Hotpot (plugin)

Thanks for this info Gordon. Sorry it has taken so long to get back to you. Needed to think and observe a bit. 

Italic - your responses. Bold - my responses

I'm not sure what you mean by "filters". Do you mean Moodle filters like the Multimedia filter? Or perhaps you mean TaskChain's pre- and post-conditions?

Right pre- and post-conditions. Thanks.

1. Well, if by "go back into" you mean "restart" or "resume", then the is answer is "no"; a student cannot resume an abandoned attempt
   
   So I often release tasks in a Taskchain to students in a list with no conditions. You see this list of 2 tasks in the image above which is actually part of a larger list of tasks meant to to familiarize the students with the different types of tasks they will encounter during the course. I have 100% on the second one. What I did was to go in and try different answers. Then I clicked on back on the browser which took me back to the list of tasks. Then I re-entered the task, Question Types 2,  again and redid it again having figured out the answers in my first run through it and doing it perfectly the second time. It gave me a score of 100%. I even see students taking pictures with their phones of certain tasks before going back as part of this process. I suppose the only way to limit this kind of "in and out" of an individual task using the back button in the browser is to set conditions. The downside of that is that on a long taskchain, it becomes very hard sometimes to get good scores. Bear in mind that there is a formative element to my use of Taskchains meaning that I do allow them to re-do them and improve their scores. The many different Taskchains do make up part of their final score in the grade book, their highest score being their summative mark. Not to digress to much, but this learning through the Taskchain work does count in part to a final score I also have summative tests which are usually Moodle quizzes. I realize that this is a pedagogical set-up issue. Thanks for your thoughts below. I would be interested in knowing the various preferences of teachers out there when allowing mastery of their Taskchains. I suppose the question is what do teachers think promotes the most learning in terms of Taskchain usage. One final note here is that I am a TESL teacher.
   
   
   
2. Yes, other people have noticed this issue. You may like to set the "Manual Completion" setting to "Yes". (see attached screenshot)
   I am not sure I will go with the "Manual Completion" setting. With a lot of Taskchains on the go, students seem to miss buttons that indicate completion and then wonder why their scores are so low. But I appreciate your highlighting this feature.
   
   
   
3. I'm pretty sure that by "filters" you mean "conditions", as in "pre- and post-conditions", right? I use TaskChain differently to you. I have lots of easy tasks, with the conditions set up to allow a single linear route through the tasks. I experimented with several parallel routes through the tasks and allow students to choose an easy low-scoring route, or more challenging routes with higher possible scores. I think that was effective for the students, but difficult to set up and maintain.
   Would love to hear others chime in with what must be the wide array of approaches to pre- and post-conditions out there. Maintenance is an issue when you have a lot of content on the go. My inclination is settle in on doable approaches and then not vary too, too much.
   
   
   
4. Hmm, students CAN review answers if they click the "My attempts" link in the Administration block (see attached screenshot)
   So I have checked this out. I have no idea how much my students use it. It requires entering a Taskchain attempt, then entering a specific task and then you get the menu. The menu is only in the menu at the top of the page. I am not sure how to put it on the sidebar. May be a theme limitation. See below.
   
   
   
   
5. Hmm, teachers CAN view reports of the students attempts, including details of individual attempts by students, if they click the "Class reports" link in the Administration block (see attached screenshot) 
   Thanks for pointing this out. There is always something more to both Taskchain and Moodle. I use a wide array of tools so I don't always delve too deeply into each one unless a need or issue emerges. The kind of report that is the most useful in both Taskchain and Quizzes is a list of the various answers put forward by students. This unfortunately is a bit of a tedious process in both. What would be great is a concise summary of each answer given by students with the number of times a specific answer shows up sorted by the most frequent to the least. I would like this for both Taskchains and Moodle Quizzes where the report includes all of the tasks or questions in a single report.
   
   

It may be that if your theme is based on Boost, then the link to TaskChain reports appear in a different location. If you don't have an admin block, or if you can't find the "Class reports" link, please let me know which theme and Moodle version you are using.

Right, I don't have this in the admin block. It is in the menus. You see this visualized in an image above. I am using the Decaf theme with Moodle 3.6.2+ (Build: 20190118). I won't move to new version of either until I am between sessions again or have run into a problem. If you have thoughts on themes, I would be happy to hear about them. I like how easy the light grays and blues of Decaf is on the eyes especially after a few hours at the computer.

Thanks again Gordon.

Mel