Moodle in English: Remove "Rating grade for" from forum gradebook item

Hi Everyone,

I am just hopping on here to give a suggestion for a Moodle forum change. We have a decent amount of users that don't like the change of how Moodle forums now display in the gradebook, name wise.

Example: Forum name is "Group forum" and it has ratings turned on for grading. Name in the grade book is now "Rating grade for Group forum". There is no problem with this necessarily but it becomes a problem for identifying assignments in the grader report with narrow columns all you can see is "Rating grade for...". Implementing either an alternative way to display this in the grader report or turning in off if you want would make this easier to use.

Wasn't sure where else to submit this suggestion but feel free to remove if this is not the place!

(Edited by Helen Foster to clarify the discussion subject - original submission Monday, 26 October 2020, 11:44 PM)

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Rick Jerz - Tuesday, 27 October 2020, 8:19 AM

I am not absolutely sure, but I think this "Rating grade for" stuff started happening a little while ago when "whole forum" grading was added to Forums. Yes, you can now grade forums in two different ways, so I think the "Rating grade for" is used with you are using individual post ratings. I don't use "whole forum grading" so this is why I am not totally sure.

Let's see what others say. I too do not care for this "Rating grade for" designation in the grade book.

Average of ratings: -

Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Jason McGensy - Thursday, 3 December 2020, 3:56 AM

Absolutely agree on this. I was trying to put something together with a list of graded items in a module but it looks wonky because "Rating grade for..." is appended to the beginning of the activity name in the grade items table.
I think it would be ideal [for me anyway] if these labels only appended if a forum was configured to use both whole forum grading and ratings to distinguish between them.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Rick Jerz - Thursday, 3 December 2020, 7:07 AM

Interesting point, Jason. This might be worthy of a Tracker feature request (let us know if you create one.)

I really don't like it when the grade book prepends "Rating grade for" to discussion forums. It widens the Forum name (title), almost hiding what the actual forum is about. I would actually like to see the "Rating grade for" switched to being appended, but then it would be less obvious if someone happens to use both a Rating and Overall grade scheme. Oh well.

Perhaps as a workaround solution, one can create a grade time in the grade book and make it be a calculated item using the actual forum grade. And then the actual forum grade item could be hidden in the grade book. Using this technique, the grade book name could be anything. But, I must admit, it would be a little awkward to manage these extra grade items.

I think that it was back in Blackboard where one could enter a "grade book shortname" into an activity. I wish that we could do this in Moodle. Hmmm, maybe a feature request for Moodle4.0? Or maybe a MUA project?

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Jason McGensy - Thursday, 3 December 2020, 9:37 AM

Tracker Item: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-70379

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Rick Jerz - Thursday, 3 December 2020, 9:50 PM

Well done, Jason. I voted for it.

With time, I plan to add some thoughts to the Tracker Item that will help support this feature request. In this discussion, let's see if anyone else has any ideas. The "Forum" activity, I believe, is the only activity where Moodle will modify its name in the grade book, so this problem really is a bit "odd."

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Randy Thornton - Friday, 4 December 2020, 1:23 AM

Rick,

So, if you simply change that string in the language customization (string identifier: gradeitemnameforrating ) then you could take that prepended wording out and leave just the forum name. (Or change it to some other shorter wording. )

The only downside could be if that phrase is also used somewhere else in the forum itself, and you want to preserve the wording in that case, but not in the gradebook. It would be interesting to change this string and see where else it does appear. Judging by its string identifier name, it looks like it is specific for this gradebook item name.

Randy

Average of ratings: Useful (1)

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Rick Jerz - Friday, 4 December 2020, 4:00 AM

Yep, I thought about language customization, but as you note, if you make "Rating" be blank, this word is used elsewhere in forum configurations.

I really like the idea that I shared above about Moodle having a "short name" for any activity that gets put into the grade book. If the short name is left blank, then the long name is used. But there are some possible problems with this approach. 1) It's a lot of programming, 2) It's another field, and some people already complain about too many fields, and 3) It takes a little more space when editing an activity.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Randy Thornton - Friday, 4 December 2020, 6:44 AM

Rick,

Where else exactly does this string show up outside the gradebook item?

There's several strings related to the various places forum names show up. The one for "Rating grade for {forum name}" (gradeitemnameforrating) is the one for the grade items. The word "Rating" is a different string and shows up in a few other strings too as part of the phrase. So changing this would not affect those other strings.

