Q & A Forum type: allowing students to see other replies immediately

Q & A Forum type: allowing students to see other replies immediately

by b k -
Number of replies: 10

I am using a Q&A forum for kids to make guesses about a painting.

As expected, they can't see other kids guesses until they guess first.

However, they can't see the other posts until their own 30 minute edit window has passed. I can understand this behaviour (post garbage, see the other answers, then change your post).

But in practice it means that a kid will have to come back later to see the other answers. This won't work for me. I want them to see the other answers immediately.

Is there a way to override this behaviour? I'd be fine with them not being able to change their post in this type of forum, but I don't want to disable post editing across the whole course/site.

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In reply to b k

Re: Q & A Forum type: allowing students to see other replies immediately

by AL Rachels -
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Hi b k,

Sorry, don't know of any way to override the forum edit time, but have you considered using another application? Hot Question would work for this the way you want it to. Recent changes and upgrades will allow you to customize the wording and  terms used. e.g. Instead of, "Submit your question here:" you could change it to, "What do you think this is?," or, "Enter your guess," or, "Submit your guess here:" or any other phrase.

You can also let them vote on entries, if they think they are correct. This column defaults to a label named, Heat, but can be changed to, Votes, or even hidden if you don't want to use it. Could even hide it at first, then enable it after everyone has made a guess, then let them vote for what they think is the correct entry.

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In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Q & A Forum type: allowing students to see other replies immediately

by b k -
>Hot Question would work for this the way you want it to.

Actually it doesn't, unless I'm misunderstanding something. From what I can tell, as soon as someone looks at the activity, they can see all the answers other people have given.

Is there a way to replicate the Q&A hiding of the answers feature?
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In reply to b k

Re: Q & A Forum type: allowing students to see other replies immediately

by AL Rachels -
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Sure, edit the activity and set, Approval required, to, Yes. Once a student makes an entry, it is hidden even from them until the teacher approves the entry. Teachers and admins can always see every entry. When editing the activity, you can even change the approval column label from, Approved, to anything else you might want, such as, Visibility.
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In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Q & A Forum type: allowing students to see other replies immediately

by b k -
Thanks, but that doesn't meet the requirement I explained in the OP. I want the kids to post before they see the others and I want them to see the others as soon as they post. So if I add in the teacher approval step, I'm exactly back where I was with the Q&A form requiring kids to wait till the edit window has closed.
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In reply to b k

Re: Q & A Forum type: allowing students to see other replies immediately

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Sorry, I misunderstood. Might be that I can add a setting that requires at least one, or maybe more, entries by a student before the student can see any other posts. I will add that to my TODO list. I will hopefully have a new release in the next day or so, but don't think this will be in it, unless it turns out to be dead easy to do.

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In reply to b k

Q & A Forum type: allowing students to see other replies immediately

by John Provasnik -
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Hi BK, what you are experiencing is the Maximum time to edit posts (maxeditingtime) setting found in "Site administration - Security - Site security settings"
The default setting is 30 minutes, but you can change that to something else.
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In reply to John Provasnik

Re: Q & A Forum type: allowing students to see other replies immediately

by b k -
Yes, I know this (I thought it was clear in my OP).

I just thought that the forum type makes more sense if people are able to see what others wrote right away. More collaborative. But if there is grading involved, then this behaviour makes some sense.

I don't want to change the default for the whole site/course. I just want people to be able to see the other posts immediately.
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In reply to b k

Re: Q & A Forum type: allowing students to see other replies immediately

by Jon Bolton -
Picture of Testers

This might be possible with a bit of a workaround.

Teachers (and others with the capability to manage course activities) see an option to ignore the editing time delay. See https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Using_Forum#.27Send_forum_post_notifications_with_no_editing_time_delay.27

Annoyingly though, that doesn’t appear to have a specific capability which can be overridden.

However, you can override permissions in any content - see https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Override_permissions

I use it to “promote” students to moderators by giving individuals the teacher role in a specific forum - the elevated permission only has effect when they’re in that forum, when they leave that and go elsewhere in the course they revert to their student role.

So a possibility would be to be give them the teacher role in your Q&A forum, which will give them the capability to ignore the time delay but you’ll also need to prohibit anything else that a teacher can do in that forum, eg. delete posts and move discussions. 

You could also vote for MDL-57907 to allow for the “Send forum post notifications with no editing time delay” to have its own capability.

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In reply to Jon Bolton

Re: Q & A Forum type: allowing students to see other replies immediately

by b k -
Thanks for taking the time for such a detailed response!

I think the need to have them click "ignore delay" might make it too complicated, although I recognize that this is probably the best solution.
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In reply to b k

Re: Q & A Forum type: allowing students to see other replies immediately

by Jason McGensy -

You can accomplish this with a Database activity. Set "Entries required before viewing" to 1 and "Approval required" to No. Then just make sure you don't add the edit button to the single/list template so students don't see it.

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