There are at least three groups of people aiming to make significant quiz-related improvements in Moodle 4.1. The good news is that from what I have seen so far, all these changes are compatible and should fit together.
My plan was to write a short post summarising all the work that is either underway or proposed. However, that turned out to be impossible. Here is a long post summarising everything!
Q) The Question-bank-4.0 collaboration [Epic MDL-72752]
This project, lead by Thomas, Luca, Antonia and I, and developed by Catalyst AU, delivered a lot of Question-bank improvements to Moodle 4.0, but there were still other ideas that we could not get done in time. They should be in Moodle 4.1. These items are all in development now, and getting close to completion.
Q.1) Better searching of question in the question bank:
You will be able search based on almost any information you can see about questions in the question bank listing (and qbank plugins will be able to add even more ways to search). [MDL-72321]
Searching questions will work like searching the course participants page, but better. Therefore, there is some prior development so that both places are based on a library of reusable search code. [MDL-72509]
Then, in the Quiz, random questions will be enhanced. Instead of the current limited options to pick randomly based on category and tags, you will be able to say, “pick questions randomly from these search results” for any question-bank search. This will make random questions even more flexible.
Q.2) New Question-bank activity instead of fixed question banks [MDL-71378]
Previously, every course in Moodle had exactly a question bank, whether you wanted one or not. In future you will be able to choose if and where you want your question banks. This will make it easier to control who can access each one.
There will also be more flexibility to use questions from shared question banks you have permission to access when building quizzes [MDL-72322].
These changes should also finally fix two long-standing issues with backup and restore:
- MDL-41924 Minimise questions included with quiz backups (or duplication)
- MDL-69306 Duplicated quiz uses the same questions from the same question bank: can confuse teachers if they expect questions were copied too
Q.3) Manage categories screen in the question bank will be improved [MDL-72397]
This is a relatively small change compared to the ones above, but it should be a nice usability enhancement for this part of the question bank. For example, moving categories around using drag-and-drop.
O) The Open University [Epic MDL-74607]
The people who pay my wages want some things in the quiz, and the good news is that most of the things they want are things that I know people here have been asking for years. Perhaps now they will finally get built!
Currently these are just proposals, so please give feedback about the ideas, and whether you think the overall concepts are good. Later, I will post more details (once I have worked them out!) and we can discuss the details.
Note these things are certainly advanced features. There will be no need for anyone to use them, and if you don’t need them, they should not get in your way (if we get the design right).
O.1) Let one quiz generate multiple grades [MDL-74610]
In the past people have asked for this in different ways. For example, calculating the grade for each section of the quiz, or based on the question bank category each question is in, but these are all just variants of the same underlying requirement: Having a student’s attempt at a particular quiz lead to several grades in the gradebook.
The Moodle gradebook can handle this. (If you are wondering, the only thing in standard Moodle which uses this option is the Workshop (peer assessment) activity, which gives you two grades (here is an example from the Moodle demo site of a 'Limerics' workshop):
We need to make it possible for the Quiz to use this gradebook feature.
There are other related grading requirements I have seen people ask for here. One goes like this: “To pass this quiz, students need to get an overall grade of 70%, but also, they need to get at least 50% on questions 7, 8 and 9 combined”. I think that the changes we propose to make can solve this. If the quiz puts two grades into the gradebook, one “overall grade” and one “grade for questions 7, 8 and 9” then you can use gradebook calculations to work out the right final result based on those two. Since this can be done in the gradebook, we should not duplicate that type of logic in the Quiz itself.
O.2) Allow the question numbers in the quiz to be customised [MDL-74609]
When I first heard this requirement, my reaction was “surely the quiz does not need this bit of added complexity?!”. However, over the last few months, I have been given enough examples where this makes a useful difference to the student experience.
The requirement is the ability to change the default 1, 2, 3 question numbers to any other short strings that you like. Here is a mock-up:
As well as being given examples (related to online exams) that convince me this is needed, I have also realised that it is technically easy to implement, and it can fit quite nicely in the UI (little edit-this pen icon by the number while building the quiz) so I now think this is worth doing.
O3) Allow the teacher to force the language for one activity [MDL-74608]
This is not really a quiz feature, but at the OU, this is something we want for quizzes, and so I will mention it here.
Currently Moodle has the option, to force the UI language for a particular course:
We would quite like to have this option for activities as well as entire courses (probably added to the ‘Common module settings’ section of the form). What do people think about that?
M) Moodle HQ UX team
After the changes made in Moodle 4.0, the next priority for the UX team at HQ is all the activities, including Quiz.
They are going to announce their own plans soon, so I won’t steal their thunder. However, I will say that I had a meeting with them yesterday morning, to get a sneak peak of what they were thinking of, and we had a really great discussion about that, and I am excited.
One of their areas of focus is making it easier for teachers to build quizzes (which, you might say, is lucky, because the OU changes proposed above are going to add even more complexity 😉).
N) Ideas no-one is planning yet, but ...
Both the Moodle HQ proposals and the OU ones improve the page where you build the quiz. As well as the features currently planned, there are other ideas I know people want which shoudl become more possible with the new designs. (Even if they don't happen for 4.1, it would be easier to add them.)
- An option for whether to use the Summary page at the end of the quiz, where students can review their attempt before submitting.
- An option to display some custom text (instructions) at the top of the Summary page, if you are using it. (For example “Before submitting, we suggest you check that you have dotted all your ‘i’s and crossed all your ‘t’s.”)
- An option for whether to show the ‘intro’ page when you first go into the quiz, or not. (E.g. for a short worksheet-type quiz with no time limit, perhaps you just want students to go straight into answering the questions.)
- …
Summary
So, lots going on, and I just want to add a warning: At the moment, this is mostly just proposed work. What actually happens, and whether it happens in time for Moodle 4.1, remains to be seen.
Also, the reasone for posting now is to get feedback, so please give your comments.
