Mod/assign not deleting submission status

Mod/assign not deleting submission status

by Mathijs Gloudemans -
Number of replies: 4

Hi all, 

After upgrading to Moodle 3.9.6 we found that student users who use the  "remove submission" option in the mod/assign plugin get a confusing situation. The file gets removed, but the submission status stays the same (assignment submitted). This creates the situation of "ghost" assignments where the teacher sees a submission, without any file to grade. 

Before, a user could edit their submission and remove any unwanted files. This seems to have changed to where this is (again) no longer possible and the option to "remove submission" has replaced this functionality. Users who try to remove the submission via "edit submission" get an error message stating "nothing was submitted". A problem which persisted from 3.4 onward and was fixed in an earlier 3.9 build. Now the "remove submission" has taken it's place we again get an issue where students can't edit their submissions when they have, for example, sent in a file for the wrong assignment. 

Here you can see a reproduction with a teststudent. The site is in dutch, but the submission status reads "File submitted" and you can see the teststudent doesn't have any files actually submitted. It seems the submission status does not get reset after removal of the submitted file.


Does anyone have any idea how to fix this? 

Kind regards,

Mathijs

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In reply to Mathijs Gloudemans

Re: Mod/assign not deleting submission status

by Jason Hollowell -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Mathijs,

I'm not sure if this will be helpful or not but...I'm using 3.10+ and just checked the behavior that you have explained here. I can confirm that "edit submission" does not allow the student to remove all submissions (in the event that there are more than one). The student can remove all but the last one but when attempting to remove the last one, when clicking on save I also get the "nothing was submitted" error. 

I then discovered, at least on my installation, that using the "Remove submission" button allows the user to entirely remove the submission and start over. 

If you want the student to be able to simply edit the submission and replace one file with another, I think you can ask them to first upload the new file and then delete the older previously uploaded file. When saving after using this workflow I don't think they will get the "nothing was submitted" error.

Sorry, that explanation seems confusing. Hopefully you follow my bad logic...?

Regards

Jason

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In reply to Jason Hollowell

Re: Mod/assign not deleting submission status

by Mathijs Gloudemans -
Hi Jason,

Thanks for the reply!
However the issue for us is not that students couldn't directly swap out files in assignments but that they can't undo a submission in for example a wrong assignment. We have users who have accidently sent in files for assignment 5 however they meant to send those files in to assignment number 3. After removing the files in 5 through "remove submission" and placing them in the correct assignment, the system still shows "assignment submitted" on assignment 5 even though there are no files left there.

This causes confusion for them, and for the graders who still see a "this needs to be graded" message, even though there is nothing there. This is because the submission status doesn't change when the actual submission does change.

Regards,

Mathijs
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In reply to Mathijs Gloudemans

Re: Mod/assign not deleting submission status

by Jason Hollowell -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers
Mathijs,

Thanks and my apology for not quite getting it. Actually, I'm still a bit confused. Like I mentioned, I'm using 3.10+ so maybe the environment I am experiencing is different from yours in 3.9.6.

I experimented a bit in a test course that had several different assignments. If I submit in one and then, pretending like I meant to submit in a different one, go back and remove the submission from the first assignment, it completely disappears from that first assignment. I can then go to the other assignment and submit my work there. So, it sounds like the issue you have identified does not exist for me in 3.10+

Sorry I wasn't able to help.

Cheers
Jason
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In reply to Jason Hollowell

Re: Mod/assign not deleting submission status

by Mathijs Gloudemans -
Hey Jason,

No worries, I think the confusion stems from the difference between "submission status" and the actual submission. An assignment can have 3 defined statuses, "no submission", "submitted" and "graded". When a student sends in an assignment the submission status for that student changes from "no submission" to "submitted" and from "submitted" to "graded" if a grading has been given. The submission status can be used to trigger other things, for example the progress bar plugin uses the submission status to change the colour of the corresponding blocks.

The trouble now is that the submission status can change from "no submission" to "submitted", but can't revert back to "no submission". So even if the student does successfully remove the files, the system still marks the assignment as having been submitted (albeit with no actual files there). This causes confusion in the other plugins, and in the mod/assign itself, as users see a "this student has submitted a file" message (triggered by the submission status), but there is no actual file there as the student has removed it.

Hope this clears it up a bit? Thank you for testing and thinking along!

Regards,

Mathijs
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