I would be interested to hear what other people think about this.
In reply to Tim Hunt
Re: The issue with question categories - what's your opinion?
by Peter Diedrichs -
Tim, knowing that you are an expert in moodle and it's quizzes:
- Have I misunderstood how it works?
- Would my suggestions make things better, or worse?
In reply to Peter Diedrichs
Re: The issue with question categories - what's your opinion?
by Emma Richardson -
I tend to agree with this. I think a default course level quiz bank (which all questions created in the course would be placed in unless manually switched elsewhere) would resolve the following:
1. It is not always clear what categories your questions are going in.
2. Teachers often find it hard to find existing questions when they are have been created at the quiz level.
3. It would avoid the auto creation of multiple levels of categories within the course.
4. It would simplify the export and back up and restore process.
In reply to Emma Richardson
Re: The issue with question categories - what's your opinion?
by Peter Diedrichs -
Emma: That's a lot of things I haven't even thought about. Thanks!
Do you see any negative effects?
In reply to Peter Diedrichs
Re: The issue with question categories - what's your opinion?
by Emma Richardson -
We would have to think about what would happen if you imported or restored a quiz from another course? It would have to import the course bank. But, would it merge the course bank with the new course bank? Ideally, I think it should to keep it consistent.
But that would mess up random questions.
So, then you would have to think about maybe adding a feature that would NOT allow random questions from the default course level quiz bank - that a new category would have to be created for that purpose. That might not be all bad (despite an added layer of complication) as it would teach teachers that categories are created just for that purpose - to organize questions and allow for random question selection while still having your course level bucket for all questions in the course.
In reply to Emma Richardson
Re: The issue with question categories - what's your opinion?
by Tim Hunt -
"I tend to agree with this. I think a default course level quiz bank (which all questions created in the course would be placed in unless manually switched elsewhere)"
That is exactly how the quiz works, and has always worked, isn't it?
In reply to Tim Hunt
Re: The issue with question categories - what's your opinion?
by Emma Richardson -
No, questions created from a quiz are placed in a quiz level question bank. In my experience, the only way to find these questions for use in another quiz are to go back to the original quiz and then move them to a higher level location. This idea would remove that and not create categories at the quiz level, only at the course level. (Well, that is how I was seeing it anyway...)
In reply to Emma Richardson
Re: The issue with question categories - what's your opinion?
by Tim Hunt -
I am probably wrong here, but I cannot for the life of my see anything wrong in the code that is different from the way I think it works - namely, that by default questions are put in the course category, unless you have actually selected the quiz category. The key bits are:
- https://github.com/moodle/moodle/blob/master/lib/questionlib.php#L1013 - note that it prefers course context to quiz context.
- https://github.com/moodle/moodle/blob/master/mod/quiz/edit.php#L57 - confirmation that the quiz uses that standard function, rather than doing anything weird.
Emma, can you give really simple and clear steps to reproduce what you say happens: that the quiz creates questions in the Quiz context. E.g. your instructions could start "Go to https://qa.moodle.net/ then ...". Thanks.
In reply to Tim Hunt
Re: The issue with question categories - what's your opinion?
by ben reynolds -
Reaching back to 1.9, I've seen novice Moodlers make a quiz where the questions go Somewhere automatically. It's been my job to put them in properly labeled Categories in the course. I'm a good and assiduous street sweeper.
Mind you, I don't allow novices to make quizzes on their own any more. So, no experience with the least experienced Moodler at 2.8 and above.