Problem with version question

Problem with version question

by Laurent Berger -
Number of replies: 40

Hi,

I use moodle 4.0.3

I have a got a category created in march  with 150 questions.

Today student tried a test with this category. unfortunately i made an error in some questions.

So I deleted all questions in category and i imported new question with same name.

In student results when I edit the question I can see (sorry it's in french) :


Question in test is always question created in march and it is version 1.

I deleted question history in plugin question. Problem is always here . how can I update my question?


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In reply to Laurent Berger

Re: Problem with version question

by Dominique Bauer -
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Bonjour Laurent,

Deleting questions in a category and importing new questions with the same names is not enough.

First, if questions are still being used by some quizzes, they may not actually be deleted.

Second, quizzes don't contain questions, they only contain links to questions in the question bank. To update a quiz, you must delete the quiz questions. In reality, this will remove the "links" to the questions. This will not delete the actual questions in the question bank.

You must then import new questions from the question bank into the quiz. In reality, this will only create new links to your new questions in the question bank.

A little confusing at first, but very, very simple once you understand how it works.
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In reply to Dominique Bauer

Re: Problem with version question

by Laurent Berger -
Hi Dominique,
Thanks for your answer.
"Second, quizzes don't contain questions, they only contain links to questions in the question bank." Yes and no If i delete the question moodle still find the question in the apttempt ( student answer).
In previous version of moodle (3.9) when the question answer was wrong I changed the answer and compute again score and moodle changed grade of every attempt was fine.

In moodle 4 the is a versionning system for question

May be something has changed between moodle 3 and moodle 4?
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In reply to Laurent Berger

Re: Problem with version question

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Once the student has started the quiz, Moodle records which version of which question is being used in that attempt, and sticks with that version.

There is a way that the teacher can ask Moodle to update the attempt to use a different version of the question. That is to go to Results -> Grades, and re-grade the quiz. If it is possible, then the attempt will be updated. The update will be possible if you just fixed a typo, or something. It will not be possible if, for example, you changed a multiple choice question to have 7 choices when previously it had 5.

However, you have not updated the existing questions to create a new version. You deleted the existing questions (which since they are necessary to give meaning to the existing quiz attempts, are not actually removed form the database, just hidden in the UI.) Then you imported complete new questions which have no connection to the existing ones. So, what do you expect to happen?

In fact, the situation you describe would behave exactly the same in 3.x as in 4.0. (You can tell that question versioning has no effect on this. None of the questions involved ever get beyond version 1.)
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Problem with version question

by Laurent Berger -
Thanks
I think I understand my problem. I tried to edit question and change the answer and it does not work : when I edit it again it is always the old answer (the wrong one)

Now It works only when you press re-grade ( in result screen) and then if you edit the question now it is the good answer.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Problem with version question

by Dariya Ainekova -

I have similar problem with the Quiz updates. I am using the Embedded Answers (Cloze) question type. most of the times.  I have updated my Moodle to the latest version and have started to use it over the last few weeks.

  • The first thing I have have noticed in 4.0 Moodle version is that the Quiz updates are not being seen even before the quiz becomes available to my students. I have used Safari, Google chrome, and Firefox browsers today to
- insert a Youtube video link into my Quiz question.
- I clicked  "Save changes and continue editing" button and then  "Preview". Everything looks okay in the preview.
But when I return to the "Questions" menu of the Quiz: Na-na, there is the old version of the quiz. And that happens before the quiz is made available to my students. 

I have imported these questions from my old Spring courses. And in Moodle3. versions this worked just fine. I was able to add Youtube links, additional instructions to the Quiz (no questions!) , and change the statements of my existing questions (not newly added).  And the updates were immediately shown both to me and my students, before and after students attempted the quiz.

Now it does not work. Even before my quiz is made available to students, such a simple update as adding a Youtube link is not seen. sad



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In reply to Dariya Ainekova

Re: Problem with version question

by Tim Hunt -
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Can you attached a screen-grab of the page which shows which questions are in this quiz?
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Problem with version question

by koen roggemans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Translators
I have a teacher with a similar problem with the versions:
- students made the test, all random from question category questions
- mistake in a short answer question
- edit the question - save
- regrade - no change.
-> the change is saved as V2 of the question, but the quiz keeps using V1.

