German Valero and I have been working on a new plugin for the Atto editor that will assist teachers in editing embedded answer (cloze) questions. A similar plugin has been available for the TinyMCE editor for some time, and has been maintained by German.
The new plugin for Atto is ready for beta testing here now. We would like feedback on usability and on documentation and addtional features.
Looking good to me. I have managed to make 3 questions so far without once having to refer to the Moodle documentation, like I usually do when making CLOZE type questions.
The cloze editor for Atto is now available for download at the Moodle plugins database.
There is a Moodle Docs page for this plugin.
@Marcus,
Actually, the real plugin author is Daniel. He is the brave one who wrote it very quickly and patiently improved upon the code. The Moodle community is indebted to him.
I was merely a (very enthusiastic and error-prone) beta tester and documentation writer.
I hope this plugin will make it easier for teachers to write better questions using the cloze sintax without having to learn the sintax
I still need to write some good step-by-step illustrated tutorials: one about how easy it is to make cloze questions with a (clinical veterinary) medical case, and another tutorial with an English literature review.
Yes, Yes and Daniel Thies as well!
"I hope this plugin will make it easier for teachers to write better
questions using the cloze sintax without having to learn the sintax" It is definitely easier now. In the past, 100% of the time when creating a cloze type question, I had to go read the documentation to ensure I was doing it correctly. Ever since I installed Daniel's "beta testing" version, I haven't had to do so. Makes it just as easy to create a cloze question as it is to create most of the other types. I say "most" because I still struggle with some of the "math" types.
"Error prone" beta testers are the best kind. It does not help for testers to do only what the developer expects.
Having attempted to teach software testing to young people for many years I really appreciate this point.
Every year I got the question "what bits should I test", to which the answer drew some analogy about "what part of your mobile phone would you be happy to break because the manufacturer did not test?". I'm not sure it helped much but it made me feel an excellently smug and patronising teacher.
Thanks for this plugin which is very interesting for us, we are currently using Moodle 3.1.
I'm not sure whether this is a bug or a user mistake, but when I use internet explorer 11 I cannot re-edit the syntax by marking the syntax/brackets and clicking on the cloze editor icon. The editor does not open in a new window (as it does when using firefox). This means that while using IE I would have to do changes in the questions directly in the syntax, or edit a new question. I checked the setting of IE but they seem to be ok.
Best,
Lisa
Thank you Lisa,
I reproduced the problem, and it is definitely a bug in the cloze editor or IE. It may take a few day for me to get a fix.
Daniel
I reproduced the issue with IE 8 and with Safari 5.1.7 for Windows.
Firefox (48.0.2), Google Chrome (Versión 55.0.2858.0 canary 64-bit) and Opera (39.0) work as expected.
Germán
Thank you, Daniel!
This should be added to the moodle core!
Here you can find an excel-sheet to generate the Cloze-Code for more than one gap
@Lisa:
Daniel has just uploaded a new version of the Atto cloze plugin that fixes this issue:
Please upgrade your plugin (as you would update any other plugin).
Thank you both for fixing the issue very quickly!
Best,
Lisa
Daniel has just uploaded a new (beta 3) version of the Atto Cloze editor plugin in the Moodle plugins database.
Please report any issues (if found) in the tracker.
I've just installed this plug-in and told atto to display it (cloze = cloze). It doesn't show up, no matter what I do. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?
Moodle 3.1.3+ (Build: 20161115) Version 2016052303.01
Hi Remco,
Personally, I installed mine at insert = cloze, charmap, table, clear, emoticon along with some other plugins, but the way you have it, should work. The only thing I can think of offhand is to make sure you have it installed in the correct place at yourmoodle/lib/editor/atto/pugins/cloze
Thank you for your input, Al.
I checked and yup: It's right there, where it should be...
Hi Remco,
Have you tried it while editing a cloze question? It is hidden on a Page Resource and any other page. This is meant to be a feature to prevent confusion for students and teachers that are not using this question type.
We may need to do a better job of documenting this.
Daniel
Thank you for your answer, Daniel.
I'm afraid I don't quite understand your meaning: I did not try while editing a cloze question. I was hoping the plug-in would allow me to create a cloze question.
I did try though wile editing content pages in a course an also editing question pages in a course.
I understand that the button should not show up when, say, editing text of the theme. Is that what you meant?
Did I misunderstand something?
Thanks
Remco
btw - I also tried using a different browser (Firefox instead of Chrome), to no avail.
It should only work in the cloze question editor - that is what it is designed for.
