Not to beat a dead horse... but seems as though there is no rhyme or reason to quiz scoring if you use "Penalties."
If a Quiz Developer is reading: What did you have in mind when you created the "penalties" option? I'm just wondering if we are using it incorrectly?
Is it suppossed to work for quizzes that can be attempted multiple times, or do the penalties keep building as you try each attempt?
I have a few teachers that really want to use this option, but for the life of us we cannot seem to understand or get it working correctly.
Thanks for any help.
Hi Dave,
The first thing you should bear in mind is that penalties are optional. So you shouldn't worry about whether they are there or not since you can simply ignore them and not use penalties.
Of course, it is useful to know what they do just in case you think they might be useful for you. As I understand this (and this is the way I use them), the penalty system is devised to prevent students from just clicking answers and random. Depending on how you design your quizzes, it is possible for a student to chose answers at random and still get a decent grade. With the penalties option, as its name indicates, you penalize incorrect answers thus encouraging students to think carefully before they choose an option. This is pretty standard in many tests and it works pretty well in many scenarios. You just have to decide whether this is what you want. If you click on the ? sign next to this option, I seem to remember that the function is explained in some detail.
I hope this is helpful to you.
Josep M.
The first thing you should bear in mind is that penalties are optional. So you shouldn't worry about whether they are there or not since you can simply ignore them and not use penalties.
Of course, it is useful to know what they do just in case you think they might be useful for you. As I understand this (and this is the way I use them), the penalty system is devised to prevent students from just clicking answers and random. Depending on how you design your quizzes, it is possible for a student to chose answers at random and still get a decent grade. With the penalties option, as its name indicates, you penalize incorrect answers thus encouraging students to think carefully before they choose an option. This is pretty standard in many tests and it works pretty well in many scenarios. You just have to decide whether this is what you want. If you click on the ? sign next to this option, I seem to remember that the function is explained in some detail.
I hope this is helpful to you.
Josep M.
That's great, that's how we want them to work... if they only WOULD actually work. See this thread for my (and others) frustration.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=35874
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=35874
No guys, penalties is for adaptive mode only. It does not penalize student if he randomly chooses answers. What it does is when you want them to FIND right answer after they submitted incorrect one. Each sub-attempt will be penalized.
Example: multiple-choice with penalty set to 0.333
1. - incorrect
2. - incorrect
3. - incorrect
4. - correct
First Submit
If student chooses 1. he gets 0/1 with penalty 0.333
if student chooses 4. he gets 1/1 with no penalty
Second Submit in case his choice was 1.
If student chooses 2. he gets 0/1 with penalty 0.333
if student chooses 4. he gets (1-0.333)0.66/1
Third submit in case his choice was 2.
If student chooses 3. he gets 0(1-0.333-0.333-0.333)/1 with penalty
if student chooses 4. he gets (1-0.333-0.333)0.333/1
It is not like test but like interactive studying process
OK Netm@an,
Perhaps the objective of this penalization mode is to make quiz taking like an interactive studying process, but the effect that it has, if I understand you correctly, is the same I was mentioning: it penalizes wild guessing. This is so because if the students knows that points will be taken off from incorrect answers, s/he will try to be more careful in choosing her answers.
A different matter altogether is whether there is a bug (as Dave mentions) that prevents this from working properly.
Josep M.
Perhaps the objective of this penalization mode is to make quiz taking like an interactive studying process, but the effect that it has, if I understand you correctly, is the same I was mentioning: it penalizes wild guessing. This is so because if the students knows that points will be taken off from incorrect answers, s/he will try to be more careful in choosing her answers.
A different matter altogether is whether there is a bug (as Dave mentions) that prevents this from working properly.
Josep M.
The explanation of netm is correct. I have also tried to clarify things in another post.