Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Tim Hunt -
Number of replies: 51
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I should probably have posted about this here before now. It is the usual excuse of busy-ness.

A group of us are trying to get together plans to re-develop the question bank in time for Moodle 4.0, to fix the long-standing problemes (as exemplified by some recent posts here, and I am sure you have seen many more.)

As we get further in our planning, I will post more details here, because I want as many people as possible to look at what we are suggesting, and tell us if it seems to make sense. However, detailed plans have not been made yet.

What has been happening is that I have presenting the general idea to various groups (Moodle developer meeting this morning, MUA town-hall events - there is another on of those this evening. Moot US, ...). If you want to watch one of those, I suggest the Moodle developer meeting one. It is the most detailed one so far. Earlier in the process we talked about our plans at the Global Moot Online, and Moot DACH.

The 'We' behind this project are me, Luca Bosch (who you may know from the Moodle bug-tracker, because he fixes a lot of quiz-related bugs, Thomas Korner (current MUA chair) and Antonia Bonaccorso (colleague of Thomas at ETH Zürich).

The approach we will take to this project is based on the modle that successfully delivered better SEB integration in Moodle 3.9. That is, a group of institutions to get together and crowd-fund one of the Moodle partners to do most of the development. If your organisation may be able to help with that, please complete this survey.

The reason we are proposing this now is because of Moodle HQ's decision to delay the release of Moodle 4.0 to November 2021, so there is more time to make bigger changes.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers
Thanks for the update, Tim.

Yes, over the years, there have been many good ideas about improving the question bank. At this point in time, Moodle's question bank methods are better than any other LMS, so if nothing is done, we still have a good question bank.

The improvements that quickly come to my mind are:
1) A better way to search the question bank by keyword.
2) A better way to move questions and categories around (like drag-and-drop.)
3) A "where used" tool.
4) A way to identify duplicate questions.
5) Some kind of "ownership" tool to find if questions are owned by a quiz, a course, a teacher, etc. (I am my Moodles admin, and the only teacher, so this issue doesn't affect me much, but I wanted to get it on the list.)

These ideas are a bit vague, but I am just trying to provide a few. Maybe others here can contribute ideas and suggestions.
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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Tim Hunt -
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Thanks Rick. I think most of those are already in the plan (1, 3, 5) or acutally, a change that is cosmetic (2) not fundamental, so is probably something that shoudl be done at another time, not part of this project.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Ross Lovell -
That would be amazing. I'd love to be able to see where questions are used and which quiz/course/teacher owns them.
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In reply to Ross Lovell

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Rick Jerz -
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The "where used," I believe, can be a little tricky because there might be a need for some privacy issues, such as Teacher#1 should not be able to see that Teacher2 is using a question in Quiz5. (Maybe.)
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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Eyal Ben-hur -

I think a better way to quickly organize the questions and categories in the questions bank is highly needed (2 in Rick's list). This is one of the most popular complaints I hear about moodle UX. The task of organizing the question bank should resemble the way one organize files in folders in an operating system. This should utilize simple ways for bulk actions and a GUI representation of the categories and their content.

I really hope that these aspects will be improved in the near future.

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In reply to Eyal Ben-hur

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Tim Hunt -
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I agree.

However, while this would be really nice for users. from a code point of view it is basically just a superficial change in the UI, rather than requiring fundamental chagnes to the system. So, anyone with time, ability and inclination could do it at any time. (However, it is not necessarily a small change.)
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In reply to Eyal Ben-hur

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Rick Jerz -
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There is a MUA project involving dragging to reorder question categories, as I recall. Check it out (and vote for it.) This is a start to #2 on my list.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Ton Boerkoel -
There is a question bank? Where is it located?
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In reply to Ton Boerkoel

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Rick Jerz -
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In my Boost, the question bank can be found as shown.

Attachment question bank in boost.png
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In reply to Ton Boerkoel

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Ton Boerkoel -

Yes I know about my question bank ... I was hoping there existed a question bank like Webwork where people had deposited their questions. A large repository of examples.

I had posted* on the forum a while back whether such a thing existed or whether we could create such a thing  (Like webwork).  


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In reply to Ton Boerkoel

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Rick Jerz -
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I don't know of any. I typically get my questions from my textbook publisher.
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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Ton Boerkoel -
I haven't used a textbook in such a long time ... do publishers routinely provide moodle problem sets?

