Hi,
I've just had a look at the Random Match question (RMQ) type in the development version of Moodle and have a few suggestions/comments:
1. I entered two possible answers in the short-answer questions (SAQs) which were to be used in the RMQ. One of the possible answers was worth 100% and the other was only partially correct (50% or less). However, only the partially-correct answers were used in the drop-down list in the RMQ. Obviously, the ones which should have been used are those worth 100%.
2.Another - somehow related - suggestion: if there are more than one fully-correct answer (100%) in the SAQ, I believe both answers should be included in the drop-down list of the RMQ. I.e. if there are four SAQs to be used in the RMQ, where one of these four questions has two possible answers worth 100%, the drop-down list should have five elements.
3. There is no way to pool SAQs from different categories into one RMQ.
4. There is no way do include SAQs in the RMQ *selectively*, so that only *some* of them are included.
5. Personally, I imagined the matching question type as a separate question, rather than a question pooled from existing questions. The way it is done now, if I want to create a simple matching question (e.g. the original RW Wood's example at http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=439), I will have to create four redundant SAQs, only to be able to feed them into the RMQ. Imagine doing it with a matching question where you want 20 elements! I think it would be much easier if there was a plain matching question type, where teachers would fill in all left-column elements and their matching drop-down-list elements on one screen (just like in Hot Potatoes or WebCT), and would also be able to specify how many of those pairs will be used.
Not to be misunderstood, I do believe the idea of pooled matching question is great! In fact I think it would be great to have two kinds of pooled matching question: 1/ matching question pooled from short-answer questions (the type you've created) and 2/ matching question pooled from plain matching questions.
This would mean having three types of matching questions: plain, pooled (from short-answer question), and pooled (from plain matching questions)
Cheers,
Przemek
Yes, I agree there could be more done with these. The reason it's been done like this is that someone with specific needs paid me to develop this. The client has 30,000 existing short-answer questions. Moodle can now import these and automatically construct random quizzes full of matching questions from them. Eventually there will also be a plain Matching Question type for manually constructed questions.
Point 1 is a bug, I think, which I'll fix - thanks.
Point 1 is a bug, I think, which I'll fix - thanks.
Just another thought about points 1 and 2 in my previous post. Why not include the partially-correct answers in the drop-down list as well? Suppose there are two questions, where one question has only one fully-correct answer and the other one has a fully-correct answer and a partially-correct answer. The random matching question would have to "fixed" elements and three "drop-down" elements. If a student matches the first pair correctly, but chooses the partially-correct answer for the seconf pair, he will get 75% for the whole random matching question. Does it make sense?
One thing more I noticed there (not really related to the Matching Question, but to the quiz as a whole). Suppose I set a quiz with 5 questions. The whole quiz is worth 20 pts. A student takes the quiz and gets all 20 points (100%). I then modify the quiz to add 5 more questions and the quiz is now worth 40 points. The student who took it before now has the score of 50%.
I think such modifications (adding questions) of a quiz should not be allowed after someone has taken it.
One thing more I noticed there (not really related to the Matching Question, but to the quiz as a whole). Suppose I set a quiz with 5 questions. The whole quiz is worth 20 pts. A student takes the quiz and gets all 20 points (100%). I then modify the quiz to add 5 more questions and the quiz is now worth 40 points. The student who took it before now has the score of 50%.
I think such modifications (adding questions) of a quiz should not be allowed after someone has taken it.
Yes, I agree with your thoughts - you should file them as bugs! 
Quizzes to me are a bottomless hole of possible features (often conflicting) - you wouldn't believe the requests I get in private mail (things which even WebCT and Blackboard with their multi-million-dollar development budgets have never dreamed of). I could probably make a living just working on quizzes for the rest of my life! (I wish I could say the same for the other Moodle modules!)
As it turns out the original client's needs for the random matching questions are still changing and things will probably end up quite similar to your first post here:
- fixed matching questions
- random matching questions (drawn from above)
- random matching short questions (drawn from short answer questions)
along with
- fixed multiple choice questions (ie current model)
- random multiple choice questions (drawn from above)
- random multiple choice short questions (drawn from short answer questions)
I can't even start thinking about partially-correct answers as my brain will probably explode.
Quizzes to me are a bottomless hole of possible features (often conflicting) - you wouldn't believe the requests I get in private mail (things which even WebCT and Blackboard with their multi-million-dollar development budgets have never dreamed of). I could probably make a living just working on quizzes for the rest of my life! (I wish I could say the same for the other Moodle modules!)
As it turns out the original client's needs for the random matching questions are still changing and things will probably end up quite similar to your first post here:
- fixed matching questions
- random matching questions (drawn from above)
- random matching short questions (drawn from short answer questions)
along with
- fixed multiple choice questions (ie current model)
- random multiple choice questions (drawn from above)
- random multiple choice short questions (drawn from short answer questions)
I can't even start thinking about partially-correct answers as my brain will probably explode.
I've downloaded and installed Moodle 1.0.9 dev (2003032602). The plain matching is there - wonderful!
Just one problem I've noticed when testing it: if there are two identical matches, they are not treated as the same answer. For example, I created a matching question with the following pairs:
cucumber - green
apple - red
pea - green
lemon - yellow
Unfortunately, the two "green" options are treated as *different* answers, so there may be a case when the student matches the colours correctly, but the answers are marked as wrong. This will happen if "green" which should be matched with cucumber gets matched with pea. Maybe the solution would be to check for identical answers and merging them? In the example above, the drop-down list would only have three options ("green" wouldn't be repeated twice).
Just one problem I've noticed when testing it: if there are two identical matches, they are not treated as the same answer. For example, I created a matching question with the following pairs:
cucumber - green
apple - red
pea - green
lemon - yellow
Unfortunately, the two "green" options are treated as *different* answers, so there may be a case when the student matches the colours correctly, but the answers are marked as wrong. This will happen if "green" which should be matched with cucumber gets matched with pea. Maybe the solution would be to check for identical answers and merging them? In the example above, the drop-down list would only have three options ("green" wouldn't be repeated twice).
I am new to Moodle, but I love the seemingly unlimited applications it has for education. I am struggling with how to randomize my quiz questions, and from what I understand, this function exists. Pardon my ignorance, but how do access the randomizing function?
At the moment it is not available in the official release of moodle, because it is still under development. You can download development version (nightly dump) of moodle from http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=8 (halfway down the page) if you want to test it, but you have to remember that it may contain more bugs than the official release.