After upgrading to the new Moodle program, I am running into problems with hotpot modules. Students finish the quiz/crossword, and it appears in my gradebook as abandoned, even though they did finish and "checked" their work.
Any idea what is happening?
OK, I have found the problem. Apparently, it is the crossword that acts this way because it requires students to correct their mistakes before it will take a grade. My question is if the quizzes act in the same way. Must students correct inaccurate responses before they will receive a grade?
Thanks to anyone who can answer this for me.
Thanks to anyone who can answer this for me.
Hi Mark,
the recording of scores for Hot Potatoes quizzes is supposed to work as as follows:
If you have many "abandoned" attempts at a JCross, I think it is because your students are starting new attempts before they finish the previous attempt. In any case, the most recent attempt should be "in progress".
Please could you attach the JCross to your next post to this forum (or send the JCross to me - gordon at-sign kanazawa hyphen gu dot ac dot jp), so I can investigate.
regards
Gordon
the recording of scores for Hot Potatoes quizzes is supposed to work as as follows:
- the student clicks on a link on the Moodle course page which starts the HotPot activity
- Moodle sets the "status" of the attempt to "in progress" and send the quiz to the student
- the student selects/enters their responses to the questions
- at some point, the student clicks a "check", "hint" or "clue" button, at which point the results so far are sent back to Moodle and recorded
- if all the questions have been answered correctly the "status" for the attempt is set to "correct", and the student either returns to the Moodle course page or goes on to the next HotPot, depending on the "Next quiz" setting for the HotPot they have just finished
- if some of the questions have not been answered correctly, the "status" stays at "in progress", and the student can keep experimenting until they can find the correct answers
If you have many "abandoned" attempts at a JCross, I think it is because your students are starting new attempts before they finish the previous attempt. In any case, the most recent attempt should be "in progress".
Please could you attach the JCross to your next post to this forum (or send the JCross to me - gordon at-sign kanazawa hyphen gu dot ac dot jp), so I can investigate.
regards
Gordon
Hi Mark,
I have just found (and fixed) a problem with the reporting of results from HotPot activities.
Please could you download the following file (right click on the link) and upload it to the "mod/hotpot" folder on your Moodle site.
http://bateson.kanazawa-gu.ac.jp/moodle/18/ms/mod/hotpot/hotpot-full.js
The above file will work on Moodle 1.7, 1.8 and 1.9.
I hope this fixes your problem. Please let us know
regards
Gordon
I have just found (and fixed) a problem with the reporting of results from HotPot activities.
Please could you download the following file (right click on the link) and upload it to the "mod/hotpot" folder on your Moodle site.
http://bateson.kanazawa-gu.ac.jp/moodle/18/ms/mod/hotpot/hotpot-full.js
The above file will work on Moodle 1.7, 1.8 and 1.9.
I hope this fixes your problem. Please let us know
regards
Gordon
Hi Gordon,
Using Moodle 1.8.2.
I have just had some protests from a student about the way that the Hot Potatoes score works.
I have set a Fill-in-the-blanks exercice (JCloze) to Grading method = average grade. I do understand all of your explanations in your post above (dated Thursday, 23 August 2007, 01:10 PM). Unfortunately, that particular student thought that their score would be displayed within the HP exercise itself. She first did the exercise entirely and got e.g. 40%. Then she tried again and got e.g. 60%. So in the Moodle gradebook her grade for that activity would be 50% (or rather 5/10 since I had decided to give a max. 10 points for that exercise). But the student re-opened the HP exercise, saw nothing there, and left the exercise by clicking (I suppose) on the link to the course home page. She did this a few times. Each time she did this, her HP attempt was marked as Abandonned and ... awarded the score of zero. At the end of the day, her score got lower and lower, and she got more and more furious.
Would you not agree that "abandonned" HP exercises should not be scored at all, rather than get a zero score??? Maybe this is already the case in more recent versions?
Joseph
Gordon,
I've just realized that when the teacher clicks the Delete Abandonned button all those zero marks disappear and the average score is OK, without the offending zeros. I still maintain that those zeros should not get in there at all in the first place.
Joseph
I've just realized that when the teacher clicks the Delete Abandonned button all those zero marks disappear and the average score is OK, without the offending zeros. I still maintain that those zeros should not get in there at all in the first place.
Joseph
Hi Joseph,
sorry to hear the HotPot module did not work the way you or your student expected. Hopefully though, now that she understands where to view her HotPot scores and you know how to remove abandoned attempts, the emotional temperature has cooled down somewhat.
> Would you not agree that "abandonned" HP exercises
> should not be scored at all, rather than get a zero score???
Yes, more or less. I would prefer to say "abandoned" attempts for which no questions have been attempted should be removed, because they are not "attempts" in the sense that most people understand the word.
I also think it is a good idea to change "in progress" attempts to "abandoned" after a time period which is long enough to indicate that the student is no longer at their computer doing the exercise.
Both of these things could be done by the Moodle cron - which, as you probably know, is a Moodle script which the Moodle administrator sets up to run periodically to perform Moodle "housekeeping" tasks, such as sending out Forum emails. The cron script calls each of the Moodle Activity modules (Forum, Quiz, HotPot, etc) to see if they want to do anything. At the moment, the HotPot module does nothing when the cron job runs, but we could change that easily enough by modifying the "hotpot_cron" function in "mod/hotpot/lib.php".
> Maybe this is already the case in more recent versions?
No not yet. But it is now on my list of improvements to incorporate when I can.
many thanks for bringing this up
Gordon
sorry to hear the HotPot module did not work the way you or your student expected. Hopefully though, now that she understands where to view her HotPot scores and you know how to remove abandoned attempts, the emotional temperature has cooled down somewhat.
> Would you not agree that "abandonned" HP exercises
> should not be scored at all, rather than get a zero score???
Yes, more or less. I would prefer to say "abandoned" attempts for which no questions have been attempted should be removed, because they are not "attempts" in the sense that most people understand the word.
I also think it is a good idea to change "in progress" attempts to "abandoned" after a time period which is long enough to indicate that the student is no longer at their computer doing the exercise.
Both of these things could be done by the Moodle cron - which, as you probably know, is a Moodle script which the Moodle administrator sets up to run periodically to perform Moodle "housekeeping" tasks, such as sending out Forum emails. The cron script calls each of the Moodle Activity modules (Forum, Quiz, HotPot, etc) to see if they want to do anything. At the moment, the HotPot module does nothing when the cron job runs, but we could change that easily enough by modifying the "hotpot_cron" function in "mod/hotpot/lib.php".
> Maybe this is already the case in more recent versions?
No not yet. But it is now on my list of improvements to incorporate when I can.
many thanks for bringing this up
Gordon
Gordon > I would prefer to say "abandoned" attempts for which no questions have been attempted should be removed, because they are not "attempts" in the sense that most people understand the word.
Exactly, I'd vote for that.
Joseph