What I had in mind was a collection of math problems --- as examples; available for anyone who is learning to create moodle formulas questions for their classes, possibly linked to the formulas website.
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In reply to Ton Boerkoel

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Rick Jerz -
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I cannot speak for all publishers.  In my courses, I always look for a textbook from a leading publisher and have always been able to get their question banks.  Sometimes these are in Moodle format, and sometimes Blackboard and other formats that are easy to import into Moodle.

This discussion is really not about what Tim had intended, but I think our discussion is fine.  I don't want to put words into your mouth, but I think you are saying "It would be nice if Moodle's question bank could be linked to free questions on many topics, including Math."  This could be part of moodle.net's mission, but I am not sure.

Do you think that if you were to develop maybe 1000 to 5000 math questions, in Moodle format, that you would post them in Moodle?

Incidentally, if you are referring to the "formulas" plugin, I think that you can get support for how to use this plugin from the authors (and Dominique.)

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Ton Boerkoel -

I just started a few month ago using moodle formulas, so I haven't gotten that many yet. Approaching 200. But yes I would be fine with posting them, for others to use. When I started learning TeX and LaTeX, I learned the most from examples, like the book "TeX by example". We can move this thread to my post about an example bank.

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In reply to Ton Boerkoel

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Daniel Thies -
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I think it is worth thinking about adding this to this project. The WebWork system has a project associated with it https://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Open_Problem_Library that provides a library of thousands of questions searchable by a number of criteria, topic, author, institution, textbook chapters etc. Rather than importing question export files, individual questions where shared and searchable in the interface.

I think that it may also have a version control system built in. It has been a while since I used it. However, if you are considering adding a version control to the questions it would be worth looking to see how that system works.
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In reply to Ton Boerkoel

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Ed Beck -

I think there are models in some math software like WeBWoRK or IMathAS that could make interesting user stories:

  • In iMathAS there are large libraries of questions that can be categorized or sorted in a hierarchy. Users with the correct permissions can view, or pull questions from those test banks

Screenshot of iMathAS description

This allows faculty to share open question sets.

  • While you can only edit your own questions, you can create a copy of any question to make a new version, or you can message the question owner directly (useful if there is a problem with a shared question).


The screenshot above shows a shared question bank, where a faculty member could add a question, or using the template button, could copy the question so they have an editable version.

  • Questions or sets of questions can be associated with a learning objective or learning outcome. (Useful for reporting on specialized question banks that may be used as pools for adaptive purposes).

Tim,

I watched the recording of your presentation to the Moodle Users Association. Are these types of use cases the type of things that a plugin or subplugin could be created for if your project goes as planned? 

The type of innovation that your project might not include in its scope but could make possible in the future?

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In reply to Ed Beck

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Tim Hunt -
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Sorry, a bit busy to reply in depth, but I have read it. Some of these are in scope, and some are in the "could make possible in the future" category.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Stephen Bourget -
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Tim,

I just watched your presentation (from the recording) at the developers meeting.  I'm curious what the plan is to handle quiz questions and categories shared at the course category level?  (I have most of my departments such as math / language / science etc sharing questions at the course category context)  Your presentation spoke about system context and course context but not really sharing between courses at the category context.

(I've simply assigned them the shared question user role at the course category level)

I curious on how you envision that scenario working.




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In reply to Stephen Bourget

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Tim Hunt -
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Basically the upgrade from 3.11 -> 4.0 will need to do this:

  1. For each category where there are questions in the shared question bank.
  2. Create a new course called something like "Miscellaneous category shared question banks"
  3. In there, create a question bank.
  4. Move all the questions from the old category question bank there.
  5. (Might be good to also enrol users with access to the old question bank into the new course, with some role, but we probably don't acutally need to do that, because the existing permissions setup will still apply.)
So, it should just keep working.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Joost Elshoff -
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Hi Tim,

That's a very intesting project to take on, improving / fixing the Moodle question bank. I'll be sure to follow this discussion, as I know quite a few organisations that are struggling with the question bank and it's history.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Thomas Wedekind -

As a developer of offlinequiz, which uses the quiz API a lot, my most often quiz-related problem is the deletion of still used questions.

Sometimes teachers change or delete questions while still using them in offlinequiz, which leads to undefined behavior. It doesn't happen very often anymore because we teach them not to do that, but it's not intuitive.

So it would be nice to have a chance to tell the quiz API certain questions and their version being used so they can't be deleted/edited anymore or the old version is still saved in the database until the activity is deleted.

