Moodle plugins directory: Hot Question | Moodle.org
Hot Question
Activities ::: mod_hotquestion
Maintained by 
AL Rachels
This plugin will help teachers to collect entries/posts from users in or out of a classroom.
Latest release:
878 sites
663 downloads
56 fans
Current versions available: 2
The first Moodle activity for a physical classroom. The idea comes from Purdue University's hotseat.
Some possible uses:
- Users can make posts in "real" time during a face-to-face class/lecture/meeting.
- Users can make posts 24/7 in a Hot Question activity.
- Can be used as a "Suggestion Box" with labels changed to reflect the activity is for suggestions.
- Can be used for user analysis of any kind of data placed in the description.
- Can be used for user analysis of a video placed in the description.
- Can be used for quick polls.
- Can be used for classroom auctions.
Inside or outside a classroom, users can post into this activity from any device which can access the Moodle site. Users can also apply Heat, (vote) on other users posts, so that the hottest post will be popped up to the top of the list. Teachers can set a priority, either positive or negative, on selected posts, which overrides the Heat. Teachers can also control visibility of user entries, with an approval setting for each individual entry.
General capabilities:
- Everyone can set a preference for view/hide unapproved questions.
- Site admin, teacher, or manager can allow questions to still be seen and commented on, after a Hot Question activity is closed.
- Site admin, teacher, or manager can show or hide author names from students, but still see all author names, themselves.
- Site admin, teacher, or manager can show or hide Priority or Heat columns depending on need.
- Site admin, teacher, or manager can change the words used for the column labels.
- Site admin, teacher, or manager can delete individual questions.
- Site admin, teacher, or manager can hide individual questions.
- Teacher or manager can download questions from the classroom Hot Question activity.
- Site admin can download questions from Hot Question activity for the whole site.
- Site admin, teacher, or manager can delete any round they are currently viewing including any questions and votes in the round.
- When anyone clicks on the Hot Question link in an Activities block, depending on the group settings they see a list of all Hot Question activities in the course along with how many unique users, and how many unique questions were posted the current round.
Recently added capabilities:
- Multiple bug fixes in v4.2.0. Most notable - Automatically hide visibility preference selector if Approval is not require, plus make that row display more consistently.
- Multiple bugs fixed in v4.1.9.
- Bug fix in 4.1.8.02+ to fix error when deleting data for a user.
- New in 4.1.8 Many of the missing capabilities for the non-editing teacher, have finally been added.
- New in 4.1.7 Everyone can set a preference for view/hide unapproved questions to help cut down on the "scroll of death," when there are a lot of questions, with many not approved for viewing.
- NEW in 4.16 Bug fix only.
- NEW in 4.1.5 Added capability to view questions after the Hot Question activity closes.
- NEW in 4.1.5 If set, open and close times are shown on the view page.
- NEW in 4.1.4 Added a missing string and fixed a bug for, Mark as done.
- NEW in 4.1.3 Unapproved entries are automatically sorted to the bottom of the list of entries.
- NEW in 4.1.3 Unapproved entries can be toggled ON/OFF (hidden) from the list of entries.
- NEW in 4.1.2.01 Changed the Export to .csv file to make it easier to read, especially for admin.
- NEW in 4.1.2.00 Added comments to Export to .csv file.
- NEW in 4.1.1+! Students can see and make comments only in the current round while teachers can do so in any round.
- NEW in 4.1.1+! When a user clicks the button, View grades, for a Hot Question activity using a grade scale, the Final grade column wiill show both the possible point value and the Scales maximum grade possible.
- NEW in 4.1.1! Depending upon settings, can be set up like old versions.
- NEW in 4.1.1! Depending upon settings, can require a number of question or heat/votes for completion.
- NEW in 4.1.1! Depending upon settings, can require a passing grade for completion, using Points or a Scale for grading.
- NEW in 4.0.2! Depending upon settings, Comments, can be posted to each entry.
- Teachers, managers, and admin can always make comments, but students only when they are enabled.
- NEW in 4.0.1! The question prompt and column headings are now routed through format_text so filters work on them.
- Depending upon a user's preference, a limited set of the editor toolbuttons will be available to format the text of a question/entry.
- Round number display, in the form of, X of N, between round navigation icons.
- Hide author names from students, but teachers still see them.
- Heat/Vote limit setting.
