Moodle in English: Editing quiz review settings

Editing quiz review settings

by Velson Horie - Sunday, February 21, 2021, 6:33 PM

My courses are prepared in advance as a Master copy, backed up, then restored into the new course name.

However a glitch has occurred when students cannot see the submitted and graded quiz once the quiz has closed. Indeed in the Master copy, the option to do so is greyed out. The option to edit these settings occurs only after the quiz is closed, i.e. when the course is running. A real time test seems to be applied to the editing of these options, which should be independent of the process.

Is there any way to eliminate the hurdle during the writing of course materials?

Thank you

Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Dominique Bauer - Tuesday, February 23, 2021, 11:03 AM

Hello Velson,

In the quiz settings and under "Timing", just set a "Close the quiz" date. It can be anything, say 31 December 1999 23:59 or any other date, preferably in the past. This will unlock the "After the quiz is closed" options. Anyway, this date will need to be adjusted when writing the course material.

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Velson Horie - Wednesday, February 24, 2021, 4:52 AM

Thank you.

In retrospect, it became obvious that the work-around could be used while preparing the course, but it means closing then unclosing those options for 24 quizzes, then setting 24 closing dates again when implementing the course. Doable but a pain, which should be unnecessary. And now the course is running, not sensible to do. I am now getting (I think for this reason) a rash of "not submitted" failed quiz submissions that are preventing submissions. I can find no way to reverse the effect (see another thread).

I was flagging up a disfunctional aspect of writing a course. It looks as though somewhere in the design of the quiz function, a choice/switch was made that the management of the quiz options should be done in real time. But it is better to prepare the course properly in advance, while enabling (rare) emergency changes to be made on the fly. I don't remember this problem arising a few years ago, so is it a recent change in policy?

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Rick Jerz - Wednesday, February 24, 2021, 7:06 AM

I too have run into this issue of "After the quiz is closed" settings being not allowed until a due date is entered.

Dominique, what would you think of having the ability to not have to set a due date, but allowing people to click on those "after the quiz is closed" and simply having them show as grey, which would mean they will not apply until a due date is set?

The other thing that I dislike is that if you set a due date, click on those options, then remove the due date, when you make a copy of this course Moodle clears these settings. I think that they should persist.

I have been meaning to get to this issue, with discussion and a Tracker item, just hadn't done so. But Velson's post made me think about it.

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Dominique Bauer - Wednesday, February 24, 2021, 11:34 AM

Rick,

When it comes to common sense, I trust your good judgment. This modification could be useful to teachers who are well organized and who prepare their courses in advance.

But honestly, I don't understand the difficulty. If you want to check the "After the quiz is closed" options, you must set a closing date. If you know this date, you just need to define it under "Timing". That's all.

If you don't know the closing date in advance, just put any date and you'll put the correct date when you know it. Replacing a fictitious closing date with the correct date doesn't strike me as much more difficult than just entering a correct date.

This way, if you forget to set the correct closing date, the quiz will not be available and the students will surely alert you. Whereas if the boxes are greyed out and you forget to set the correct closing date, what will happen, the quiz will remain open? Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Again, if you know the closing date in advance, there is no problem. You just have to define it under "Timing".

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Velson Horie - Wednesday, February 24, 2021, 7:40 PM

Dominique

Thank you for your thoughts. Being an only moderately organised teacher, I frequently create difficulties resulting from inadquate familiarity with Moodle's increasingly valuable intricacies.

" If you want to check the "After the quiz is closed" options, you must set a closing date. " - Why?

I wrote this course about 5 years ago with constant modifications to the content ever since, but the structure and flow has been retained.
There is a cascade of dependencies in this process (and throughout Moodle).

Option - Open the graded activity to review
a> after the closing date of the activity - the trigger concept.
b> choose the closing date - the trigger criterion
c> reach the closing date - implement the trigger.
Each of these can, and should, be set independently. For this course
a was specified 5 years ago,
b is specified about 2 days in advance of the closing date to accomodate environmental difficulties - Covid, postal delays and the like,
c is specified by the internet time signal.

Eliding these logical stages can lead to problems, indeed this one.

For each iteration of the course, 3 overlapping each year, there are about 35 separate timed activities. So "Replacing a fictitious closing date with the correct date doesn't strike me as much more difficult than just entering a correct date." I can tell you - it is a real pain. Sometimes I get it wrong, leading to hours of work dealing with unhappy students.

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Rick Jerz - Thursday, February 25, 2021, 1:48 AM

I will tell you more about the real problem.

Prior to Exams, I lock quiz grades in the grade book, but then remove the quiz's due date so that students can practice old quizzes as they prepare for the Exam. Makes a lot of sense.

Then, as I prepare for the next semester, I make a backup of this course, then restore it. Upon restoring a course, since I had removed these quizzes due dates, the restored course does not have any of the "after the quiz" settings set. I have to always remember to reset these. So Moodle has removed settings that I had once enabled. I wish that these "after the quiz" settings would persist.

(If I set these checkboxes, remove the date, save the quiz, Moodle removes these settings. I propose that their greyed state should be maintained.)

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Velson Horie - Thursday, February 25, 2021, 2:59 AM

As I understand your process, it seems one more reason why these separate choices should be setable separately . This would provide the flexibility to adjust the usage to the requirements.
Anyone who has constructed a database rapidly finds out that separating each data element from the start enables being able to address and change each one. Separating them after constructing the database, or in this case elements of a flow chart, is hard work and sometimes impractical.