So the original problem report by the teacher, was that the changes are not saved. But they are saved, in a new version. That new version is not visible by editing the question from the quiz review attempt page and not used by the quiz - it continues to use V1. You can only find the new version from the question bank.

I'm still trying to get my head around it, but that is how it seems to be. I don't know if the key thing is the random question. I'll do some more testing.
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In reply to koen roggemans

Re: Problem with version question

by koen roggemans -
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No, it's not that. I can't reproduce the problem that way in a clean environment with new questions. Works as expected. Strange.
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In reply to koen roggemans

Re: Problem with version question

by Frédéric P -

Hello everybody,

I have the exact same problem… sad

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Problem with version question

by Dariya Ainekova -
Dear Tim!
Somehow after a while, the page edited finally got updated. I don't know why my edition (just inserted a link to a Youtube video) has not shown immediately.
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In reply to Dariya Ainekova

Re: Problem with version question

by Tish Kirkland -
Kia ora Laurent, Dariya, Koen and Tim,
I am using Moodlecloud with Moodle 4.0.1 and I have found there is a significant time delay when editing a question, editing either from within the quiz or from within the question bank. If I click 'Save changes', my changes are not immediately displayed in the question within quiz or when previewed in the question bank. If I wait a few minutes and refresh, the changes then appear. Do you know if there is something I can change to speed this process up?
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In reply to Tish Kirkland

Re: Problem with version question

by Tish Kirkland -
After a bit more playing around, I've identified the following. I think this replicates others' experiences.

To see changes to the question when editing within an open (preview) quiz, as Site Administrator (with no other role in the course) I need to:
  1. preview the quiz;
  2. edit the question;
  3. click "Finish attempt";
  4. then click "Submit all and finish";
  5. and then click "Start a new preview".
Only then do I see the changes I made the the question.

I haven't looked into how to view the changes when editing the question in the question bank.

I hope that helps in your investigations!
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In reply to Dariya Ainekova

Re: Problem with version question

by Dariya Ainekova -
A typical problem I have with the Moodle 4.0  these days (not experienced with any of  the previous Moodle versions, I have started using Moodle in  2020 and upgraded every time there was a newer version)

So, I had not added, removed or editted any of the graded parts of the question  (Embedded Answers (Cloze) question type) but edited a link within my Quiz . However my students were not able to see the edited/new version of the Quiz' question containing the new/edited link.  They continued to see the old version of the Quiz! Only those students were able to see the edited/new version who have started their Quiz  attempt after I had made the change. 

It is very inconvenient. Because there still maybe changes in my Quizzes (correcting typos, inserting/removing pictures, updating links) after the Quiz gets published. But those minor changes (not changes in the graded parts of the Quiz) are not visible to my students, and sometimes even me(!), UNLESS they start a new attempt of the quiz. sad



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In reply to Dariya Ainekova

Re: Problem with version question

by Richard Lobb -
Picture of Plugin developers
I think you can push your changes to the students by doing a full regrade, even though the quiz is live.

However, this isn't a practical solution in our context. We use quizzes as Learning Modules, typically open for a fortnight, with a class size approaching 1000 students and lots of CodeRunner questions. Since each CodeRunner submission takes 1 - 2 secs to grade and students can have lots of submissions to each question, a regrade can take up to a day or more!

The ability to regrade just a single question would help hugely, but there really needs to be a way to push minor changes directly to a live quiz without having to regrade.

Or am I missing something?
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In reply to Richard Lobb

Re: Problem with version question

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Yes. Something needs to be done about this.

I just has a thought, but there could be an option, particularly for 'informal' quizzes, that when the student gets to a particular question, it checks to see if there is a newer version, it then and there tries a regrade with the newer version before displaying the question to the student.

