First of, this post is not about complaining but more about sharing the experience that I went through and what I think teachers probably struggle with...in this situation I was more like a new user than an experienced admin because it has been a long time since I did this...
It has been a long since I had to create a quiz...the first couple where I manually had to create questions were fine...but then I had a bunch in a word document and thought it would be easier to import them.
Maybe I missed something but the process I undertook was kind of awful...this is what I noticed (maybe due to missing stuff but I did look quite a bit or maybe the import process is not fully flushed out)
1. When adding questions to a quiz, you cannot import them directly into the quiz (or if you can the setting must be hidden somewhere because I could not find it). Feature request!
2. So you have to go to the quiz bank...the first bunch I imported dumped in the category for the original course that this course was copied from which I found very weird (the default category was from a course that was created over five years - the category for the current course was buried further down in the category list)...and there was no option to import and just add to the quiz that I was working on which would have been nice. Another feature request!
3. Once they were in the quiz bank, I thought they would just all be at the end of the category but instead they were scattered throughout the 400 questions that were already in there which made them very hard to find. Is there a way to sort these when you are adding them to a quiz? I did not see a place to add a tag in the import wizard - did I miss that or is that another feature request?!
4. On the second attempt, I thought I would be smart and import them to the category for the quiz I was working on - I selected it and then did the import...for some reason, the system created a subcategory under the quiz category that was named for another quiz in the course...at least all the questions were somewhere together even if in a category named for a totally different quiz but I did not understand the behavior at all.
5. I also wanted to change the point value on all the questions in the quiz but found that I have to do that one by one and if you select them all about the only option is to delete them all. Again, I am missing something or it is another Feature Request.
Forgive me if I just missed a lot of stuff but also, if I missed settings etc, I think a lot of teachers would too so maybe we need to think about the interface...not expecting (but always hoping for!) a solution but just wanted to start a discussion maybe about the process...
Hello Emma,
Are you implying that user experience isn't just about changing button colors and rearranging items in a dropdown menu? Could there be more important things, like the ones you mentioned?
Don't let your first importation of questions discourage you. By doing it several times, you'll eventually learn how the system works.
Thanks for your post. It's so refreshing to see a manager grappling with what teachers face every day. If only some developers could also take a leaf out of your book!
I agree that question import could be improved. My thoughts on this are in the PDF attaced to MDL-74070. (Sorry, not the most helpful way to share them.) But, there is so much else going on at the moment, don't hold your breath.
Did you mention the question types you are making. Depending on it the excellent https://moodle.org/plugins/browse.php?list=set&id=82 could help. Or do you mean such a plug-in when you say "import"?
Only half serious: When you start with Microsoft Word, where can you go?