Possible areas for Moodle improvement?

Possible areas for Moodle improvement?

by Paul Craven -
Number of replies: 10
I've got some areas of Moodle that I think are worth improving. I'm pretty new to Moodle, so I'd like to know if these are 'features', and there is a reason they operate that way.

No sense in my creating a patch if I'm the only one that is looking for the improvement.

  • The screens for entering quiz questions are too long
    • Why do I have to come up with a question name for each question? I don't want that extra work. I'd like to see the question actually work as the title, unless I specify otherwise.
      • The question name is required, but not the text? How about flipping that requirement.
    • All the little help buttons take up space. They should be off to the side.
    • There are too many little buttons that I have to 'tab' over, I can't just enter questions via the keyboard. I have to do mouse-keyboard-mouse-keyboard-mouse-keyboard.
    • You should tab right to the editable field, not the font type, etc.
    • The screen needs to be more dynamic. None of this 'click here for 3 more blanks' stuff.
  • Moving items around in the weekly outline is too difficult
    • I should be able to click and drag HTML items. It is possible to do this.
  • 'Turn editing on' should work dynamically and not force a page reload
  • 'Adaptive mode'
    • It should not be the default.
    • I should be able to set a default for it
    • It should also have a better name. This was quite a surprise to me the first time I made a quiz and saw people
    • Likewise, selecting 'students get one attempt' should mean they only get one attempt. Adaptive mode allows multiple attempts even when I select 1 attempt
That's it for me now. Please let me know where I'm missing the boat. Thanks.
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In reply to Paul Craven

Re: Possible areas for Moodle improvement?

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
You know, when you are making that many different point in one post, it would be so much easier if you had used numbered lists!

1) Yes, but you try removing any of that functionality, and see what response you get in the Quiz forum!

1a) Once you have 100 questions, you may be glad you were forced to give them sensible names, so you can find them again. However, you may also have a valid point. This got changed as a side-effect of some other changes in Moodle 1.8. It used to work the way you suggest.

1b, c, d) these are all problems with the forms library we use. Yes, they are minor irritations. But on the other hand, if you have a disability which means that you can't use a mouse, just the keyboard, you do need to be able to access the help buttons, so there is no obvious solution. Do you know about accessibility requirements for web sites? Anyway, to skip the help buttons, just tab twice. The HTML editor is a bigger problem.

1e) Could you explain more? how do you propose it should work.

2a) Have you tried turning on the 'ajax' switch in your user profile? This does let you drag and drop items.

3) That would be really, really hard. What is so bad about page loads anyway?

4) If you had clicked the help button, rather than just being irritated by it, it would have explained what the setting meant. I agree it is a bad name. On the other hand, it is the name that existing quiz users are familiar with, and it is hard to come up with a better name for this functionality. Defaults for all the quiz settings can be set under Admin -> Modules -> Activities -> Quiz.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Possible areas for Moodle improvement?

by A. T. Wyatt -
I had written a pretty long answer to this myself, but Moodle died just when I pressed submit, so my wisdom all disappeared! smile

1a) I agree with the need for having short question names. I use this to identify questions BY OBJECTIVE so that I can pull them out quickly when creating a comprehensive exam or an assessment where I need to report performance on certain objectives. Sifting through question stems would be much more difficult.

Adaptive mode: One of the greatest things that happened in 1.8 was the ability for the admin to go in to the modules > activities > quiz > settings and alter the defaults for the system with a few clicks! It was wonderful! That way you can set up the most common settings desired by your instructors and they still have access to the rest if they want to use them. Of course if you want to do tricky things with the code, you can search the forums a bit and find some additional tweaks. (like change the default penalty, or make the default number of distractors 4 instead of 3).

I would also recommend, Paul, that you investigate some of the import tools--gift, aiken, Blackboard, WebCT. They were meant to automate some of the task of creating question banks and can be used very profitably.

atw
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In reply to A. T. Wyatt

Re: Possible areas for Moodle improvement?

by Paul Craven -
1a) I think it should be an option, not a requirement.

