin, markers had the option of saving their annotations as a draft" - technically this button did nothing at all, it was just there to make teachers feel a bit better about closing the window (all changes were saved as you went along, they just weren't visible to the students until you clicked on the 'save and generate pdf' button).
According to the recent survey
http://research.moodle.net/71/1/Plugins%20Usage%20Survey%202015%20Report.pdf
Assignment is the second most used plugin after quiz. Teachers and academics spend a great deal of time in the grading interface so it seems a really good place to focus on the interface. Extra power to your elbow/fingers Damyon.
Do we have a broader proposal as well? One that would unify the grading experience across all gradeable activities? I realize you are staring with Assignment, as a proof of concept. Will it also be used to determine what changes need to be made in the fundamental architecture to allow for a "generic" solution?
mike
Damyon,
I love the mock-up! and the ideas with the updating of the assignment grading UX.
Like Mike - I'd love to see this applied consistently across all the activities.
I do have a concern with answering the "How do I get back to my course?" question. I can see the link to the course on the top right, but in every other place, this is either in breadcrumbs or the Navigation block, which generally defaults on the top left. I might suggest keeping the breadcrumbs across the top - although I'm not sure how that works with the responsive design.
I was also wondering about having grading/marking guides and rubrics display in more of a full screen (like the PDF annotations). I see the pop-out/expand in the description, but generally with these types of grading it helps to see the whole picture. Not to mention the annoyance of expanding/popping out the rubric/guide for every student.
I'm excited to see how this exploration moves into a great update!
Lisa
This kind of UX would be a huge improvement over the first, but I wonder a few things taking a look at the mockup:
- How expandable is the viewing area or is it now full page? The current PDF annotation tool presents a very small window for looking at documents. If the new one is to be of comparable size, all of the extra space given to grading will limit viewing size even more.
- Would there be support for rubrics in the view somehow? Nearly all of our courses grade on them.
- Any plans to go beyond PDFs? Frankly asking students to work in PDFs or Save in PDFs is a user experience nightmare.
The prototype is up now - you can find it at prototype.moodle.net. This is not the final code as it is still being reviewed - but it is "close".
The login details are on the front page and the site is reset every 2 hours.
Have fun!
(Edited by Mary Cooch - original submission Friday, 4 March 2016, 5:10 AM)
Damyon,
I am really liking the work you've done on this interface. I especially like the obvious "grade" buttons.
I like the converting to PDF option to use the annotation tools.
I noticed on the feedback file and rubric popouts the arrows icon should point in (as in "go back in" rather that "go to full screen." Nice work here! I was wondering how the rubric would work here - very nice!
I did wonder "How do I get out of here?" I might suggest the options at the bottom to save changes, reset, save and show next, cancel (return to the view all submissions page).
I also have concerns in terms of accessibility as there are still major issues with the PDF annotate (See MDL-44081) and the rubric grading (See MDL-38869 )
I am excited to see this!
Lisa
I would concur with Lisa on the accessibility as well. Previously PDF annotation was an optional feature in the grading workflow. With this new interface and the conversation of HTML (which is highly accessible by its nature) to PDF (which is accessible with a lot of work) you are now moving an issue that had a work around (don't use PDF annotation) to something that doesn't. Unless the workaround is to not use the new assignment grader ux.
My recommendation here is that you do not auto convert HTML to PDF and that auto convert should be reserved only for file formats that can't be displayed on the web inline like Word and Powerpoint. Although if the APIs and renderers are done in a pluggable manner the office 365 integration could allow Word and Power point files from office 365 submissions to be displayed instead of the PDF annotator on the left hand side. In fact if done pluggable by file type someone in the community or a Moodle partner could create a crocodoc or scribd integration allowing an institution to replace the PDF annotator with a 3rd party plugin of their choice.
This is seems like a mild improvement over the previous assignment grading screen. Moving the pdf annotation to front and center is great and the orientation of the screen is a positive on the desktop.
I would recommend some improvements however.
- Add a demo of how this works with an advanced grading method. Definitely rubric and also marking guide.
- Allow navigation between assignment so that as a teacher I don't have to leave this screen to grade all assignments that need to be graded currently in my course.
- Move the grade and feedback information above the submission status. I would even consider having the submission status data as something that can be hidden. The most common thing a teacher will want to do in this screen is grade.
- Separate submission comments out of that expand collapse area to be its own separate conversation. It will allow for a better flow of the discussion of the submission than the way it currently is setup buried in a table. I am also guessing that this will be a problem for screen reader users to find.
- Fix the interface on mobile devices at least a tablet should be able to use the interface in some meaningful way. Right now this is what i see in landscape on my ipad on first page load
- Support more than just Assignments. Add support for the same interface in Quiz, Forums, Database, Glossary.
- Centralize the feature like the Grade link in the admin block add and Activity grader link to
I don't think the prototype supports rubrics/marking guides yet but I have a couple of examples from the School demo site with rubric and marking guide which you can restore to the site and try if you like.
Agree with most of what others have said:
- How do I get out? A back type button needs to be much more obvious
- Switching between students should be next to student name and more obvious
- Support for advanced grading would be very beneficial as well as add comments.
- The box should have some sort of indicator when there was no uploaded document. Having it sit there with a blank white screen looks like it isn't working when in fact there is just no document to view.
It would be nice to make the submission detail information a collapsable div so we can optionally hide it when we're working, but expand it when necessary. Either that or push it to the bottom of the grading screen.
Also a DRASTIC reduction in size to the "grade" button on the assignment submissions window would be great. It's already extremely crowded with content and could be simplified. A simple "G" would be enough, or lacking that a FontAwesome checkmark.
Could someone with the magic fix Damyons link, the hyperlink should be prototype.moodle.net but it points just to moodle.net (which is a real site)
(Edited by Mary Cooch - original submission Monday, 7 March 2016, 1:42 PM)
Possibly not a UX issue, but anything for penalties for multiple attempts?
It's something that we're quite keen on, and have done a proof of concept: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-50395
We are quite excited for the pandoc feature, so long as this is available beyond just the annotate pdf function.
We currently use Surface Pro's for PDF annotation, and save word and picture files to pdf to annotate them. Being able to download a pdf to use in another application would be very handy.
Now, I don't know where to submit suggestions for annotate pdf as well, but we were evaluating it to replace our current system and found the following things were missing:
a) Line width (highlighter, pen) needs to be customizable.
b) Text size needs to be customizable
c) (plus everything that looks like was fixed in the video demo the other day)