Moodle in English: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by P Bowers - Saturday, October 22, 2016, 2:14 AM

Moodle 3.1

Sorry if I've asked this here before.

Will the following Moodle operation MOVE or COPY the Category's Questions into my Miscellaneous category?

I want to COPY them to there so that the original course is maintained and people can continue taking the existing Quizzes, and so that I can generate a new Quiz that contains ALL the Question Bank's questions.

Too bad this sort of operation can't be performed via drag-and-drop, batch-processed or automated, because I'm going to have to repeat this activity 73 more times to grab all 1280 questions. Unfortunately I'm not a programmer.

Regards,

Paul

PS I hope the image isn't too large.

Attachment move_or_copy_moodle_questions.jpg

Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by Howard Miller - Saturday, October 22, 2016, 1:58 PM

Moving to Quiz forum...

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Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by Emma Richardson - Saturday, October 22, 2016, 7:02 PM

It will move them...

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Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by P Bowers - Saturday, October 22, 2016, 8:54 PM

Thank you. Pending operation cancelled. I'll just have to manually export each Category via Moodle XML, oh joy.

Are other MOOCs just as cumbersome when it comes to quiz question / question bank data?

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Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by Emma Richardson - Saturday, October 22, 2016, 10:26 PM

What exactly are you trying to do?

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Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by P Bowers - Saturday, October 22, 2016, 11:16 PM

The goal is to accomplish two things:

1. Create one new 'Mega-Category' that will contain ALL the question bank questions so that I'll be able to print out (actually, generate PDF files) all the questions c/w images and answers (there are over 1200 questions currently in the question bank). This will be then distributed to subject matter experts for quality control checking, and then I'll make any necessary changes. We currently have four courses*.

2. I'd also like to have this 'Mega-Category' available so that I can pick and choose questions from one "folder" location in order to create a few sample quizzes for prospective course-takers* so they can see what a typical quiz looks like, how it works, the type of questions asked, etc.

*It is actually a site for quizzes. The actual course material is on a separate server over which I don't have any control.

Thank you for your interest.

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Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by Emma Richardson - Sunday, October 23, 2016, 7:31 AM

Couple of ways to achieve this.

1. Create a category level question bank (with one or multiple categories as you need) and move all the questions there. This will allow all courses in the category (if quiz creators have appropriate permissions) to access all questions to place in quizzes.

2. Create a metacourse and create all the quizzes in that course and they will be available to all other courses that are created as child courses of this metacourse.

I think from your description, option 1 will probably work better.

As for exporting, you can export questions in a variety of formats (xml might work well for you) but you will need to create a pdf following export from whatever program you open the exported questions in.

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Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by P Bowers - Sunday, October 23, 2016, 1:45 AM

More experimentation results in apparent failure to download more than one Moodle XML file, but offers the option to MOVE them if 'Continue' button is clicked. See attached screenshot.

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Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by Daniel Thies - Sunday, October 23, 2016, 7:01 AM

If what you are wanting to do is copy all of the questions of a course into one category, you do not have to do that one category at a time. Simply export from the top level category with the appropriate boxes unchecked for saving the category information. Then import the file into a new category. Copies of all the question will then be in one place.

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Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by P Bowers - Sunday, October 23, 2016, 8:07 AM

"If what you are wanting to do is copy all of the questions of a course into one category, you do not have to do that one category at a time. Simply export from the top level category with the appropriate boxes unchecked for saving the category information."

Could you post a screen shot of where I'm supposed to be in order to do this?

I'm using up my own allowance of screen captures simply because I'm lost.

Paul

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Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by Daniel Thies - Sunday, October 23, 2016, 10:24 AM

You should be exporting the question category in the last picture you have above. Make sure you have Moodle XML format check above. Usually the top level category says Default for course, but you may have change that above. The indentation shows which categories are contained in others. The one farthest to the left (Course PPDL 101) should contain everything indented to the right of it below it.

Once you select the category that is on top, you then uncheck the box below to ignore the separation into subcategories. The export question form with write category context unchecked

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Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by P Bowers - Sunday, October 23, 2016, 12:13 PM

Thanks for the reply, Daniel.

If I understand you correctly, I should be highlighting the item that says 'Course PPDL01'? That one's un-highlightable. And the 'Default for Miscellaneous' only contains 2 questions and fails anyway. Aaarrgghh!

It just occurred to me to look at the server. Can multiple moodledatas cause problems? There are more than one moodledata folders and one subfolder called Moodle_OLD.

Paul

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Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by Emma Richardson - Sunday, October 23, 2016, 8:45 PM

Multiple moodledata folders are not your issue unless you see missing files throughout the site.

You are using the one listed in your config.php file. I would be very careful about deleting folders in case they are used by a development version or something.

It sounds like whoever upgraded last put a backup copy of the previous moodle code in your new moodle folder. That is pretty strange but you also need to check where config.php is pointing to for the code before you start messing with stuff.

Right now, your site is not broken...you just have an issue with downloading questions. We are presuming that you are admin for the site - is that right? What version of Moodle are you using? In mine, I see a drop down box and the Default for the Course should be selectable...

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Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by P Bowers - Sunday, October 23, 2016, 11:16 PM

Thanks Emma, that's somewhat reassuring.

It's Moodle 3.1.2+

Yes, the site recently moved hosting companies and I took that opportunity to have the new hosting company upgrade from 2.8. I volunteered to look after the site since no one else knows much about websites but I have mostly worked with static HTML/CSS/JS going back 15 years or so, although some Joomla experience.

The original Moodle site was built about 6-7 years ago, the original dev is unavailable and it hasn't really been kept up to date...

Yay!

Paul

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Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by P Bowers - Tuesday, October 25, 2016, 12:50 PM

Well, thanks to the input of people here, I was finally able to bring all 74 categories containing 1500+ questions into a top category. Thanks again.

But - somehow I've managed to have duplicated all the questions so the category has 2 of each question. Is there a way to easily remove the dupes from the single XML file or from within Moodle itself?

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Re: MOVE or COPY Category Questions

by Daniel Thies - Monday, October 24, 2016, 1:36 AM

If you are new to administrating a Moodle site, you should read the documentation on Course backup and make backups of each of the courses in case something goes bad.

The question categories can be overseen and modified with Course administration -> Question bank -> Categories. You should be able to find the directory you want there. If all the question are not under one directory, you can create one and move them there.

You also may not need to do the export and and import to remove the subdirectories. There is a checkbox on the Question bank (Course administration -> Question bank -> Questions) for 'Also show questions from subcategories'. This will display all questions a if they were part of the parent directory.

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