Problems deleting student submissions for assignment activity (Moodle 3.1.1 on Debian 8.5)

Problems deleting student submissions for assignment activity (Moodle 3.1.1 on Debian 8.5)

by Tim Gildersleeve -
Number of replies: 6

Hi

I am due to move Bradford College over to Moodle 3.1.1 in the next few weeks from Moodle 2.9.5.   After a few glitches with BCU and moving to Adaptable I thought I had everything working and ready to go.   I had even completed my pre-upgrade "what to expect" email for all college staff, then I started having another play with Assignments.

I should say that we mainly use Turnitin Assignment 2, and not the default Moodle assignments for most purposes but for somethings this isn't really appropriate so we do still need the core Assignments.

Immediately  I had some issues with it - getting unoconv working was a surprising challenge and I am still very dubious about something that people say doesn't always work!  Saying to our lecturers that it could fail and if it does - well tough really I cant get it to recreate the pdf - isn't going to go down the best!   Regardless it seems to be working now.

My issues though are first of all the main assignment option "seems" to take you out of Moodle.  All Moodle branding is "gone" and it just looks like the site has been hijacked.   It would have been much better from a usability viewpoint if it still had the site header on it.    This issue is "frustrating" but not the end of the world.  

What is causing me a lot of grief however is I do not seem to be able to delete a students submission.   I can see the list of users and their uploads.   I can click edit submission.   I can then click on their submission and choose delete.   I can click save..... but then I get an error saying that there already is a submission and I should close the page and try again.  Of course there is already a submission..... why else would I be trying to delete it?   Either way, it simply will not save the changes once I delete the file.

The only way I have now of deleting student submissions is to log on as the student and then delete them.   This works - although clunky - but I do sometimes give override permissions to certain lecturers to be able to edit others submissions so they can delete submissions (and submit on behalf of their students), and there is no way I am giving "logon as" permissions to lecturers.

I have so far tried on about 5 different installs of Moodle 3.1 - three new virtual machines spun up just for testing this issue and all have the same issue.

Can anyone shed any light?


Kind regards

Tim Gildersleeve

VLE Developer

Bradford College

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In reply to Tim Gildersleeve

Re: Problems deleting student submissions for assignment activity (Moodle 3.1.1 on Debian 8.5)

by Tim Gildersleeve -

Incidentally, this is not just for deleting files from the submission.  The same issue occurs if I add files to the submission (assuming it allows multiple files).  It refuses to save the submission saying there already is a submission and I should leave the page and try again.

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In reply to Tim Gildersleeve

Re: Problems deleting student submissions for assignment activity (Moodle 3.1.1 on Debian 8.5)

by Tim Gildersleeve -

Not managed to find a solution to this issue, and really not happy with the changes to the Assignment tool in general.

Adding to core what can best be described as "experimental" code (anything that requires cron entrys to check it is still running and restart it - already has low confidence)  is a worrying move in my view.    Bloating the tool to the extent that there are recommendations to offset pdf creation to a second server is again a very strange move.

I can only hope that in the next year, these changes mature to being worthy of considered core changes, but while they have been pushed upon us already I would not consider them more than beta.    I realise my view matters not, but I would have thought that such major changes should have been made optional.    Considering that converting documents to PDF doesn't actually give a 100% reliable representation of the student's work as converter tools often alter formatting, there could even be claims from students that their work was altered before being graded.

While I am saddened to do so, I am forced for this year to avoid 3.1 and upgrade instead to 3.0.x which I was planning to skip due to updates ending in 2017 before the end of the academic year.  I just hope that this is a one off because I am losing faith in Moodle HQ pushing these changes on us when they clearly have such wide repercussions.   

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In reply to Tim Gildersleeve

Re: Problems deleting student submissions for assignment activity (Moodle 3.1.1 on Debian 8.5)

by Damyon Wiese -

"I would have thought that such major changes should have been made optional"

Unoconv is completely optional - if you don't install/configure it then the annotations will still be available but you will only see the students submission if they submitted a PDF. If you don't configure unoconv or ghostscript - the annotations interface is completely hidden. 


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In reply to Damyon Wiese

Re: Problems deleting student submissions for assignment activity (Moodle 3.1.1 on Debian 8.5)

by Tim Gildersleeve -

True.   If you don't configure unoconv you only see the work displayed if they submit a PDF.   Otherwise you see a useless block of white that every tutor under the sun will (justly in my view) complain about.  It's pointless.    Anyone who has any experience with HCI would shudder at an interface design that has a large block taking up the majority of the screen "just in case".  The annotations interface is hidden if you disable pdf annotations or do not have ghostscript configured but we have for years used pdf annotations - for some assignments that want them.

The new changes are "all or nothing" do not have proven stability, have no way (that anyone can show) to regenerate missed conversions, and dramatically increases load on the server to the point where it is suggested offloading the conversion work to another server for larger installations.

I stand by my early statements: I do not consider that this should have been put in core as a replacement for the assignment tool, maybe as another type of assignment for those that want it, but not a total replacement.

The very fact that it relies on a version of unoconv that is not even present in most distributions repositories is factor enough.    Something that is core,  should not require special library installation that adds another insecurity (if the item is not in the distributions repository then it is FAR less likely to be updated with security patches).

A tool such as Moodle should be based on rock solid stability - not cutting edge technology.    I realise that it's not quite cutting edge technology but it is more cutting edge than the latest Linux distributions feel comfortable including. 

For myself it's not a problem as I have been using Linux for over 20 years, but its no simply feat for some people to get unoconv working - and as for checking for updates to it......... just not going to happen in a lot of cases.

Please do not misunderstand me: I think the new assignment tool is in general good, but it breaks HCI conventions, does not seem to have  a high confidence in stability (suggested to have something check every 5 mins and restart it if it fails - indicating it is expected to fail), and increases the load on the server by a large amount.    For this, I think it should be an optional additional assignment type - not replace the existing type.

I am not expecting or even hoping for anything to happen based on my feedback - but that doesn't effect the validity of the feedback.   more than anything I am disappointed in the direction that Moodle HQ is going with pushing such major changes with no alternatives.

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In reply to Tim Gildersleeve

Re: Problems deleting student submissions for assignment activity (Moodle 3.1.1 on Debian 8.5)

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

As a minor aside, since the latest version of Moodle 3.1 that came out in July it is possible to collapse the large screen :


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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Problems deleting student submissions for assignment activity (Moodle 3.1.1 on Debian 8.5)

by Tim Gildersleeve -

Hi Mary

Yes, and this is indeed a major improvement (I moved the floating help widget I have for our help-desk from the right to the left for the reason of making sure this is visible.    I would add that if the interface defaulted to the hidden view when unoconv was not configured and a pdf submission was not detected I would have less problems with the system.

I also have to say that the interface design or even the sudden change in system requirements was not ultimately the reason I have avoided 3.1 this year - although knowing I will avoid the support issues I am sure I would have is certainly appealing.   The straw that broke the camels back is I can no longer delete (as admin) submissions that students have made - when I try it refuses to save the empty submission saying there is an existing submission etc.   I would think that this may be an instalation issue but after installing on three different distributions - at least twice on each (Debian 8.5, Ubuntu 16.04 and Centos 7) and having the same problems (as did a colleague who also tested) indicates that it is not something as simple as a straightforward installation issue.  As soon as I tested the same thing on 3.0.5, the problem went away.  I also had problems submitted on behalf of a student too with errors on "some" files.

I will give 3.1 (or 3,2 or whatever) a go again next year when hopefully there has been more testing and likely some finetuning.


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