All in all I think it's a good way to let the question bank to be a more prominent feature, because a lot of teachers don't find it in the last section of the course settings and therefore don't know about it's capabilities.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Helder Pereira -

Hello. If I may suggest, reporting on the question bank is something missing I think. A lot.

As an example, I have a category of questions that multiple courses have a quiz on those questions. If I need to know statistics about the questions of the single quiz I have that report "Statistics" that, by the way, is awesome!, the analysis is great. BUT that is at quiz level. If I need a report like "Quiz Statistics" for all the questions of the Question Bank category where all those quiz get them there is none. There are no report to evaluate questions, statistically speaking, grouped on the Question Bank. At least that I know of. If there is please let me know.

That would be a great addition I think.

Thank you.

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In reply to Helder Pereira

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Tim Hunt -
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This sort of thing is already on our list of requirements.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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This is radically different from the current concept. So, consider it as "food for thought".
wink

The subject title has it, "Fixing the question bank". Implying that the question bank is broken. But there is good news, the quiz is not broken - in fact, it is exactly the right thing.

Now what is wrong with the question bank? Firstly, the most obvious, the hierarchy along the "contexts" in Moodle. That is not the way teachers think. Secondly, the less obvious, the elephant in the room, is the live connection the questions in the quizzes maintain with their "originals" in the question bank. Think of it: What is original about a question? Sure, we recycle questions. But each time we ask a question (in a quiz) it is a copy! Becomes an instance of its own. That is how the teachers think. Not surprisingly, that is how every (static) electronic document behaves. They get multiplied through copying and have no (built-in) mechanism to trace back the pedigree.

To keep it short, rather than arguing why the question bank is broken, here comes my solution. Replace it with, you guessed it, the content bank! To be specific on the part of questions (the content bank is more general), the new question bank of a user in his content bank is a hierarchy, of his own planning - not something given by Moodle. In the simplest case, he may not want any hierarchy. Then just put the questions in the "root". Once he wants to structure it, he can create "question directories" (in the root) which are like the root itself, i.e. may have loose questions and further "question directories". Sounds famliar? It is exactly the same construction of files in a hierarchial file system. The root "question directory" is analogous to the user's home. Questions are analogues to the files inside.

Well, that is the easy part of it. Now the more difficult part, the permissions. He may want to share those questions and question directories with others. I haven't studied the content bank concept, but believe the sharing issue must have been already solved. If not, why reinvent the wheel? The fathers of the Unix file system came up with a brilliantly simple system, which survived 50 years, and still going. In coded form it is "drwxrwxrwx user:group". For those who find it cryptic, here is a simple explanation.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Rick Jerz -
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You are correct, Visvanath. Moodle's question bank works fine, is not broken, and is the best quiz engine amongst all other major LMSs. I would say "It blows them out of the water!" So this topic should use "Improving" instead of "Fixing." However, I understand Tim's original post and intent.

Moodle's quiz engine and question bank approach is very sophisticated. As such, the question remains (which Tim is always very open to ideas) is how to give it even more "power" and how to make it "easier" to use.

I will have to think about your "content bank" ideas. You might be on to something.

Thanks for sharing your ideas.
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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Stéphan GRIGNON -
Hi,
I teach mathematics in France. In June 2020 I started a big question bank.
Could you give me a direct link to the video that some are talking about above. I would like to know the planned improvements before giving my opinion.
Thanks in advance.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Tim Hunt -
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Thanks Visvanath for the thoughtful post, and for the people who replied.

I completely agree about the problems caused by tying the question bank to Moodle's context hierarchy. Changing that is already in the plan.

The live link between questions in a quiz, and questions in the question bank is not necessarily a problem. Sometimes it is a problem, but sometimes not having a link is a problem. At the Open University, we keep questions in each course separate, and each year we make a new copy of the course. And, when our academics want to share a question between courses, then we tell them to use Moodle XML export. Recently, we found an issue affecting one of our STACK questions, and when I looked, we had 13 copies of it which needed to be fixed! This is a different sort of problem!

So, sometimes you want a live link, and sometimes you want a copy. There is already another part of Moodle which works like that. What are add a file from certain types of repository (e.g. My proviate files) then you get an option to either make a copy or alias/shortcut the original (https://docs.moodle.org/310/en/Private_files#Making_an_alias.2Fshortcut_to_a_file_in_the_private_files_area). I am planning to do the same think when you add a question to a quiz in future.

And combined with that, the plan is so store each version of each question. So, even when you link to a question, you can still control when or if changes that other people make will affect your quiz. Also, in future it will be easy to see in the question bank all the places that a question is used - you you can see the consequences before editing.

