Quiz

All options seems interesting to different teachers in various scenarios, hard to choose

Maybe use all?

Also, It looks as if all those options should go into the "activity completion" rules, which will allow the teacher to decide which case apply pedagogically to that quiz. and the dashboard should check for activity completion. (although, it is a little bit problematic, as the teacher needs to enable activity completion tracking in that course)

Dear Fred,

I would go for option C - this is a report for the student's benefit, alerting them to quizzes they may have forgotten to attempt. If a finished attempt exists, then it can be assumed that they have not forgotten about it.

Thanks

Steve

I probably should not post, since I am much more interested to hear what the teachers here have to say, rather than what this developer thinks.

However, as a developer, option B) is what seems logical to me. That option could perhaps be explained more clearly as:

B) When the student goes to the quiz, they can no longer continue the current attempt or start a new one.

Until that time, the student may be able to improve their score by doing more work, so we should remind them about this.

I like the logic of B but also like the idea of C.  How about a combination of both? - it goes away when there are no attempts possible AND an attempt submitted.  

Leaving it there when there are no attempts possible still indicates to the student that they are missing work regardless of whether they can submit or not.  I think that this is a good indication for a student - they might be able to talk the teacher into an extension at that point.  

Making it go away when they have submitted but they still have the option to submit again robs them of the chance to make another attempt (not really but they might not realize that they can submit again.)

Fred,

My vote is for all of the above.  Actually could we add a few additional scenarios?  When this issue was fixed in the lesson module (MDL-49065) the approach taken was:

1. If the user had not started the activity then it displayed "No attempts have been made on this lesson"
2. If the user started, but not completed the activity then it displayed "Lesson has been started, but not yet completed"
3. If the user had completed the activity but there were still attempts available "Completed, You can re-attempt this lesson"
4. If the lesson was completed, and no additional attempts were possible, then nothing was displayed.
5. If the due date had passed then nothing was displayed.
   

Could use the same approach with quiz?  As a teacher I found this helped my students since they are notified when there was something that they could act on, but the entry is not listed when everything is completed.

One other question.  Since you are re-working the dashboard for quiz, any chance you could modify the display for teachers?  Right now it simply displayed the number of completed attempts.  Any chance that instead it could display the number of questions or quizzes that have manually graded questions that need grading? (Something like "You have 6 questions on 3 quizzes that require grading")

Thanks for your work on this,

-Steve

My preference would be for both A (last attempt is finished/submitted) and B (attempts are no longer possible).

The message is "You have [an activity] that needs attention" which implies a certain amount of emergency to me. To paraphrase: "If you don't submit/do something, you will lose marks."

• A quiz is open and never attempted; it needs attention.
  
• An unfinished attempt suggests that the student didn't realize that it hadn't been submitted yet. It needs attention.

Respectfully, I disagree with Steve's suggestion "If the user had completed the activity but there were still attempts available 'Completed, You can re-attempt this lesson' ". An activity (quiz) with additional available attempts does not necessarily need attention.

Hrynkiw
Kwantlen Polytechnic University

P.S. I suppose if I wanted to make a sparkly pony wish, the student (and teacher too) would be able to configure their own preferences for what appeared on the Dashboard "needs attention" list. Then they could choose whether or not to be reminded about additional available attempts.

Thanks everyone, great feedback so far!

The approach I like the most is Stephen's. In fact I was discussing this issue with Helen Foster yesterday and mentioned to her that there could be different levels of reporting such as:

• Quiz A is due
• The passing mark on quiz B has not been met, more attempts are allowed
  
• The mark on Quiz C could be improved

Now, I would personally leave that to a separate issue to the one I'm working on. Changing the wording so much would be an improvement and needs more considerations. The issue I'm solving here is that students are "wrongly" being warned about quizzes needing attention, and as per their definition they are not.

My personal preference goes for option C, just like Steve. As a student I want to be reminded of quizzes that are due, not quizzes that can be improved. Reporting too much information to the user will just lead them to not looking at the information anymore. Say, if for two consecutive weeks, every time I visit my dashboard I'm reminded about that quiz that I've already taken and I'm already satisfied with, what are the chances that I'll pay attention to that information in the 3rd week? Especially that I need to expand the information to find out what quizzes need attention.

Let's not get side tracked, we can always improve things on many levels and for many different types of users. In this scenario we're trying to improve when the reporting is presented to students who feel that their quizzes do not need attention.