Penalties for multiple quiz attempts (not tries on questions)

Penalties for multiple quiz attempts (not tries on questions)

by Ulrike Albers -
Number of replies: 7

Hello,

We put penalties on Quiz questions, but we were very wrong about how this really works. We thought this would work for different attempts on the quiz (i.e. the penalty on a question would be conserved). Is there any possibility or plugin to do this?

Here are the reasons we wanted to do this: knowing that everything is this courses is graded (students get a lot of grades), we wanted to

  • encourage students to work, and encourage them to re-attempt quizzes if they are not satisfied with their result
  • avoid putting too much pressure on students
  • discourage students to answer randomly and try until they get a good result
  • have a faire grading (everything is auto-graded in this courses)

That's why we have

  • Review options: Attempt, mark, overall feedback only
  • Grading methods: Highest grade

I suppose one idea could be to choose Average grade... but that means that students cannot use the exercices to train theirselves.

Can anybody help with this?

Thank you!

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In reply to Ulrike Albers

Re: Penalties for multiple quiz attempts (not tries on questions)

by Rick Jerz -
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My guess is that your first and third reasons are incompatible. You cannot "encourage" and "discourage" at the same time. And perhaps your second reason is also incompatible with your third. 🤔

I have been using quizzes with repetitive attempts, highest grade, and have not found anything better.  Yes, I do get some students guessing.  I know that they "guess" by seeing their results on an exam (no guessing, one attempt) and then mapping it back to the frequency of how they did their quizzes.  
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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Penalties for multiple quiz attempts (not tries on questions)

by Ulrike Albers -
Hello,

Thank you for your answer. I do not agree with you on this point however.
Students should be encouraged to work, and to re-attempt IF they know they can do better (for instance, because they were not enough conctentrated the first time, or stressed, or they hadn't done enough work) so IF their result is really superior, to counterbalance the penalty).
They should be discouraged to randomly check boxes until they get 100%.

This should not in principle be impossible... if penalties are conserved from one attempt to another (they do not see their results, only their overall mark).

Thank you for your help though, I suppose this means that there is no way in Moodle to conserve penalties.


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In reply to Ulrike Albers

Re: Penalties for multiple quiz attempts (not tries on questions)

by Marcus Green -
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As design principle Moodle tends not to concentrate on penalties.
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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Penalties for multiple quiz attempts (not tries on questions)

by Dominique Bauer -
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Ulrike,

In the quiz settings and under 'Question behaviour', quiz reattempts can be set in two different ways: 1) Each attempt builds on the last, 2) Each attempt does not build on the last.

With the first way, each new quiz attempt contains the answers and results of the previous attempt. It is meant to allow a quiz to be completed over several attempts.

With the second way, answers and results from the previous attempt are discarded. The new attempt is an enterily fresh one.

Suppose the students complete an attempt, that is, they used up all tries on all answers. If the quiz is set to 'Each attempt builds on the last', then there is no way they can do better on the new attempt than on the previous one. It's just a square circle impossibity.

If you want students to train on a quiz, you have to set it to 'Each attempt does not build on the last'.

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In reply to Ulrike Albers

Re: Penalties for multiple quiz attempts (not tries on questions)

by Daniel Thies -
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Hi Ulrike,

I did some work with penalties a few years back and created some plugins, e.g. https://github.com/dthies/moodle-qbehaviour_deferredpenalty that might be useful to you. For example you might allow students one attempt with standard deferred feedback and then change quiz to deferred feedback with penalty with additional attempts.

That plugin fit a particular need for us at the time, but is not the clearest way to address student behavior problems. So it is not in the database, but you are welcome to use it if it works for you.
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In reply to Daniel Thies

Re: Penalties for multiple quiz attempts (not tries on questions)

by Dominique Bauer -
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Ulrike,

Each quiz attempt is saved with the penalties that have been assigned to the questions. The penalties are therefore in fact conserved.

By setting the number of attempts to a number greater than one, students will be able to re-attempt if they think they can do better and, by setting the grading method to highest grade, their grade will improve if they actually do better.

If the number of attempts is set to a reasonable number, not infinite, that you can adjust according to the difficulty of the quiz, students will be discouraged to randomly check boxes until they get 100 %.

What you want to do is therefore not only possible but very easy to do with the usual quiz settings.

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In reply to Dominique Bauer

Re: Penalties for multiple quiz attempts (not tries on questions)

by Ulrike Albers -
Hello,

Thank you very much for all your comments ! These were really helpful.
We will make some tests to see how students' grades are modified if we change to "average grade" and if we leave on "highest grade" but allow only two or three attempts.

Thank you,
Ulrike
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