Confusing about categories

Confusing about categories

by Peter Diedrichs -
Number of replies: 5
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Hi, I have reported parts of this problem here: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-63801

According to the answer I got, this should be solved when upgrading to 3.4.5, but that's not so. In the same time, I'm confused - is this expected behaviour, or actual problems? I think it is at least some functionality that is missing... But I might just need some explaining. 

I have tried to illustrate the problem in the attached PDF.

There are 5 questions, and hopefully they make more sense in context with the PDF:

Question 1: Why isn’t the quiz’s own category visible in the question bank already directly after the quiz was created?

Question 2: Shouldn’t the quiz’s own category be pre-selected when creating a new question from within the quiz?

Question 3: Why is the question category for my first created quiz no longer visible in the Question bank? 

Question 4: When duplicating a quiz inside a course, shouldn’t the copy also get it’s own question category?

Question 5: When duplicating a quiz inside a course, shouldn’t also the questions in the original quiz it be copied, into the copy’s own question category?

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In reply to Peter Diedrichs

Re: Confusing about categories

by Peter Diedrichs -
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I also have another issue:

When creating a new course "from scratch" Moodle creates a default question category with the course name.

But, when creating a new course from a template course containing a quiz (this is a standard quiz regarding plagiarism that all courses can use), no default question category is created, instead the existing quiz category becomes the course default question category.

Shouldn't all new courses get their own standard question category...?

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In reply to Peter Diedrichs

Re: Confusing about categories

by Tim Hunt -
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The default category is created when you visit the question bank, and it is only created if another category does not already exist.

So, what you observe is consistent with how the code is supposed to work.

Whether that is what people want, or not, is another question.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Confusing about categories

by Rick Jerz -
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It seems to me that the current code is what we (or I) would want.  When a course gets created from another, I don't see any reason to create a new category, and maybe worse, recreate all the quiz question.  The current behavior seems to be the most efficient way of managing question bank categories.

If, for example, a new category is always created for any new course created from another, the question bank could end up with a bunch of categories with nothing in them.

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Confusing about categories

by Peter Diedrichs -
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Rick, if you copy a course and it's question bank also the quiz questions do get recreated, to ensure that tampering with the questions in a quiz will not affect another course/quiz.

My users are getting confused, though. In some courses they have the default question bank is given the course name, in other courses it's the name of a specific quiz. When creating a quiz it gets a question bank category, same when importing a quiz from another course, but when copying a quiz within the corse it gets the same category as the copied quiz. 

There's a lot of "ifs and buts" there, putting the sensitive work with quizzes and examination at risk. Those can be explained from this discussion, but we who meet here are probably extra interested in this - the average teacher using moodle just want a "consistent behaviour" and has a thousand other things to handle as well.

I think the least confusing order would be if every new course, however it is created or copied, automatically gets a default question bank category based on the course name. And, every Quiz in the course, created, imported or copied within the course, should get their own default question category as a subcategory to the course'e main category. Changing to another category and use the same set of questions should be an conscious action by the user.

And, always when a quiz with questions is copied, the new quiz should get it's own set of questions copied as well. Even when the copying is done within the course, to avoid that editing the questions in one quiz affects the questions in another quiz without the user realising this.

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In reply to Peter Diedrichs

Re: Confusing about categories

by Rick Jerz -
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Well, maybe so.  It might depend upon your perspective about a common question bank versus a question bank for each course.

Let's say, that someone finds an error in one question.  If the question bank is common, fixing the error would fix it for every course using that question.  If you had separate question banks, the question would need to be corrected in every course.

I once used Blackboard, which seemed to duplicate the question bank per course.  I discovered that if I had two of the same course in one semester, that if I found an error in one question, I had to make sure that I fixed it in both courses.  This bothered me.  When I switched to Moodle, I loved that I now had a centralized question bank, and I wouldn't want to do it any other way.

But I can see that some might want decentralized question banks. 

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