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Dominique Bauer - Thursday, February 25, 2021, 3:10 AM

Hello Rick,

I would not have joined this discussion because you have grasped the problem and have already responded very well to the OP. You were kind enough to ask me for my opinion and I gave it to you, unfortunately still without understanding the problem. I hope I haven't offended anyone. I understand the problem better now.

But you know as well as I do that this kind of change might not be made soon. In the meantime, I'm trying to find a solution. For example, rather than removing the due date, prior to exams, you could replace it with a date after the exams, for example the start of the next term. This way you will not lose the "after the quiz" settings set. At the next term, you will just have to set the correct closing date.

Anyway, your "greyed state" suggestion is excellent. In fact, as you have surely noticed, it already exists, at least in Moodle version 3.10. Indeed, when you disable the closing date, the "After the quiz is closed" settings are greyed out. So the greyed state does exist. The problem is that it is not saved when you save the quiz settings.

Maybe Tim could explain why the greyed out state is not saved. Is this an oversight?

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Rick Jerz - Thursday, February 25, 2021, 3:43 AM

I am certainly not offended by anything said in this topic. This has been good discussion. And I am only trying to stimulate some discussion. I didn't know if you, Dominque, had run into this situation before.

Velson, who started this topic, seems to be tracking with some of my ideas. Mainly, that the state of these checkboxes should persist, regardless of whether or not a due date is set.

What you are observing in Moodle 3.10 (which I too have) is only part of the situation. I think what you see is that 1) you first set a due date, 2) you set some of the "after quiz closes" checkboxes, and 3) you remove the due date. At this point, you see the checkboxes with greyed checks. Yep. This is true. But then 4) Save the quiz (with no due date), and 5) reopen the quiz. When I do this, the grayed checkboxes are blank.

I could be wrong, so give the above try.

So, what I am proposing (and this discussion has help me formulate a Tracker Feature request) is that the checked boxes , when the due date is removed, should remain greyed out. Then, when a due date if finally set, the greyed state should change to regular checks. I think this is what Velson is wanting.

Incidentally, this is how these check boxes once behaved. I can't remember when this changed, but way back in Moodle 1.9, the state of these check boxes was maintained (as I recall.)

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Dominique Bauer - Thursday, February 25, 2021, 5:35 AM

Rick,

I agreed with you. It might have been an oversight that the greyed out state is no longer saved.

The same problem occurs when you switch between say "Interactive with multiple tries" and "Deferred feedback". With "Deferred feedback", the "During the attempt" options are greyed out, but the greyed out state is not saved, which can be annoying at times.

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Tim Hunt - Thursday, February 25, 2021, 5:53 PM

It's not an oversight. It is how forms work on the web.

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Velson Horie - Thursday, February 25, 2021, 7:17 PM

I agree with Rick that in the past I never had this difficulty. It suddenly and most unexpectedly caused a flurry and a couple of days of unwanted work. What had I done wrong? It is only in fairy tales and Don Giovanni that a genie opens up a trapdoor beneath one's feet - I thought.

This is at least the 3rd time that a change somewhere in how settings are interpreted has caused unhappiness in the students and difficulties for the teacher (me). It would be useful if there could be a policy that applying changes in how Moodle operates should be an explicit additional option and not change retrospectively how previously applied settings are interpreted.

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Rick Jerz - Friday, February 26, 2021, 1:32 AM

Every time I start thinking about this issue, I realize that I need to give it more effort to explain what is going on. I think something is a little "not correct" or a little "it didn't use to work that way" but I have got to get all the pieces together to clearly explain this issue.

Tim, it might be a forms issue, but I am not convinced.

Dominique, maybe it does occur with others, but for the way that I construct my quizzes, nothing else has ever changed. But I am going to have to experiment in order to be sure.

This issue has been on my list of "things to do" for a while. Over the next week, I am going to try to give it some serious effort. (Sorry that I can't do so right now, but I am in the middle of my job, teaching.)

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Tim Hunt - Friday, February 26, 2021, 10:20 PM

Well, there may be a valid usability issue here.

However, any solution that invovle fighting against how HTML forms naturally work is likely to end up being a maintenance headache. So, ideally someone can think of a natural solution. (Like Rick, I don't really have time to think about this properly right now.)

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Dominique Bauer - Saturday, February 27, 2021, 2:07 AM

Hello Rick,

By the way, I teach the three terms of the year, to five different groups, for a total of 75 weekly exam quizzes, 110 take-home quizzes and 55 homeworks, in addition to many overrides, all for which I have to set timing. So I fully understand the situation and sympathize with you.

I suggested the following:

Rather than removing the due date, prior to exams, you could replace it with a date after the exams, for example the end of the exam period or the start of the following term. This way you will not lose the "After the quiz is closed" settings. At the following term, you will just have to set the correct closing date since proceeding this way, the "After the quiz is closed" settings" are perserved.

Could this be considered as a natural solution?

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Rick Jerz - Saturday, February 27, 2021, 3:23 AM

Possibly, but then the message that appears when a student picks the quiz will show a new due date instead of no due dates. If students are exporting/importing the Calendar events, they will have something that will seem to be due in the future. But it might be a better overall solution.

I also have that "Grading method" to deal with, too. It would be nice if the Grading Method could be automatically changed to "Your grade is locked" when a lock is added.

Yep, I know that you too are a busy guy.

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Re: Editing quiz review settings

by Dominique Bauer - Saturday, February 27, 2021, 3:56 AM

In French, we say « Ce n'est pas à un vieux singe qu'on apprend à faire des grimaces » which means exactly that I will not teach you anything because you are more experienced and you know the subject better than me.

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Editing quiz review settings