Moodle in English: Highest / Average / First / Last Grade for External Tool

Highest / Average / First / Last Grade for External Tool

by Saburo Higuchi - Sunday, April 2, 2017, 3:15 PM

Hi,

I am on Moodle 3.1 and have configured the external tool activity to connect to an LTI provider, Maple T.A. 10. We successfully accept grades from the provider. Every time a student attempts the external tool, the grade is updated in the Moodle gradebook. I would say this is like "Latest Grade" setting in Moodle Quizzes.

My question is whether one can keep track of the highest / average / first / last grades of the external tool activity in the gradebook, just like Moodle Quizzes, hopefully by configuring the Moodle side.

I note that the history of external tool attempts is stored in both the provider and Moodle. On Moodle side, you can view it in "Grade History."

A post which seems related: LTI Submission attempts sorting chronologically in gradebook and submission report https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=271378

Re: Highest / Average / First / Last Grade for External Tool

by John Okely - Tuesday, April 4, 2017, 9:50 AM

Hi Saburo,

Unfortunately the scoring of the students is the responsibility of the LTI provider, not the consumer. LTI only supports sending of one grade. In moodle the quiz module itself manages what grade it sends to the gradebook, and along these lines the tool is responsible for what grade it sends to Moodle.

Maple T.A 10 will need to collate the grades and calculate the highest/average/first/last grade before it sends them to Moodle. Do you have a support channel for that tool? You may be able to follow it up with them http://www.maplesoft.com/support/

In the draft outcomes 2 specification multiple grades can be sent but that's more for separate grading items, not attempts. There is a chance it will be possible, so you may want to vote here: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-51480. But of course this will require that your provider also supports outcomes 2 (which is not yet released)

Hope this helps, and sorry that we can't solve your problem in moodle.

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Re: Highest / Average / First / Last Grade for External Tool

by Saburo Higuchi - Thursday, April 13, 2017, 6:54 AM

Hi John,

Thank you for you response. Following your suggestion, we inquired a reseller of Maple T.A. and were told that the newest version, Maple T.A. 2016.1, can be configured to return the Highest / Average / Last grade via LTI. We plan to upgrade because this satisfies our demand.

Although the upgrade would solve our problem completely, I imagine an alternative design of Moodle External Tool module, the LTI consumer. Assume that there is only one grading item on an LTI provider. Students use the external tool repeatedly, say, once a day. The external tool module, if appropriately designed, could record the last grade returned, a single integer, in its own database table every time a student attempts the tool. Then the module could calculate the Highest / Average / Last or some statistical quantity from the table entries and send it to the Moodle gradebook, just like the Quiz module does. This could add more flexibility for the case where the LTI provider only returns the last grade.

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LTI and Moodle

Highest / Average / First / Last Grade for External Tool