I wonder if that really works? If so, I wonder how to make a non-confusing option for that, because I am pretty sure that for formal exams, you don't want it.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Problem with version question

by Richard Lobb -
Picture of Plugin developers
That's a cunning and interesting idea, Tim! How about calling the controlling checkbox in the quiz settings "On-the-fly regrading"? Does that capture the notion? I agree you might not want it on during an exam, although if it's only a change in the wording of a question, not affecting grading, you might.

I assume when you say "when the student gets to a particular question" you mean the student is displaying a page with that particular question on it? If there are multiple questions on the page then you might be regrading a question the student has already done, or one they're working on right now or one they haven't seen yet. And if the student has moved on to a later page the regrading wouldn't take place at all. These different scenarios might cause some confusion. On the other hand, if you edit a live quiz in a way that changes the grading, any solution is potentially going to cause confusion. If all you've done is clarified the wording of the question - the most common situation for us - your solution does just what we want. 

The 'on-the-fly regrading' in-line help would have to warn about the potential confusions.

It might be a bit annoying for a student who had made say 10 submissions to a CodeRunner question in which only the spec had been tweaked and which was a slow one to mark (perhaps 2 secs per submission). They'd have to wait 20 secs for their page to refresh. But it would only happen once and it would be a relatively uncommon situation.

Definitely an idea worth considering. It would solve most of our problems.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Problem with version question

by Ilse Rootman-le Grange -
Dear Tim I see this tread was last live about a year ago, but we recently updated to 4.1.5 and we're still struggling with this. Do you know if any progress has been made to address this?
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In reply to Ilse Rootman-le Grange

Re: Problem with version question

by Frédéric P -
Hello everybody,
I had the same problem and went on the following page : /admin/settings.php?section=manageqbanks and desactivate "Question history".
The behavior is then the same as in Moodle 3.9

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In reply to Frédéric P

Re: Problem with version question

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Thanks! Found it in my Moodle 4.1.4+ (Build: 20230728). Is it deactivated by default? That is what I found, can't remember deactivating it myself.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Problem with version question

by Frédéric P -
I also have 4.1and it was activated by default. Can tell you more…Sorry
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In reply to Frédéric P

Re: Problem with version question

by Tim Hunt -
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This advice is not helpful.

If you disable the question history plugin, then all you do is removed the screen where you can see the versions if each question.

Behind the scenes, everything still works the same way. Whenever you edit a question a new version is made, and when a student attempts a quiz, Moodle fixes the version of the question that they are getting. (But if you disable that plugin, it will be harder to see what is going on.)
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In reply to Ilse Rootman-le Grange

Re: Problem with version question

by Tim Hunt -
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I little bit of progress has been made. For example

  • MDL-77745 Anywhere a teacher views questions, display version information
  • MDL-75301 Question preview: add 'always latest' version option, and warn if question edited after preview started
  • MDL-76757 Cannot easily delete all versions of a question
  • MDL-74452 Quiz and question versions: confusing errors if all versions of a question are draft
  • MDL-78477 Deleting the last version of a question in the history view throws warnings and has confusing UX

We still need to do more, and we will, when we have time to do more developer on this. Some of the ideas floating around are:

  • MDL-78547     Teacher previews of a quiz: if a question has been edited since the preview started, update it
  • MDL-78590     Manual Quiz grading report should show question versions to make it clear what is going on 
  • MDL-73701     qbank plugin to automatically remove/cleanup unused question versions 
You can vote in the tracker to help set the priority order for how they are tacked. And, other ideas welcome too.


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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Problem with version question

by Richard Lobb -
Picture of Plugin developers
Thanks for the update Tim. I've upvoted MDL-78547, which is something that has been causing some annoyance and confusion. However, for us the real biggie is still the fact that there's no way to push out minor changes to a question in an active quiz without re-grading the entire quiz. In a class of 1000 students, with 40 or more CodeRunner questions in a quiz and students attempting each question several times - or even 10s of times if we have the Precheck enabled - this is cripplingly expensive.

Have you had any further thoughts on this problem? Is there a tracker issue I can upvote? smile
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In reply to Richard Lobb

Re: Problem with version question

by Tim Hunt -
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I don't have specific further thoughts about what should be developed, but I am aware that this is a problem, and I am thinking about it when I can.