Thank you Emma, that did the trick!
I failed to understand the german translation for the cloze question type. "Lückentext" means something like "incomplete text", which is miles away from "embedded answers". I recognised the icon now and yes: it works!
Thank you all for letting the pieces fall into place!
Remco
Hi Remco,
If you had trouble with the german language translation for the cloze question type, perhaps you can contribute a suggestion for an improved translation of this language string.
Please read the documentation about how to do this in https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Contributing_a_translation and help us to improve Moodle (for german language users).
Hi Germán,
Thanks for your post. I know how to contribute translations and I've done so for another plugin. In this case I've considered it but I don't think it 's necessary.
I wouldn't know a better translation for "embedded answers" than "Lückentext". I just didn't connect the two as being the same thing. That is not an unusual phenomenon when translating labels, I've had the same sort of problem with other moodle-labels too ("echelon" = "globale Gruppe" to name one).
So there is no reason to doubt the quality of the current translation.
Remco
I think this is more of a problem with the English name. 'Embedded answer' is awkward and not really standard. It is also referred to as cloze which is jargon.
Furthermore there are other plugins performing similar functionality. If you are interested in a Lückentext question, you might also be interested in the more aptly named Gapfill question type.
It would be rather good if the Cloze question type could always be referred to by that name.
I just looked at the German and Spanish language packs, and the Spanish translation includes the English '(Cloze)' after the Spanish phrase. The German does not. but from the way the docs look it did at one time.
Hi Remco,
Sorry, I had forgotten this. If you go into a question bank and click on 'Create a new question' then select 'Embedded answers (Cloze) > Add' then the new toolbutton, 'Cloze editor' should show up. If you elect to edit a previously created Cloze question, the toolbutton will also show up then. In other words, it only shows up where it can be used.
Hi Al,
thanks for your patient and helpful answers! At last I've understood how it's done (cf. my answer to Emma's post above).
Remco
I love this plugin and thank you for it. I would marry it if it would give the same size gap for long and short words. Is there a trick for doing this?
Just noticed a productive cloze on prepositions had a wide box for "about" and a narrow box for its 2- and 3-letter alternatives in the word bank. Crafty students will notice that. :P
Many thanks for this gem.
Hi Clay,
The cloze question type adds a random number of characters to the longest possible answer listed for each blank. This may not be enough to confuse the students. The easiest way to fix this is to add an alternate incorrect answer for each of the shorter answer questions. You may use the longest possible answer and assign 0% or incorrect as the grade.
For example you can try
The fox circled {1:SHORTANSWER:~%100%around} the stump and then jumped {1:SHORTANSWER:~%100%on~around#This is the distractor} top.
The duplicate function on the plugin may be a useful tool to help you do this.
Excellent, Daniel. Thank you!
Thank you for this excellent profile.
We've have been testing it out and will install it next school year. I have one question: is there any difference between "incorrect" or "0%" on the grade. Do both have the same effect?
Thanks in advance
Hugo
Hello Hugo,
With single answer multiple choice, the effect is same. For Moodle 3.2+ the multiple response subquestion is available. For this option an "incorrect" response receives a negative score that depends on the possible number of right answers.
Hi Daniel,
We've had some issues with answers that are contractions--"didn't," "I'll," etc--being scored as incorrect when students answered them correctly. Students work on Chinese Dell laptops. We've told them to be sure to use the "English" input setting to eliminate the possibility of Chinese keyboard input causing the problem.
Any guidance?
Thanks~
Many students seem to prefer copy and paste as an input method. That may be part of the problem, but if you can find some student responses that are marked incorrectly in the quiz review, you should be able to edit the question and paste the students' response as an alternate answer and regrade the attempt. Set the feedback differently to note the encoding issue.
If that works you should be able to export the question and upload it here, and maybe someone could figure out how to fix the encoding.
Hi, I can't get the icon to show up in vanilla moodle 3.3.
I tried with version 2017072800
Are you
editing an embedded answer (cloze) question? (It will not appear anywhere else)
LOL, sorry, yeah that makes sense. Was trying to test it on a forum post.... Thx!
The button disappeared in the Atto editor after update to Moodle 3.4. - used this a whole year but button vanished. Also in the old Cloze questions which I made with the Cloze editor button. The button is not there in the editor.
It should be compatible with 3.4. Make sure that the configuration settings for the Atto editor contains in the button configuration. Also check that the editor plugin is still installed. The code may have been removed somehow during the upgrade.
