Assignment Module - Add Titles to Buttons on "Instructions" Page in student view

Assignment Module - Add Titles to Buttons on "Instructions" Page in student view

by John Provasnik -
Number of replies: 3
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Hi all, Happy new year. For Moodle 3. 9, I've created tracker MDL-70599 for adding a "Title" to the Add Submission, Edit Submission, and Remove Submission buttons. 

The reasoning is so I can target those buttons with CSS. I just wanted to check with the community to see if that is the correct thing to ask for if I want to target them with CSS. They all have IDs but with each page loads, the string of numbers in the ID is different.

Now my reason for this may not be something all agree with, but I want to target these buttons so I can hide the Edit and Remove buttons. When students gets denied a 2nd attempt on their assignment, they simply edit their first attempt and then it get's put back into the grading queue. Teachers would like to see a stop to this practice. Now we do not use cut-off dates at my school because we are asynchronous so the student have the entire semester to submit work and once the semester is over, the class closes. We also don't use the 'require students to click the submit' button because no matter how many reminders we post, students just for get to do click it and things constantly sit in draft form. 

Im just trying to find a way to make the Assignment more user-friendly and straight forward: I'd like to just target that Edit Submission button and hide it. I'd also like to target the Remove submission button and hide it because once a student removes their submission, they are not presented with the "Add submission", only "Edit submission" and therefore not useful in our use case either. 

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to John Provasnik

Re: Assignment Module - Add Titles to Buttons on "Instructions" Page in student view

by Davo Smith -
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I can see a number of flaws in your proposal:
  • A 'title' attribute is not a good way to target CSS, as any 'title' attribute will be translated into the language of the user viewing the page, so would need a CSS rule for every possible language Moodle supports.
  • Hiding buttons is only a minor hindrance to submitting work, for anyone with the slightest web development skills (just opening the web developer tools would allow the buttons to be unhidden, and you're not proposing any check on the server side to stop the user from submitting).
  • As this isn't a bug fix, there is no chance it will be added to Moodle 3.9 - you might get it into Moodle 3.11 or Moodle 4.0, if you can make a strong enough case for it.

If you don't want students to edit graded submissions (and don't want to use the "require students to click submit" button), then you should consider asking the tutor to lock the student's assignment when grading it: https://docs.moodle.org/39/en/Using_Assignment#Submission_status

(Note it might be a good tracker ticket to add a 'prevent submission changes' checkbox to the individual grading page, so that a teacher can lock submissions at the same time as grading them).

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Davo Smith

Re: Assignment Module - Add Titles to Buttons on "Instructions" Page in student view

by John Provasnik -
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Hi Davo, having the ability to utilize the "lock submission" option directly on the individual grading page (instead of only on the quick grading page) would indeed be a perfect outcome. I'll definitely update the tracker.
In reply to Davo Smith

Re: Assignment Module - Add Titles to Buttons on "Instructions" Page in student view

by John Provasnik -
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Thank you for the valuable feedback -- I've updated the tracker title and body. Have a great day,