Hi Christine,

In Essay questions you can add a sample answer as feedback and if you don't want the students to see it you simply clear all check boxes of the feedback column in the 'Students may review:' section of the quiz settings.

Itamar

An example (cont.)

The derivation editor dialog window:

The dialog window code:

• The code is a slightly modified version of the Moodle pop up javascript functions, adjusted to my needs (e.g. the structure of the returned string (strDerivation)).
• Note the inclusion of the library popup.js
• I added the resizeDlg function because the HTML editor's function which opens the dialog window assigns predefined dimensions and a default when it does not recognize the target (as in my case) and it locks the resize function of the dialog window.

I hope that helps. Let me know if any other details are required.

Itamar

An example

The question:

The 'Open derivation editor' button code:

• InsertDerivation function - a variation on the HTML editor's Insert function which I took from the HTML editor core code.
• obj - for passing the id of the editor's instance in the question to the function so that the answer will go to the right place.
• file-name.html - the html file which is opened in the pop up.
• strDerivation - the string returned from the pop up and entered into the HTML editor.

The completed answer:

Hi Mithu,

Here is a quick description of my approach and I'll add the details in subsequent posts.

1. I use essay question.
2. I add to the question description a button that imitates the behavior of the insert buttons of the HTML editor (e.g. the Insert Smiley button).
3. My button opens a pop up with an html page in which the student enters the answer.
   
4. When the student finishes she clicks Insert (in the pop up window) and the answer goes into the HTML editor.
5. The student, then, can save or save without submit; the answer is stored in the quiz.
6. Now, you can set up the html page in the pop up window such that when the answer is returned from the pop up window to the HTML editor it includes a string which is the answer formatted as XML (and you can put it in a hidden filed).
7. You add to the question description another button which extracts the XML string and either feed it to an interpreter (if it can be executed from javascript) or display it in a pop up window from which you can copy it and save in a file.
8. After you check the answer you can mark the essay question and also add the interpreter output.
9. And so, answers marks and feedback are stored in the quiz.

I'll post the javascript I use soon.

Itamar

Just to make it more interesting, I use a combination of Word, Excel, Notepad and the Moodle XML format. The main component is Excel where each question resides in a row, one column of which contains a formula that formats the data to a Moodle XML element. After adding the questions I simply copy that column into notepad (to clean it from Microsoft garbage), wrap it with the Moodle XML opening and closing tags, and import it into Moodle's questions database.

What's useful about working with Excel is that I can create ordered names and duplicate question description by simple drag. I can also play with other question properties such as shuffle, penalty etc.

What's useful about working with Moodle XML is that I can create and upload questions with content written in HTML (especially cloze questions).

Of course there may be somewhere out there a questions authoring tool which does all that with a friendly interface. If you know about such a tool, please let me know.