I did think very carefully, about combining Question bank and Content bank. From a user's point of view there are lots of benefits. It makes sense to have only one place to look for all your different types of content. However, right now, there are too many differences, which makes it effectively impossible to combine them. For example, at the moment, things can only be stored in the Content bank, and later used, if they are essentially files. Also, the whole point of the content bank is to make it easy to share content. (To use your analogy, It's like it has hard-coded 777 file permissions.)

With enough time, of course, anything can be changed into anything else. But, we only have a fixed amount of time before 4.0. Therefore, we have (slightly reluctantly) taken the decision not to try to combine the question band an the content bank how. Instead, we want to focus on getting some long-wished-for changes made in the question bank. (However, we will continue to talk to the the content bank people at Moodle HQ in Barcelona. Hopefully the changes we make now might make it easier to consider combining them in a future bit of work.)

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Tim Hunt -
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My previous message was getting very long, so I decided to split this out into a separate post.

One other part of the new design is how to handle filtering and searching in the question bank, and my current thinking is to steal the interface the added to the participants screen in Moodle 3.9. (Thank you Moodle User's Association.) If you have not seen it yet, you can try it here: https://qa.moodledemo.net/user/index.php?id=2

That lets you search and filter on a wide range of things, while also taking up not too much space at the top of the page (unlike how much space is currently used up above the list of questions in the question bank). And, we should be able to make pretty much any property of questions searchable.

Also, just as a footnote, by now, there should be more detailed plans in writing. However, stuff keeps coming up at work (or I am procrastinating, or both). My challenge, for the remaining 3½ days I have left to work before Christmas, is to see how much of the stuff floating around in my brain I can get onto paper (or electrons in the cloud).

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Stéphan GRIGNON -
Thanks Visvanath for the link.

I just wrote my little adventure with the question bank. It does not add much to what has been said but as it is done ...

The 350 high schools in my area have had a Moodle for a long time, but teachers haven't used it much so far.
Things started to change four years ago when the region started giving out laptops to all students between the ages of 15 and 18. This year the health crisis has rapidly increased the number of teachers using Moodle.
In France, digital teaching resources are mainly created by the teachers themselves. Since many teachers are new to Moodle I had the idea of creating a question bank. With the integration of Safe Exam Browser in Moodle 3.9 I thought it would be useful.
I started this project by setting myself as objectives that it be easily usable by colleagues in my high school and that it be easily distributed to other high schools.
I quickly gave up the categories, too painful to manage, and which causes the movement of questions between categories, when importing xml files from another Moodle.
So I kept less than ten categories. Using the name of the questions I thought I could get a ranking in the categories. It works but the sorting is done inside the type of question, which is not very intuitive. Of course I ended up using Tags.
So I obtained a bank of 600 questions where you can easily find what you are looking for, that you can easily share. This bank is not sufficient for the program for one year, so it will contain a lot of questions when finished.
I would like to drop it at the system level and allow users to only copy questions. In this way, the entire bank is not saved at the same time as a course. But admins seem reluctant to do this and looking at each question and importing the xml file takes time.
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In reply to Stéphan GRIGNON

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Marcus Green -
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'I quickly gave up the categories, too painful to manage, and which causes the movement of questions between categories, when importing xml files from another Moodle.'
That is interesting, could you elaborate on your frustrations with categories?
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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Stéphan GRIGNON -
Alright Marcus, I'll give it a try, but Rick (point 2) and Visvanath said a lot of my frustrations.

When I started my project I knew how to do a few types of questions and I had a few dozen in different categories. I started by looking for others on the web and I found ... nothing, at least not in French. Strange, isn't it? Especially if we compare to the very many files available on GeoGebraTube (by the way GeoGebra abandons the development of most of its plugins for Moodle, see here). But by modifying the xml files found here I managed to get a lot of questions in dozens of categories. I then wanted to classify them but it's too painful with so many questions / categories (point 2 Rick). A colleague from another high school wanted to help me but the transfer of categories by xml made a mess.

I understand that these two points are not in your priorities, but they seem important to me to facilitate the work with Moodle.

So nothing new, you must be disappointed Marcus so maybe the following will be of some interest.

If we end up with well-structured question banks, the result of a search is likely to return too many questions. If it was then possible to select some to view them all at once rather than one by one (for example test column of the xml site above, use Chrome).
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In reply to Stéphan GRIGNON

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Rick Jerz -
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Relative to my Point 2, I can say a little more.

