Prevent negative marks for embedded (close) questions

Prevent negative marks for embedded (close) questions

Maciej Radziejewski -
回帖数：5

Hello,

I am using Moodle 3.6.

I set up a close question, worth 3 points, with sub-questions, like this:

Choose a capital letter: {1:MCS:%100%A~%-100%b~%-100%c~%-100%d~%-100%e}

Choose a lowercase vowel: {1:MCS:%-100%A~%-100%b~%-100%c~%-100%d~%100%e}

Choose an uppercase vowel: {1:MCS:%100%A~%-100%b~%-100%c~%-100%d~%-100%e}

I want the students to get:
(a) +1 point for every correct answer and -1 point for every wrong answer, if there are more right answers than the wrong ones,
(b) 0 points total if half or more of the answers are wrong.
In other words, if the total score for the question turns out negative, I want it to be changed to 0.

If I change :MCS: to :MRS: above, Moodle does something similar to what I want, but not quite: the score for each sub-question is changed to 0 if it turns out negative. I want this to be done with the total score for the question.

Is it possible to configure the question, the quiz, or the Moodle instance, in such a way, that the mark for the question is forced to be at least 0?
Any workarounds?

I thought about exporting the individual marks and altering them on my PC, but is there away to import them back to the quiz, to overwrite the original marks?

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回复Maciej Radziejewski

Re: Prevent negative marks for embedded (close) questions

Joseph Rézeau -
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Hello Maciej,

I'm afraid what you want to achieve is not possible with the standard Moodle Cloze question type.

1.- In your paragraph (a) I do not understand what you mean by "if there are more right answers than the wrong ones,"

2.- It would be more clear if you used at all times the terms "sub-question" and "question" when talking about a Cloze question type.

3.- (b) That is not possible. The Cloze question simply adds up the individual score of each sub-question, and those individual scores cannot be negative, i.e. can never be less than zero.

4.- "If I change :MCS: to :MRS: above, ..." Using that option does not make sense, since your sub-questions require a unique answer, not multiple answers.

5.- The solution to your problem is probably given in this paragraph of the Cloze question type documentation: https://docs.moodle.org/310/en/Embedded_Answers_(Cloze)_question_type#Using_.22all_or_nothing.22_plugins

I have tried that qbehaviour_adaptiveallnothing plugin and here is the result:

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回复Joseph Rézeau

Re: Prevent negative marks for embedded (close) questions

Maciej Radziejewski -
Hello, Joseph,

Thank you for looking at my question. I will try to re-phrase. Please, try my question without the plug-in.

The cases when the question behaves as I intended:
(a) If you answer 3 sub-questions correctly, you get 3 points for the whole question.

(b) If you answer two sub-questions correctly and one incorrectly, you get 1+1-1 = 1 point, because you score 1 point for each correctly answered sub-question, and -1 point for the incorrectly answered one.

(At least this is how it works on Moodle 3.6, that my institution still has, and on Moodle 3.10 here).

(c) If you answer two sub-questions correctly and leave one unanswered, you get 1 + 1 + 0 = 2 points.

(d) If you answer one sub-questions correctly and leave two unanswered, you get 1 + 0 + 0 = 1 points.

(e) If you answer one sub-question correctly, one incorrectly, and leave one unanswered, you get 0 points.

This is all expected behaviour. I want my students to answer when they really know something, and see the advantage of saying "I don't know" when they really don't know.

Now, the cases where I would like to see different behaviour:
(f) If you answer two sub-questions incorrectly, and one correctly, you get 1-1-1 = -1 point for the whole question. In this case I would like the score for the question to be 0.

(g) Likewise, if you answer 3 sub-questions incorrectly, you get -3 points, but I would like the score for the question to be 0.

The plug-in that you suggested apparently fixes (f) and (g) (because then the score for the whole question would be 0, as I want it),
but it breaks (b), (c) and (d) (because then the score for the whole question would be 0 again, while I want it to be positive).
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回复Maciej Radziejewski

Re: Prevent negative marks for embedded (close) questions

Joseph Rézeau -
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Hello Maciej,
Thanks for the detailed explanation. I'm afraid what you want it impossible to achieve with the Moodle Cloze question type.
The problem is that you would like to apply at the same time two incompatible logical ways of reasoning, #1 and #2 below.

#1.- Score RIGHT answers +1 and WRONG answers -1 (that's what you do in your Cloze question example). In this logic you penalize wrong answers.

RIGHT + RIGHT + WRONG = 1 + 1 -1 = 1
RIGHT + WRONG + UNANSWERED = 1 - 1 + 0  = 0
RIGHT + WRONG + WRONG = 1 - 1 -1  = -1
WRONG + WRONG + WRONG = -1 -1 -1 = -3

The total score can be negative.

#2.- Score RIGHT answers +1 and WRONG answers 0. In this logic wrong answers do not give points but they do not cost points either; a wrong answer is scored the same as an unanswered answer.

RIGHT + RIGHT + WRONG = 1 + 1 + 0 = 2
RIGHT + WRONG + UNANSWERED = 1 + 0 + 0  = 1
RIGHT + WRONG + WRONG = 1 + 0 + 0  = 1
WRONG + WRONG + WRONG = 0 + 0 + 0  = 0

The total score can never be negative.

Maybe other members on this forum can come up with a solution to solve your conundrum, maybe by using a different type of question. We'll see.思考

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回复Joseph Rézeau

Re: Prevent negative marks for embedded (close) questions

Maciej Radziejewski -
Hello Joseph,
Thank you for your reply. I am sorry, but this is not what I wrote. I will try to rephrase again.

I want to score RIGHT answers +1 and WRONG answers -1. Then I want to sum the scores for sub-questions:
sum = score1 + score2 + score3
Then I want to apply an extra check:
if sum >= 0:
    final_score = sum
else:
    final_score = 0
I hope this is clear now.
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回复Maciej Radziejewski

Re: Prevent negative marks for embedded (close) questions

Joseph Rézeau -
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Yes, Maciej,
I do understand what you want to achieve. But it is not possible to do it with the Moodle Cloze question type as it currently works. What would be needed is an extra setting in that question type, something like "Allow negative score for this question Yes/No".
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