Deferred feedback behaviour ?error

Deferred feedback behaviour ?error

by Velson Horie -
Number of replies: 3
Ca 10 years ago, I constructed quizzes for the course, including a number of Cloze multichoice questions. Each quiz is designed to be finished before submitting, marked and returned with feedback.

I recently moved from Moodle 2.4 to 3.6.  A student has raised a problem which I think is new.
The Cloze question is

"Choose the appropriate state for the material applied.

sand in sand blasting
{1:MULTICHOICE:%100%solid#sand is used as a solid~%-100%liquid~%-100%gas}
solution of ammonia gas
{1:MULTICHOICE:%-100%solid~%100%liquid~%-100%gas#the ammonia gas is dissolved in water, which is a liquid}

" + 5 more multichoices.

The new (?) error is that a wrong answer not only gets scored 0 but has a penalty of -1.
On previewing the question in editing mode, the technical information informs me that the behaviour used is deferred feedback, which results in this behaviour.  There seems to be no way to change the "behaviour" of this question within the question editing screen. If I alter the behaviour in the quiz settings to adaptive mode (no penalties), it has no effect on the behaviour of this question.

So-
How can I achieve my requirements of Submit all> mark & feedback, plus have no penalty applied?
Thank you

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In reply to Velson Horie

Re: Deferred feedback behaviour ?error

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Allowing multiple choice questions with a single right answer to support negative scoring was a very strongly requested feature. If my memory is right, this was done in Moodle 2.1, as part of MDL-20636 (and issue number I can still type from memory 10 years later, I spent so much time working on it.)

Anyway, what you are seeing is the expected behaviour, I think (although I don't recall anyone specifically asking about this in the context of Cloze before).
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Deferred feedback behaviour ?error

by Velson Horie -
Thank you (I think)
I created many of these questions in ca Moodle 1.9.8, presumably before the negative scoring was instituted. My course was updated to 2.4.1 in 2013 (when presumably the new rule was applied to my existing MCQ) but no-one has reported this error until now. This is not the first time that an existing syntax and output has been modified, so affecting my existing questions and their underlying purpose, without any effective warning or workaround. It would be sensible if a new feature was given a new name and process, so the existing feature in existing courses are not modified. Version control in any programme of work is necessary to avoid glitches such as these.

I can see the potential need to support negative scoring of answers, but that is only one of many didactic tactics. As its implementation is so deep in your soul, did you provide a switch so it can also not support negative scoring?

It seems as though the deferred feedback facility has got mixed up and confused with negative scoring so I may need a way to separate them.
Can you suggest a way forward?
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In reply to Velson Horie

Re: Deferred feedback behaviour ?error

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
I am sorry, this changed 9 years ago. In line with what you say, we are not going to change this now.

If you have a lot of questions that now need to be updated, you can probably fix them in bulk in the database - if you are familiar with with updating data in databases. (Although the fact that these are Cloze questions makes it a bit trickeri.)
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