However, it is a balance. Given limited time, do we implement the ideas we already have, or thing of more ideas without time to implement them.

My feeling is that doing MDL-78547 first makes sense - teacher previews are a low-risk place to develop and prove the code for updating one question in a quiz in-progress. Once we are confident what works, we can consider doing the same for real attempts, where appropriate. (Generally, it is appropriate in learning and practice quizzes, probably not appropriate in exams, were you want to know for certain which version of each question each student saw.)
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Problem with version question

by Rick Jerz -
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I agree with your thoughts on doing MDL-78547. And I know that there are around a dozen (or more) things that you can work on, taking time. The concept of "question versions" is on target. We didn't know all the issues this great idea would entail. The Moodle quiz engine was already much better than other LMSs. "Versioning" will take it to another level.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Problem with version question

by Richard Lobb -
Picture of Plugin developers
Thanks again, Tim. I can see that it's a difficult problem and I like the idea of exploring the space a bit with MDL-78547.

One thing that would help a lot would be the ability to regrade just one particular question in a quiz. Is that something that would be relatively safe, feasible and not too much effort to implement?
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In reply to Richard Lobb

Re: Problem with version question

by Richard Lobb -
Picture of Plugin developers
Another thought: could the regrader just regrade only questions that have changed? This would mean recording in the grading the version of the question that was graded. If that matches the current version, don't regrade. That would give almost the same benefit as being able to regrade only a single question but without any UX changes. For CodeRunner and Stack questions with multiple submissions to a question, and a significant regrade cost for each submission, this would be a huge win.
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In reply to Richard Lobb

Re: Problem with version question

by Tim Hunt -
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I agree that re-grade only one question would be helpful.

There are situations where you might wnat to re-grade a question, even if nothing has chagned in the data. (E.g. if the question type code had a bug, and you fix the bug in the code, then want to re-grade.)
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In reply to Richard Lobb

Re: Problem with version question

by Tim Hunt -
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Just FYI, MDL-78547 got integrated last week.

And, MDL-79546 (Quiz: allow regrade of selected questions) made it to integration last week, before the 4.4. code freeze today, so hopefully that makes it into th 4.4 release. Fingers crossed.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Problem with version question

by David Pinyol Gras -
Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Tim,

Thanks for the information concerning the regrading of quizzes in order for students to view the latest version of the questions. However, we have not been able to locate this information in Documentation. Can you give us a hint or a URL?

Also, MDL-77745 has been updated in 4.3 but we are currently using Moodle 4.1.6 because it is the LTS version. 

Thanks in advance

David
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In reply to David Pinyol Gras

Re: Problem with version question

by Mary Cooch (personal account) -
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Hello David. I will make some additions to the user docs to help with this.
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In reply to Mary Cooch (personal account)

Re: Problem with version question

by Alix Creuzé -
This forum has been very instructive for us as we are experiencing the same issues since we upgraded to Moodle 4. We cannot save anymore small needed changes in our quizzes. Thank you Mary for introducing information about that in the general documentation. It will be very helpful to have any kind of suggestions and information on this matter!
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Problem with version question

by Erastus Khisa -
I have a question related to this.
I understand that if a question is part of a quiz activity (random question) gets deleled, it will only be hidden specifically when some learners had already attempted it.
My question is, will the same question be visible to any new leaners taking the same quiz activity in future?
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In reply to Erastus Khisa

Re: Problem with version question

by Tim Hunt -
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No. A deleted/hidden question will not be selected to be included in new attempts.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Problem with version question

by Erastus Khisa -
One more question, will deleting any question cause problems with the old/existing user data. Including old users who want to review their attempts and old scores getting deleted. Users loosing the attemot history.
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In reply to Erastus Khisa

Re: Problem with version question

by Tim Hunt -
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That is the whole point of what we are talking about. When you try to delete a question that is used somewhere, the question is just hidden, not really deleted, to make sure that existing attempts don't break.
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