An analogy might be that someone who has lived in spreadsheets, like Microsoft Excel, will have a hard time transitioning to relational databases.  It will take some study to appreciate what a relational database's advantages.

So, the same thing is true about Moodle's database approach to managing quiz questions.  It is a functionally excellent approach!  I have used the other major LMSs, and their approach is quite weak compared to Moodle.  However, you must spend some time with the Moodle quiz bank to appreciate what it has to offer.

I am not saying that Moodle's quiz engine is "complete."  Not at all. There is still room for improvement, which is what this conversation is about.  And new ideas are appreciated.  

Moving "data" around, as you have illustrated with your experiences with GeoGebra questions, is always challenging.   (And I wouldn't say that French is strange, I would just say it is different.  😀 🇨🇵)

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In reply to Stéphan GRIGNON

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Hi Stéphan

What a nice surprise to hear that the teachers on the other side of the Röstigraben think the same.
wink

True, nothing new here. The teachers, who want to look at each MC question before adapting them, are boring. But our message need to be repeated. Otherwise the developers will only take notice of the more exciting, more sophisticated, more affluent users, who call themselves the "enterprise". Those who consider teaching as series of "shots" aimed at the learner, if I were to take the current vaccine mania as an analogy. So the digital learning space will be booby-trapped, aka automated - they prefer to relax thereafter and watch how the learners fall.
;-(
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Salim Al Waili -
Hi Tim,
Thank you for your initiative for getting ideas for Moodle 4.

I would suggest two things:
1. Teachers want to know about where each question in the question bank has been used (in which quiz/quizzes)
2. Adding random category is good thing to consider. Similar to the current option of adding random question. But here you can make similar set of questions in one category and repeat this in a number of categories and than ask the system to choose one full category for each student. So each student will get a different copy of the test.

Thank you.
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In reply to Salim Al Waili

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Rick Jerz -
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Salim, #1 has been suggested many times. Tim can speak for himself, but I can confidently say that he knows about this. I cannot recall if there is a Tracker Item for this request that you can vote for.

Tim also knows about #2. I believe this is captured in MDL-40991. Vote for this Tracker item, and of course, express more of your views and suggestions about how this feature would work. I spoke with Tim about this feature at the 2019 GlobalMoot in Barcelona.

Also, keep offering ideas. Moodle is an organization made up of people who listen (and speak), just as you and I do. (I am not a formal part of Moodle, just a professor who uses Moodle.)

Tim is a good guy. He loves seeking ways to improve the quiz engine. From what I can tell, some of these ideas are not easy to implement, and Tim isn't a paid Moodle employee. He has a lot of things in the works.
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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Andrea Sella -
I am new here so apologies is this is in the wrong place. Maybe it belongs in a new thread.

I am trying to figure out how to manage some 2000 questions that are scattered across a number of courses to maximise shareability and reuse. I would love to use the Embed Question plugin but am very daunted by the whole issue of question management. There are loads of interesting ideas and discussions in this thread – thank you all – but I'm finding it difficult to pull all the thoughts together.

My question: Are there anywhere a set of guidelines for how to maintain a Question Bank with multiple teachers so as to ensure set of uniquely identified questions? I might be able to combine a taxonomic structure of categories with tags to allow users to find questions, but what is the optimal way to uniquely identify/find questions within a centralized question bank?

Thanks,
SellaTheChemist
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In reply to Andrea Sella

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Rick Jerz -
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I can't help, because I am the only teacher in my Moodle (I run my own small Moodle.)

However, as I think about this, I wouldn't want any other teacher to touch any of my question banks because I would fear that they would mess them up. I would want my questions private (which Moodle can do) and then if I wanted to borrow another instructor's questions, I would have them export them and then I would import them (which Moodle can do.) But this is my way of thinking.

Yes, I understand. Some schools would want a common pool of questions. Again, I don't do this because I am the only instructor. However, I believe that Moodle can share questions at both the course, and course category levels.
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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Andrea Sella -
It totally get your possessiveness about questions, but I'm prepared to let that go when imagine that my questions could support the learning of more students. The thing is that writing the feedback is the real high value aspect of these questions, and the thing that really takes time and energy. So I'm prepared to risk someone mucking up my question in exchange for more students getting to use them.
I'd love to use the Embed Question plug-in to enable this, but am tying myself into knots trying to think of a taxonomy and workflow that would enable this sharing.
AS
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In reply to Andrea Sella

