Hi all,
Just a quick post to announce the beta release of the 'question creation module' (follow the link to the Moodle modules and plugins database for more info on the module, links for download etc.
As it says in the plugins db entry "The Question Creation Activity is a graded activity where students must create questions in the Moodle question bank. A teacher grades the questions. The students get a grade for the questions they create."
The activity works with Moodle 1.9. It depends on changes in the question engine in Moodle 1.9.
Jamie
Here is the info copied over from the entry I added to the plugins db. The record in the plugins db may not be available yet. It is awaiting approval.
Activity Module: Question Creation Module
Type: Activity Module
Requires: Moodle 1.9 or later
Status: Third-Party
Maintainer: Jamie Pratt
The Question Creation Activity is a graded activity where students must create questions in the Moodle question bank. A teacher grades the questions. The students get a grade for the questions they create.
- You can specify a percentage of the grade be automatically assigned depending on how many of the required questions the student creates and the rest of the grade awarded to the student is dependent on the grade a teacher assigns for the questions created.
- Questions permissions for students to create and view questions are limited just to the questions for this module. Questions created by students as part of this activity are kept seperate from other questions in the question bank (they are stored in categories in this modules context).
- The student may create more than the required questions. They will then receive a grade calculated from the questions they received the best grades for.
- You can automatically export questions that receive a grade above a chosen grade in your preferred export format.
I've set this activity up, giving students permission to 'preview, view and save as new', but when I log in as a student and create a question, I don't see any way of previewing it. Am I missing something completely obvious?
I've started some documentation here.
I've had chance to run a class activity now, and it all works really well. Some bits of the interface are not quite clear though and took a little bit of working-out, so my suggestions for improvements are:
- After pressing 'Save all my feedback' I land on the grading page again, but its emtpy rather than having all the now-graded questions on it (I didn't grade all of them, just some)
- When setting the grade for the activity, its not clear whether that is grade-per-question or overall grade
- The "Will Grade Minimum Number of Questions of Type" would be better as "Students must create a Minimum Number of Questions of this Type". This would also benfit from a help button explaining what happens if it is and is not set.
- A help pop-up for the automatic/manual bit with a couple of examples of grade combinations would clarify too.
- After grading, then going back to the grading screen, I have given different marks to different questions, but the Final grade column shows the same grade for all of them. If this is deliberate, it is a bit confusing.
Hope that helps. I think this is a great module and should certainly be put into core after polishing. The time its going to save me in terms of question writing is immense.
Matt
Hi Jamie, I've just realised that the Preview button on the grading screen is not much use as grading inevitably means judging the quality of specified answers and feedback, not all of which is present in the preview. The edit button is far more use and additionally, it means I can change rubbish questions into good ones, or move them into a not-to-be used category so that my question bank doesn't get cluttered up.
What do you think?
What do you think?
Yes. The edit button let's you see all of what your student input.
But care should be taken when editing questions. The question in the question bank in the module category is the only record you have of the question the student created. Yes you can move questions within the module context between categories. The 'Export Good' tab allows you to choose to export questions that have been graded above a grade that you choose. This is the recommended way to copy questions to use in a quiz, import them into another context and category - you can then edit the questions and this will not affect the original questions which are the record of what the student has done.
But care should be taken when editing questions. The question in the question bank in the module category is the only record you have of the question the student created. Yes you can move questions within the module context between categories. The 'Export Good' tab allows you to choose to export questions that have been graded above a grade that you choose. This is the recommended way to copy questions to use in a quiz, import them into another context and category - you can then edit the questions and this will not affect the original questions which are the record of what the student has done.
Jamie,
1. I like this module a lot. I use it in my English classes as a kind of ongoing progress assessment.
2. I am lazy. When I go to grade, my wish is that the question and the answers would pop up in a separate window that would include a place to grade and another button that would let me save feedback and go to the next question. This is the way that on-line text grading goes, and it makes grading on-line text easier to grade than question creation. (I will confess that on the grading page, I give a grade just based on the question that I see without seeing how good/bad their answers are. Also, I can't tell if a student has put their question into both the question name and question field, so last year after I exported some questions to a test on Wuthering Heights I had several students point out to me that they had a set of answers without questions. Obviously I failed to teach students how to properly create a question. This year I was more careful, but I discovered that some still did this. )
3. I like the idea that students create their own assessment, and I love the idea of large test banks of questions to draw on.
Last year I used it for Wuthering Heights and this year I am using it on Macbeth. With classes of 40 it would be nice if the grading was easier.
