Answers vanished on time up?

Answers vanished on time up?

by Jan Prodöhl -
Number of replies: 6

Hello.

We have used the quiz mod for a test. Some students now reported that some (but not all) of their answers vanished when their time was up. Students who submitted their answers before the time did not see this issue.

Has anyone seen anything like this happen before? I couldn't find anything in the forum or on the bug tracker.

Many thanks in advance for your feedback.

Greetings from Hildesheim, Germany,

Jan

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In reply to Jan Prodöhl

Re: Answers vanished on time up?

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Obviously, this should never happen.

If it does happen, you need to work out the root cause - and the clues to that are usually in the server log files. You should look in the logs for:

  1. Apache (or other web server)
  2. PHP error log
  3. and Moodle's log table in the database.
  4. Any monitoring you have of server load is also worth checking.

Common causes:

  • Student's log-in session expired during the attempt. (Although, if that happens, they should get a warning.
  • The load was too high for the server to cope with. (4. above would show that.)

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Answers vanished on time up?

by Jan Prodöhl -
Hello Tim.

We were looking into this earlier today, but we couldn't find anything special in the Apache or PHP logs. Since all the questions were on the same page, there was only one submit event for all the questions. I would have expected that, on error, no answers of a given student would have arrived.

We couldn't look into the log table yet.

If neither you nor anyone else have heard of this happening before and there's nothing in the last log, I think we must take into consideration that the students just lost their overview over what they already answered and what did not. (I refuse to impute malice.)
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In reply to Jan Prodöhl

Re: Answers vanished on time up?

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
I recommend one question per page. In the worst case scenario is then one lost response.
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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Answers vanished on time up?

by Jan Prodöhl -
Ha! That's what we tell our professors. They don't always listen.
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In reply to Jan Prodöhl

Re: Answers vanished on time up?

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
The danger of hiring people who are valued for their independence of thought.... smile
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