The string in the grading item name is specific to just that one place as far as I can tell. When I grep the Moodle code, it shows me this string is only ever used once (mod/forum/lib.php line 882) : when creating / update the grade item name. It doesn't occur elsewhere in the forum itself.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Jason McGensy - Tuesday, 8 December 2020, 1:01 AM

After seeing this post I tried it and it almost works (at least in our instance). I find I have to go into a forum and click save and display [or save and return] to get the grade item string to update for that activity. If I make a new forum, the grade item will appear with the custom string but any existing activities need to be manually re-saved to get the change to take effect. I purged the language strings cache and tested by making a different change in quiz.php that reflected as soon as I purged again [but not related to the grade item name], so I think it may have something to do with the fact that the change is to a grade item that already exists. Any ideas? Or is this the expected outcome?

Average of ratings: Useful (1)

Re: Remove "Rating grade for" from forum gradebook item

by Helen Foster - Tuesday, 8 December 2020, 1:12 AM

Thanks Jason for your feedback. Good to hear that customising the language string works for new forums.

I think you're right about the name not changing because the grade item already exists i.e. it is the expected outcome.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Josh Manders - Tuesday, 8 December 2020, 6:15 AM

Jason,
Did you ever figure out a way to refresh the cache? I'm in the same spot as you are. I've edited the two strings in my language file
-- Rating grade for = gradeitemnameforrating | Rating grade for {$a->name}
-- Whole forum grade for = gradeitemnameforwholeforum | Whole forum grade for {$a->name}

But Moodle won't pick them up for pre-existing activities. From Helen's response, this is 'as expected' but this seems different from other Language behavior where I can make a change and it effects the entire site.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Jason McGensy - Tuesday, 8 December 2020, 8:04 AM

No, I don't think there's gonna be a way around it. Should be okay, though; I am hoping that when we roll classes forward for our next term, the new courses are restored with the updated grade item string and there will be minimal manual updating that needs to occur and those who are eager for it can take the time; I think having even a 'workaround' for this will be welcomed warmly.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Josh Manders - Tuesday, 8 December 2020, 8:55 AM

Gotcha. You might want to do a little testing of your own but I found when I just tried to import the forum activities into a new shell after making the string edits, Moodle did not update to the new name. However, when you go and manually edit/save a new title, it does.

@ Andrew: Thanks for giving me a hint as to why these language strings strings are different.

-Josh

Average of ratings: Useful (1)

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Jason McGensy - Tuesday, 8 December 2020, 9:18 AM

Yup, I'm seeing the same thing. Oh well 🤷🏾‍♂️

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Andrew Lyons - Tuesday, 8 December 2020, 8:31 AM

Hi Josh,

This is a bit different to the usual language string changes in that these are used as the initial value when you create a grade item. The new language string will take effect if you create a new forum, but existing ones are not changed automatically. You can, of course, manually update them.

It is the same as the default name for the "Announcements" forum, and a few other places.

Average of ratings: Useful (2)

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Rick Jerz - Tuesday, 8 December 2020, 2:24 AM

I have tried to search "gradeitemnameforrating" and when I put this into "string identifier" I cannot find it in the English (us) language customization admin utility. I might be using the language customization incorrectly.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Randy Thornton - Tuesday, 8 December 2020, 2:45 AM

Rick,

It will be in the main en language pack. The en_us pack is a "child" language pack that only holds the various differences from the standard "parent" pack, en (with its many misspellings our former British masters still quaintly persist in using ;)

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Rick Jerz - Tuesday, 8 December 2020, 4:47 AM

Okay. I pick the English (en) language pack, load it, put in the "gradeitemnameforrating" into String identifier, and it is not found. What am I doing wrong? Do I have to select a category in the "Show strings..." area?

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Josh Manders - Tuesday, 8 December 2020, 5:38 AM

Rick,

You've likely already figured it out by now but if you haven't, make sure you select all of the components you want the search to apply to (i.e. click in the "core" and hit hit command-A on your keyboard for select all).

-Josh

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Jason McGensy - Tuesday, 8 December 2020, 5:55 AM

In the show strings area, scroll down to the 'mod' section and choose forum.php

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Randy Thornton - Wednesday, 9 December 2020, 1:10 AM

Exactly, that string is in the forum.php component.

Usually, I just select ALL the component names when searching for something, since a string may sometimes be in a different component that you might expect.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Rick Jerz - Wednesday, 9 December 2020, 1:26 AM

Well folks, no luck yet. First, on my Moodle, the "English (United States) (en_us)" is my Default language. I go to Admin | Language Customization, and open "English (United States) (en_us)," and Moodle loads this language pack. In "Show strings..." I scroll down and select forum.php from the mod section. I search for "gradeitemnameforrating" and Moodle finds this string. I make a minor change, add X, just to see if this is working. I Save changes. I purge caches. This "X" change does not show in the grade book item.

