Composing HotPot activities in Moodle

Composing HotPot activities in Moodle

by Tom McCarthy -
Number of replies: 7
I just installed moodle (1.5.2) on my server. Got it setup. Enabled HotPot.
Now, when I try to add a HotPot activity to my course, I get an error:
"Could not create XML tree: missing course or reference"
What does this mean?
  1. Must I upload the HotPot activities after creating them outside of Moodle?
  2. Is it possible to incorporate previously contructed HotPot activities?
many thanks,
tm
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In reply to Tom McCarthy

Re: Composing HotPot activities in Moodle

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Tom,
welcome to Moodle and the HotPot forum. Sounds like you're raring to go.

> Must I upload the HotPot activities
> after creating them outside of Moodle?

Yes. You should create the Hot Potatoes quizzes on your PC first. Then upload them to the "Files" area of your Moodle course (click the "Files" link on the left hand side of the course page). Then on the "Add a HotPot activity" page, you can click on the "Choose or upload a file ..." button and you should see your Hot Potaoes files listed. Click the "Choose" link for the file you want to use. After that, it should be plain sailing smile

> Is it possible to incorporate previously
> contructed HotPot activities?

Absolutely. If you have a lot of Hot Potatoes quizzes to upload, I suggest you zip them all up into a single file, upload that to Moodle and then unzip it there.

hope this helps smile
Gordon
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Composing HotPot activities in Moodle

by Tom McCarthy -
Yes this is much clearer now. Is it listed somewhere in the docs? It wasn't clear to me at first. It seemed like one could compose HotPot activities within Moodle.
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In reply to Tom McCarthy

Re: Composing HotPot activities in Moodle

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
For quite some time now, (ever since I sat next to Helen Foster at the Oxford MoodleMoot in August actually), I have intended to create some materials which explain how to create Hot Potaotes quizzes and add them to a course, and which also show off some of the things that Hot Potatoes quizzes and the Hotpot module can do. I regret to say I haven't got round to it yet. However, your message has reminded me of the importance of this kind of support. I'll get on with it!
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Composing HotPot activities in Moodle

by Greg Carey -
Hi from down under to all.
Gordon I enjoyed your presentation at Oxford and am wondering if you can help.
A number (not all) of the HotPotatoes exercises I upload are not completing and recording the results into the grade area. At the end of the quiz the page reports

"Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@ozeseminars.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

Any ideas what I am doing wrong

Cheers
Greg Carey

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In reply to Greg Carey

Re: Composing HotPot activities in Moodle

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Greg,
good to hear from you!

Please could you tell me what version of Moodle you are using? Also, is it possible for you to have a look at the server error logs to found out what the internal error was?

If you could send me one of the quizzes which is not working (gordon at-sign kanazawa hyphen gu dot ac dot jp), or try it out on my server (http://bateson.kanazawa-gu.ac.jp/moodle/16/ms/course/view.php?id=3), it may help establish the source of the problem.

all the best
Gordon
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Composing HotPot activities in Moodle

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
A quick note to record the results of my joint investigation with Greg.

It turned out his server had an aversion to the word "from". Whenever "from" occurred in the left-hand side of multiple-choice option, the "internal server error" occurred after the quiz was finished.

If "from" was changed to "fro-m" or "fro m" the quiz results were returned and recorded without an error.

On other servers, the quizzes did not cause any errors. We tried other servers with the same version of Moodle (1.5.2), Moodle 1.6, Hotpot v2.0 and Hotpot v2.1. We tried adding just the error-prone quizzes to other Moodle sites, and importing the whole course into other Moodle sites. In all cases, the quizzes ran without a hitch.

Incredible as it seems, this server chokes on the word "from" surprise

We decided not to pursue the problem any further, because the course will not run for much longer.

Gordon
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