- Remove my vote, capability.
- Auto hide Heat/vote column when set to zero.
- New column labels are used in teacher csv download.
- Admin download uses the default labels due to downloading ALL questions from a site.
- Column labels are now settings which allows teachers to change each to fit the current activity use.
- If a Hot Question is hidden in the Activities list, the Hot Question name will now show with a slashed eye.
- Setting to show or hide the Priority column
- Setting to show or hide the Heat column
- Groups
- Grouping
- Group members only
- Confirm delete entry
- Confirm delete round
- Changed Delete round icon
- Open and Close dates now show in the Calendar
- Modified the ordering of the fields in the CSV Question downloads, to make reading the results in a spreadsheet easier, by placing Content last. This helps with readability as that column is usually very wide.
- Added the Teacher priority and Heat (votes) to the CSV Question downloads.
- Made the SQL for the CSV cross DB compatible so it now works for PostgreSQL database users.
- Implemented width and height styles to the thumbsup and thumbdown icons used for teacher priority and heatas with Moodle 3.6 they switch from gif to svg and with the styles setting, they are huge.
- Provided a separate language string for the "Post" button so Hot Question is not sharing a core string. The new string now shows as, "Click to post." Makes it possible to customize the button label, without affecting a Moodle core language string.
- Modified the Behat tests to account for the new language string used on the Click to post, button. Also fixed a few other Behat steps that worked in previous Moodle versions, but not in Moodle 3.6. Tests now work as expected.
- Fixed a problem where the initial Teacher priority of zero would not be shown, and you would have to manually make it go positive, before you could go to negative number. It depended on the various combinations of Moodle, PHP, and database in use, but now works reliably in all versions of Moodle.
- Added code for GDPR compliance.
- Added a setting that allows the teacher to set a priority rating for each question.
- Added an approval setting for each question so the teacher can hide inappropriate questions.
- Added groups capability.
- Added 12 Behat tests.
- Added setting for, "Display description on course page."
- Added settings for open and close Availability dates.
- Added setting to allow changing, "Submit your question here" to whatever the teacher wants when creating a Hot Question activity.
- Included an optional icon for this activity, that is more "activity purpose" neutral than the light bulb.
Link to the old forum discussion https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=158368#p714750
Useful links
Screenshots
Contributors
AL Rachels (Lead maintainer)
Zhigang Sun: Original author
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Comments
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I also changed the csv download filename a bit so that you can use language customization for all but the date and time. I left that unchanged so that if you get in a rush, you will not accidentally wipe out an old file with a new download having the exact same name. Using time as part of the filename, there should never be a duplicate.
In the previous release, if you deleted the current round, you needed to manually open a new round or you might accidentally try to add a question(s) that would get lost without any warning or indication of a problem. I have added code that automatically checks for this condition and opens a new round, if needed.
I have made changes as needed to make this new release also work with Moodle 2.8 so that users of that Moodle version can have access to the new capabilities of the current version of Hot Question.
Debug info: SQLState: 42000
Error Code: 8120
Message: [Microsoft][SQL Server Native Client 11.0][SQL Server]Column 'mdl_hotquestion_questions.hotquestion' is invalid in the select list because it is not contained in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause.
Running Moodle on Windows Server, IIS with SQL database.
Has anyone seen this error before? Is it fixed in later versions?
I have the new code changes in the master branch at github for anyone who might want to try it out now. I want to do some more testing to see about making this a release for Moodle 3.3 too.
1) csv export does not seem to work - i just get "error reading database"
2) it seems to me a little dangerous to have a button that deletes the current "round" and everything in it without confirmation
3) the navigation icons to change "rounds" are very misleading / unintuitive - in our moodle 3.5 boost they are both displayed as "+"
1) I have the latest Hot Question installed on every Moodle from 2.8 to the latest 3.5 and I just retested and see that csv export works on every version. If possible, could you use something like phpMyAdmin and look at the four Hot Question database tables to see if they look okay.
2) I have an open ticket to add confirmation for deleting a round, but due to health problems and other priorities, have not gotten to it yet.
3) Hot Question tool bar icons come directly from the Moodle pix folder by name and their look changes depending on the Moodle version and whether there are other rounds. When they changed from left/right triangles to +'s, I looked at what was available and decided to stay with the same four names previously used in the code. The new look seemed okay to me after using it for a day or two.