Confusion with attempts

Confusion with attempts

by Josep M. Fontana -
Number of replies: 5
OK, maybe the answer to this question is very obvious and the question has even been asked before (perhaps even by myself thoughtful) but I haven't been able to figure it out.

I have set up all my quizzes so that the grade/mark that is recorded is the one given for the 'first attempt' (selecting this option in 'grading method'). Even though the quizzes are not intended as a test/exam, I'm interested in seeing what my students do so that in class I can address problems that I detect.

OK, so far so good. The problem comes when I go to 'view reports for X attempts' and I choose 'overview' or 'simple statistics'. Here what I see is a bit confusing for me. For most students there is a single attempt but for those students that have more attempts (2 or 3), I see things like the following:

Student's name
 		100 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100

Where 3 is the number of attempts.

So, if I have set up the quiz to give me the grade for the first attempt, how can it be that this student (and all the other students with more than one attempt) has a perfect score if the attempt that is shown to me is the first attempt. The only way I can make sense of this is if the student answered all the questions correctly and then s/he tried two more times to answer them even if s/he knew s/he had answered them correctly. But this is a bit counterintuitive.

If I click on the 3 (which is a link) it takes me to a table with the results that starts with the following information:

Attempt : 3
Raw score: 100
Penalties: 0
Status: Completed
Time taken: 6 mins 40 secs
Responses recorded: dilluns, 4 febrer 2008, 10:55

That would indicate that I'm viewing the results for attempt number 3, wouldn't it? But I am positive (and I have double checked it) that I selected 'first attempt' in 'grading method'.

Can anybody help me to get out of my confusion? Is there something wrong or I'm just not understanding something.

Oh, I forgot, there is also this other mistery:

Student X
 		90 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 90
Student Y
 		100 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100

Why all these zeroes if the result is 90?


Josep M.
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In reply to Josep M. Fontana

Re: Confusion with attempts

by Gordon Bateson -
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Hi Josep,

I am guessing from what I already know about your site, and from the snippet of the report you gave, that we are talking about a JCross activity on Moodle 1.6?

It would be helpful if you could check whether you can reproduce the problem on my server:
If we are indeed talking about a JCross, then the reason for the zeroes is that the questions do not have individual scores. Instead the final score is calculated by subtracting the number of Penalties (=incorrect guesses) from the total number of letters on the crossword, and then converting that to a percentage.

I do not know how students were apparently able to take 3 attempts at a quiz when the attempt limit is 3. Did you impose the attempt limit AFTER several of the students had been able to attempt the quiz several times? Can you find out from the students how they did it? Can you give me access to your site so I can have a look myself?

cheers
Gordon
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Confusion with attempts

by Josep M. Fontana -
Hi Gordon,

Thanks!

Nope, it is not a JCross.

I've sent you a private message with info on how to get into my site.

Josep M.
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Confusion with attempts

by Josep M. Fontana -
>I do not know how students were apparently able to take 3 attempts at a quiz
>when the attempt limit is 3. Did you impose the attempt limit AFTER several
>of the students had been able to attempt the quiz several times? Can you find
>out from the students how they did it?

Actually, I did not impose any attempt limit. Since the goal of the exercises is for the students to practice and learn, I always choose 'unlimited attempts' (although now that I see it, it would let me choose up to 10 attempts!). It is just that I'm interested in seeing how my students did in their first attempt. That's why the combination is

attempts allowed: unlimited attempts
grading method: first attempt

I'll ask my students to try to remember what they did.

Josep M.
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In reply to Josep M. Fontana

Re: Confusion with attempts

by Gordon Bateson -
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HI Josep,
sorry, I misread your original email. As you say, this is nothing to do with limiting the number of attempts blush

Thanks for sending the access info to your site.

First, I looked at the results for a HotPot called "Homeschooling".

I saw that several students had made several attempts at the quiz. At some point, I think you - or someone you know, has deleted some of the "Abandoned" attempts, because some of the students do not have an attempt number 1. When you select the "First attempt" report filter, this selects the lowest numbered attempt for each student, so for students who do not have an attempt number 1, the lowest numbered attempt will be something other than 1 e.g. 2 or 3 or whatever.

Next, I looked at the results for a HotPot called "Vocabulary 1" - a JMatch quiz.

For this type of quiz there is no score for each inidividual item in the left hand side column. That's why all the question scores are zero. Instead the score for the quiz is calculated by subtracting the number of PENALTIES (=incorrect checks) from the number of items in the left hand column of the match, and then converting that number to a percentage. That's why ALL attempts for ALL students have a zero score for ALL questions.

If you want to know why a particular student got less than 100%, then click on the numbers in the "Attempt" column on the HotPot report page. For example, the student who got 90% on this quiz has the following results:

To gain something by force.
Correct: conquer
Wrong: curb
Score: 0 Weighting: 0 Hints: 0 Clues: 0 Checks: 2

This information tells you that one of the items was incorrectly matched, and it also tells what the incorrect match was.

hope that's clear, but if not please let me know smile

all the best
Gordon
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Confusion with attempts

by Josep M. Fontana -
I think if I went back and checked my questions in this forum, the expression that could summarize most of the cases would be: duh!

It really didn't occur to me that JMatch would necessarily report errors in a different way. But when you think a little bit about it, it makes sense.

Oh well. Live and learn. I'm glad this is not something that is malfunctioning in our installation of Moodle. I've had enough scares lately with our traumatic migration to 1.8.

Thanks once again, Gordon.
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