Peter Ruthven-Stuart

Hello,

Why should some students getting all the correct answers in a Lesson be stuck on a 44.44% total score.

I have created two simple Lesson activities in my Moodle system (version 1.6.2+). They are 'simple' because there are no branches; both Lessons contain 8 questions, and when student get questions right they are taken to the next question in order, and if wrong, back to the question they got wrong. Students can do the Lessons as many times as they want.

Now that some 80 students have done both these lessons, I notice that there is a problem with the scoring for Lesson 2: many students get 100%, however some students appear to have all the answers correct but are only getting 44.44%. All the questions are equally weighted (i.e. custom scoring has not been used). Lesson 1 contains only 'Multiple Choice - Multianswer' type questions, whereas the Lesson with the total score problem contains one 'Multiple Choice' and one Matching type question, and six 'Multiple Choice - Multianswer' type questions. Another difference difference between the two lessons is that one of the 'Multiple Choice - Multianswer' type questions in Lesson 2 has no incorrect answer. My intention was that students have to recognise that all 7 of the choices are correct, and so select all 7 of the choices in order to move to the next question.

Could the lack of a wrong choice in this question be the cause? Or could there be another reason why some students getting all the questions right, are only getting 44.44%? And yes, students that are not getting all the questions right are getting correspondingly varied and expected scores.

Hello,

I have just downloaded the Feedback module (version 2006092900) into my Moodle system (1.6.2+), and it seems to be working as intended.

However, there are two question types of which I am not sure the purpose: 'Dropdownlist (rated)' and 'Radiobutton (rated)'. They seem to perform exactly the same function as 'Multiple choice - single answer allowed (dropdownlist)' and 'Multiple choice - single answer' respectively.

I have made a sample Feedback activity and used all 8 question types and have named each question according to its type. Click here to see a screenshot of the questions.

I have then answered the questions as a student. Looking at both the questions and results page, it is not clear to me how the 'rated' type questions differ from the traditional dropdownlist or radio buttons. Since they have the label 'rated', I was expecting students to be able to select, or rate, the choices in order of preference, but it seems they simply select one of the choices, which is exactly the same as they do for the 'Multiple choice - single answer allowed (dropdownlist)' and 'Multiple choice - single answer' type questions.

I must be missing something. Below you can find links to some relevant screenshots:

• screenshot of the questions
• screenshot of the results screen
• screenshot of the Excel file results

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Hello,

I have some questions about how to set up two Macs to run Moodle for 3,000 users and a maximum of 250 concurrent users.

However, in order to help you answer my questions, I'll first give you some background information:

What I have done so far:

Since April I have been running Moodle on a Dual 2 GHz Power PC G5 (Mac OS 10.4.5) with almost no problems. You can see my Moodle site here: http://vle.c.fun.ac.jp/moodle/.The only problem that I have experienced is that with about 30 or more concurrent connections to the Workshop or Database modules my students get database overloaded error messages. This could be because I am still using the beta version of 1.6. Although this does seem to be a recurring problem with Moodle running on Mac servers: for example, see this discussion: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=40836#192558.

I am now in the fortunate position of being able to acquire a second Mac; one of the new MacPro Dual-Core Intel Xeon 'workstations'.

My present hardware and software setup:

• existing server: Dual 2 GHz Power PC G5 (the regular desktop machine)
• memory: 2GB
• Hard disks: two 7200 rpm, 250GB hard disks formatted as a mirrored RAID
• probable new server: MacPro 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, with 1 or 2 hard disks
  
• OS: Mac 10.4.5 - the standard version, not the server version (to be upgraded to 10.4.7)
• Database: MySQL 4.1.14
• Server: apache 1.3.33
• php: 5.1.2
• Moodle: 1.6 beta 1 (to be upgraded to latest version)
• filters: only 3 switched on (Multimedia Plugins, Resource Names Auto-linking, Activity Names Auto-linking)

Present and predicted future loads:

• Maximum number of users: at present 500, projected to reach a maximum of 3,000 in 2 years
• Maximum number of concurrent users - at present: 45 (this is only occasionally and usually leads to the 'database overloaded' message as described above)
  
• Maximum number of concurrent users - hoped for: 250 (only 2 or 3 times a year for online tests)
• Maximum number of courses: 10 now (each with 20 to 45 users), and possibly 30 courses within the next year, each with 45 or so users
  

Limitations

First and foremost, I am a teacher that happens to be using and administering Moodle for my own classes and some of my colleagues' classes. I am not a trained IT person, not a programmer, and not knowledgeable about servers and server software. Furthermore, I get next to no help from my institution's IT people with Moodle, because my present use of Moodle is seen as a 'private project'.

However, I have been using and administering various Moodle sites for the last 3 years. My goal is to convince my present employer to adopt moodle as the institution's LMS. In order to do this, I need to show that it works and is effective. The best way to do this is for me to stick to what I know: i.e. running a Mac (or 2) as a server. So, although I understand that a Linux setup is preferable to a Mac (http://docs.moodle.org/en/Performance), and it is even possible to run Linux on a Mac machine, I am unable to make the switch due to lack of time and knowledge. That said, I feel like a bit of an impostor; "why an earth is a non-professional even running an advanced system like moodle?" I hear some of you ask. Well, that's the great thing about Moodle, even someone like me can set up Moodle to carry a small load and run it with very few problems - so far anyway. My hope is, that with a bit of advice from the Moodle community, I can make my setup even better, and thus demonstrate to my employers the efficacy of the system, and thereby in the future have a professional IT person set up and run a more 'advanced' server configuration for Moodle.

So, my questions are:

Given that I am 'tied into' using a Mac or 2 Macs, and that I am not a professional IT person, my questions are:


Answers to any or all the above questions, or any advice pertaining to tuning Macs and Moodles will be greatly appreciated, and thank you for reading through my long message.

In the original wiki module it was possible to set up a wiki in 9 different ways according to who had read and write privilges. Will this be possible in DFWiki? The original wiki help file explains these 9 possible setups as follows:

Wiki types

There are three wiki types: Teacher, Groups, Student. In addition, like any activity, the wiki has the Moodle group modes: "No Groups" "Separate Groups" and "Visible Groups". This leads to the following matrix of nine possibilities:

	No Groups	Separate Groups	Visible Groups
Teacher	There is only one wiki which only the teacher can edit. Students can view the contents.	There is one wiki for every group which just the teacher can edit. Students can view the wiki of their group only.	There is one wiki for every group which just the teacher can edit. Students can view the wikis for all groups.
Groups	There is only one wiki. The teacher and all students can view and edit this wiki.	There is one wiki per group. Students can view and edit the wiki of their own group only.	There is one wiki per group. Students can change the wiki of their own group only. They can view the wikis for all groups.
Student	Every student has their own wiki which only they and their teacher can view and edit.	Every student has their own wiki, which only they and their teacher can edit. Students can view the wikis of other students in their group.	Every student has their own wiki, which only they and their teacher can edit. Students can view the wikis of all other students in the course.

Unless the group mode has been forced by the course settings, it can be set with the groups icons on the course home page after the wiki has been created.

• A teacher can always edit every wiki in the course

The above was copied from the following help file:

I am particulary interested in being able to allow members of the same group to edit their own wiki pages, but only view the pages of other groups, without being able to edit them. In the old wiki version this would have been the 'Groups-VisibleGroups' setup.

In DFwiki (version 2006041201) this setup does not seem to be possible. Will future versions of DFwiki include the 'group' settings that existed in the original version?

Victor,

Have a look at the help file titled "Importing GIFT format files".

Normally, one would use a text file to make GIFT formatted questions, however it is possible to use Excel. In fact if you are making a lot of questions of the same format it is quicker to make the questions in Excel.

Once you read the above mentioned GIFT help file, it should be apparent how to use Excel for this purpose.