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Helder Pereira -
Hello! I totally understand your situation.
We also have to have a single point where question are shared for multiple courses.
What we did was create categories to organize the courses. Then the question can be assigned to those categories and all courses created on those categories can get that question bank.
Any course or subcategory have access to the questions assigned to the "parent" category.
That way, if you need to change one question you change in one place and it's done.
Of course that is a solution for our needs where there are persons responsible for the management of the questions database exclusively.
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In reply to Helder Pereira

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Andrea Sella -
That's very interesting and maybe needs a different thread… 

We too have wondered about a Question Bank course with categories – but how do you see categories across courses? What is the Moodle magic that turns me into a cross-course question voyeur??? Let me add that while I've used Moodle for years I know little of the nuts and bolts because I have friends/colleagues who know that kind of dark magic/juju.
wink
A
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In reply to Andrea Sella

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Helder Pereira -

I will try to example our situation.

We use what we named "template courses". These are courses that are the original and them we create the real courses students use with Moodle procedures to do so. Namely the "upload courses" feature.

So something to bear in mind, in Moodle you have categories for organizing your courses, and you have categories for your question bank. They are totally apart from each other BUT, as I will try to show you further in the explanation of our case, they are somewhat "connected".

We have a course category "Course Template", inside we have all our courses, some in sub categories. Assuming "Course Templates" has our main category, then we have courses in these main category, these are the courses where we don't need to share question, and as such, the questions for these courses are at the course level. But them we have some courses that need to share questions, so we made another category, for example, "Template DMIF". Inside "Template DMIF", we have a number of different courses that share the questions inside DMIF and because there are some that share part of these questions and have some that are specific we create another category, "Template MBCP". These are all course categories.

Now the fun part 😆, by default, when you create one course category Moodle creates a question bank category with the same name.

So, in practice, for courses that don't share question, you put them at the main level in the "Course template" level.

We have some courses that share de DMIF question, so we put the courses inside the DMIF course category and assigned these questions to the DMIF category in the question bank category. We have more specific courses that share DMIF question AND have specific questions, we put them in the "Template MBCP" and have access to the questions in the parent category "DMIF" and also the specif "Template MBCP" ones.

This is quite simple to implement but probably I'm terrible at explaining it ...

Here is a little movie to try to explain this in practice, sorry for the quality but it was made in a hurry: 

There are 2 drawbacks to this approach:

1 - If you use, like we do, the "upload courses" feature, the courses inside subcategories of "Course templates" need to be created in the original category, and them you move them to the proper category altering this in the course settings. I opened a thread about this and, "mea culpa", I should have opened a bug tracker... It's better explained here: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=396614

2 - If you nest 2 or more levels of subcategories and have a substantial number of question in a quiz that is part of the course to create, there are a good probability that the quiz will be wrongly created with missing questions, you have to check these situations. We made a report to check if there are courses in this situation and we run this report wright after the creation process. If we have this problem them what we do is we import only the quiz to the newly created course. This problem I don't know if is a bug or not. We have something that may have problems that some other folks don't have, because we use a Oracle database and in the passed we had issues because of it. Oracle is accepted but not the preferred DB for Moodle.

Also, we are on Moodle 3.7 and we are in a process to upgrade to the 3.9 version. Unfortunately we have some clients that still have the Internet Explorer so we cant move to 3.10 version...

Maybe I was a bit confusing, hope not. Hope this helps you.


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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by H D -
Wish there is some easy way out in new Moodle to make NO NUMBERING default for all questions. Also how to make such changes of Numbering for all questions in a question bank in mass. This , I think is not available at present.
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In reply to H D

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
There is: Admin -> Plugins -> Question types -> Multiple choice. (Assuming I understood what you were asking for.)
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by H D -
Thanks Tim,

Yes, its there for any new question import or question creation.

But if we have already uploaded many questions and now want to change "Number the choices" , is it possible in bulk?
Attachment nonumbering.png
Attachment questionbank.png
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In reply to H D

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
There is no way to do bulk changes in the UI. This setting is stored in the database (in the qtype_multichoice_options table). If you can directly access the database, you can change it there (with all the usual caveats about editing data directly in the database).

Also, after chacning the data in the DB, you would need to purge Moodle's caches to make the changes show up. (Specifically the 'question definition cache.)
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In reply to H D

Re: Fixing the question bank in Moodle 4.0

by H D -
Thanks a lot.
Will try to download XML and then from plugin , will make no numbering as default. Then will upload XML as a new questin catagory.
Should work..

Thanks again..
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