Also, I have used the import tools. With a little use of Perl I've loaded up Moodle with lots of questions. One of the things I like about the import format is that I DON'T have to give a question name. It defaults to the first x characters of the question. Some of my questions are short enough, that is ok.

I imagine there are good GUI question editors that will save in one of these formats, I should search around for one of those. That would help.
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In reply to Paul Craven

Re: Possible areas for Moodle improvement?

by A. T. Wyatt -
Yes, the fact that you do not have to provide a question name is why I mentioned the import tools. I wasn't sure if you knew all about that or not! I am glad you did.

My stems all seem to start with about 165 characters of "Which of the following is an important characteristic of . . ." which makes them all look alike. I do better with the question names! smile

atw
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In reply to A. T. Wyatt

Re: Possible areas for Moodle improvement?

by Paul Craven -
Speaking of 'smile', how do you turn off those auto-character conversions? I teach computer science, and my code often has character sequences that trigger the editor to insert a special character, like an easter egg ().
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In reply to Paul Craven

Re: Possible areas for Moodle improvement?

by Matt Campbell -
Open /lib/weblib.php and search for replace_smilies, then comment out any of the smilies you don't want to use. Or, vote for MDL-10915.

Thanks,
Matt
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In reply to Paul Craven

Re: Possible areas for Moodle improvement?

by A. T. Wyatt -
Also, if you can use the preformat tag (look for the dropdown box on the editor), that usually works. Problem is with multiple essay questions, students only get the html editor on the first one. We have had MUCHO trouble with all the strange characters you use in coding, html, and css!! We just work around it, because other people like the smileys. ALso, those types of questions do NOT work well with the gift creation tools I have tried so far. Breaks the syntax royally.

Thanks, Matt, for the patch and tracker number! I voted for it!

atw
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Possible areas for Moodle improvement?

by Paul Craven -
1) Yes, feature-bloat is a plague that has crippled many projects.

1a) I have more than 100 questions. As long as I arrange them in groups, I don't feel the need to be forced into having a name.

1b, c, d) I'd recommend one of the two:

Keeping the help buttons, but putting them to the side. Then set the tab order so you go through the primary fields first, and the help fields second.

Or you could have one button that would set the visibility of the help buttons to true, leaving them hidden by default.

I developed for a large bank before retiring to teaching, and I have a quadraplegic student. I've very aware of accessibility requirements. Once a person learns the screen, they don't need be required to move past the help items each and every time.

1e) For example, on the short answer question:
Only have one blank answer show. Once you start typing in that question, a new blank question would appear below dynamically. Without a page refresh. Keep doing that for each one, rather than in groups of three. That would keep the keyboard and screen scroll position, increasing accessibility for keyboard people like me.

2a) I didn't know there was an ajax setting. It is really well hidden. When I hit the 'advanced settings', I expected all the advanced settings to appear in the bottom box. I didn't know there would be new ones in the top box. Anyway, I see the setting but moodle does not allow me to change it off of 'no'. I assume I have to install something first?

3) HTML-wise it would simply be a matter of setting the visibility of the items. But I do realize you'd be increasing the page weight even when you didn't need the editing.

4) Thanks for telling me where the default setting is on this, I really appreciate it.

Also, thanks for hearing me out.

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In reply to Paul Craven

Re: Possible areas for Moodle improvement?

by A. T. Wyatt -
Re 2a) Ajax, so far as I know, is first enabled by the admin for the site. If you look in the admin block under experimental, you will find it. Is that what you mean? I am not sure I understood your comment.

atw
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In reply to Paul Craven

Re: Possible areas for Moodle improvement?

by Anthony Borrow -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Paul - In response to missing the boat - I don't think you did. Raising questions, suggesting areas for possible improvement, etc. are all things that are very much supported within the Moodle community. Thanks for sharing your experience, raising the questions, and taking an active role in the Moodle community. I hope that you continue to think of ways that you can contribute to making Moodle even better. Peace - Anthony
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