4. Great module. Thank you. Please keep up the great work.
Charles Griffin
Torrance High School, California
1. I like this module a lot. I use it in my English classes as a kind of ongoing progress assessment.
2. I am lazy. When I go to grade, my wish is that the question and the answers would pop up in a separate window that would include a place to grade and another button that would let me save feedback and go to the next question. This is the way that on-line text grading goes, and it makes grading on-line text easier to grade than question creation. (I will confess that on the grading page, I give a grade just based on the question that I see without seeing how good/bad their answers are. Also, I can't tell if a student has put their question into both the question name and question field, so last year after I exported some questions to a test on Wuthering Heights I had several students point out to me that they had a set of answers without questions. Obviously I failed to teach students how to properly create a question. This year I was more careful, but I discovered that some still did this. )
3. I like the idea that students create their own assessment, and I love the idea of large test banks of questions to draw on.
Last year I used it for Wuthering Heights and this year I am using it on Macbeth. With classes of 40 it would be nice if the grading was easier.
4. Great module. Thank you. Please keep up the great work.
Charles Griffin
Torrance High School, California
Matt,
We are just starting to use this at our school and the calculus teacher would love to have the students be able to preview the questions they create. I can see why in most cases this may not be needed but it is for a calculus class and the students use DragMath equation editor to create the questions so a preview to make sure the question looks the way it is supposed to would be very helpful.
The work around we have is that the students are teachers in the course for now and are creating the questions with preview available. Dangerous if these were not students of high trust and we are a day school as well.
Thought this might be a useful insight as it just came to light. I guess we could make a role for the question creator as well.
Great module..
Karl
We are just starting to use this at our school and the calculus teacher would love to have the students be able to preview the questions they create. I can see why in most cases this may not be needed but it is for a calculus class and the students use DragMath equation editor to create the questions so a preview to make sure the question looks the way it is supposed to would be very helpful.
The work around we have is that the students are teachers in the course for now and are creating the questions with preview available. Dangerous if these were not students of high trust and we are a day school as well.
Thought this might be a useful insight as it just came to light. I guess we could make a role for the question creator as well.
Great module..
Karl
Wow. I am going to be upgrading Moodle from 1.8 to version 1.9 very soon and this is on my list of new features.
One question: Once the students create the questions, what is the process for the teacher to then turn around and put those questions into a quiz? Are the questions right there for the teacher to select?
Thanks. This is awesome!
-Chris
One question: Once the students create the questions, what is the process for the teacher to then turn around and put those questions into a quiz? Are the questions right there for the teacher to select?
Thanks. This is awesome!
-Chris
This is a great module. Thanks for making it.
On a new test server I am setting up I am receiving the following errors:
Warning: require_once(moodleform_mod.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in C:\webserver\Apache2.2\htdocs\moodle\mod\qcreate\mod_form.php on line 27
Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'moodleform_mod.php' (include_path='C:\webserver\Apache2.2\htdocs\moodle/lib/pear;C:\webserver\php\PEAR') in C:\webserver\Apache2.2\htdocs\moodle\mod\qcreate\mod_form.php on line 27
Any ideas why this might be happening?
Thanks - Lael
On a new test server I am setting up I am receiving the following errors:
Warning: require_once(moodleform_mod.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in C:\webserver\Apache2.2\htdocs\moodle\mod\qcreate\mod_form.php on line 27
Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'moodleform_mod.php' (include_path='C:\webserver\Apache2.2\htdocs\moodle/lib/pear;C:\webserver\php\PEAR') in C:\webserver\Apache2.2\htdocs\moodle\mod\qcreate\mod_form.php on line 27
Any ideas why this might be happening?
Thanks - Lael
just missed time to edit.
My instinct is that the issue is permissions? however, I think they are all set correctly. Setup is almost identical to the production server, on which the module works fine.
The only difference is the test server uses a newer version of apache (2.2.11).
Lael
My instinct is that the issue is permissions? however, I think they are all set correctly. Setup is almost identical to the production server, on which the module works fine.
The only difference is the test server uses a newer version of apache (2.2.11).
Lael
Hello,
I have a version of the qcreate module for Moodle 2.7
It is not yet in the Moodle plugin directory so you must download it from my github account.
This is still a work in progress but it is quite stable and I use it with my students since september.
Unfortunately as I am a teacher I can only work on it during holidays so I don't expect to finish it before January 2015.
But it is feature complete, the only things to do are
- rewrite teacher view to use a renderer (this is a programmer thing, so unless you want to customize the teacher view renderer in your theme you won't miss anything)
- write documentation including documenting the new features I added in this version.
- fix bugs when one is reported, but apart me nobody reported any bug, and in fact maybe nobody but me is using my version When I find a bug I fix it and upload a corrected version to my github account.
WARNING: This version is for Moodle 2.7 only (and of course Moodle 2.8 when it will be out next week ) don't try to use it with an older Moodle version, it will not work (This is because I have used new features available in Moodle 2.7)
It is also very important that your cron is running (and with a short delay for instance 1 minute between executions as recommended since scheduled tasks were introduced in Moodle) because this is how student's rights on questions are updated when the activity start and finish.