More suggestions? Am I not entering the string correctly?

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Jason McGensy - Wednesday, 9 December 2020, 2:06 AM

You have to go into the settings of each forum activity and re-save to see the change reflected.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Rick Jerz - Wednesday, 9 December 2020, 3:08 AM

"Bingo" Jason! Wow! That's interesting. It appears that one just needs to "Edit" the forum, and simply save. You don't need to actually change anything.

Thanks much! This did it.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Moodle 3.8 Forum change suggestion

by Skye Nguyen - Friday, 4 December 2020, 1:23 AM

Thanks Jason, I also voted for it and added it to my watch list!

Average of ratings: -

Re: Remove "Rating grade for" from forum grade item

by Helen Foster - Tuesday, 8 December 2020, 8:45 PM

Thanks Jason for creating MDL-70379 for improving the forum activity grade item name.

For anyone not watching the issue, I commented there about realising from reading this discussion that a simple improvement would be to change the English language strings gradeitemnameforrating and gradeitemnameforwholeforum so that the name of the forum is first:

{$a->name} rating grade

{$a->name} whole forum grade

Average of ratings: Useful (3)

Re: Remove "Rating grade for" from forum grade item

by Rick Jerz - Wednesday, 9 December 2020, 11:12 PM

Helen, I think that this change would be useful. As you might have seen, I finally got my Language Pack modified after Jason mentioned that I had to "edit" the forum. Since I do not use "whole forum" grading in my Moodle, I simply removed the "Rating for..." words and just put in "{$a->name}."

It is really great to be able to modify one's language pack for these kinds of adjustments. But getting the default wording "correct" is also important. As a simply modification to what you suggest, I would remove the word "grade" since when looking at the grade book, "grade" is already implied. Also, other activities, such as quizzes and assignments, do not append the word "grade" to the grade book heading. So maybe something like the following would work:

{$a->name} Rating

{$a->name} Whole Forum

or perhaps with a dash.

{$a->name} -Rating

{$a->name} -Whole Forum

Average of ratings: -

Re: Remove "Rating grade for" from forum grade item

by Jason McGensy - Thursday, 10 December 2020, 12:26 AM

And that leads me back to the tracker request to append/prepend nothing unless it is necessary for clarification in a case where both rating and whole forum grading is utilized.

The term rating and whole forum grading have little/no purchase with our students - so maybe this goes to Rick's idea of a gradebook alias for an activity. What would be a use case for both rating and whole forum grading? Maybe something like the workshop where you want one method for peer assessment and one method for instructor assessment. Well, having those appear in the gradebook as "Reading Discussion - Rating Grade" and "Reading Discussion - Whole Forum Grade" is still confusing; students can probably reason it out from context, but if you could apply/edit the name in the gradebook to be "Reading Discussion - Peer Grade" that would allow for maximum clarity.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Remove "Rating grade for" from forum grade item

by Rick Jerz - Thursday, 10 December 2020, 1:25 AM

"And that leads me back to the tracker request to append/prepend nothing unless it is necessary for clarification in a case where both rating and whole forum grading is utilized. "

Very good point, Jason. Maybe they should both be blank by default.

I am not sure how many instructors would use both a Rating and a Whole Forum grade. To me, it would seem like it is one or the other. But I might be wrong. However, if an instructor (maybe a newbie) were to use both, then they would see what would appear as two identical grade book items for the forum activity. And the only way for an instructor to fix this would be to contact their Moodle administrator and request a Language Pack change.

Hmmm. Maybe what should happen is that these extra words should be added to the Forum Activity's name only when someone chooses both grading methods? (This idea seems to be your Tracker feature improvement idea.)

Average of ratings: Useful (1)

Re: Remove "Rating grade for" from forum grade item

by Josh Manders - Thursday, 10 December 2020, 2:00 AM

Rick,

We ended up rolling with:
{$a->name} [Rating]
{$a->name} [WholeForum]

If you use parenthesis, Moodle wants to make it an emoji . I realize is poor design for accessibility, but doing so mitigates text wrapping display issues.

Average of ratings: Useful (2)

Re: Remove "Rating grade for" from forum grade item

by Rick Jerz - Thursday, 10 December 2020, 3:32 AM

This is acceptable to me.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Remove "Rating grade for" from forum grade item

by Helen Foster - Thursday, 24 December 2020, 5:23 PM

Thanks Rick for your suggested improvements to the language strings. I have removed the word 'grade' from gradeitemnameforrating and gradeitemnameforwholeforum.

Average of ratings: -