Random activity

Activities ::: mod_randomactivity
Maintained by Astor Bizard
The "Random activity" activity type is a lightweight module that allows teachers to randomly split students among other activities within a course.
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Random activity

Version: 1.5 (July 2022)

Author: Astor Bizard

This software is part of the Caseine project.
This software was developped with the support of the following organizations:
- Université Grenoble Alpes
- Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble

Introduction

The "Random activity" activity type is a module that allows teachers to randomly split students among other activities within a course.
Typically, suppose we have two versions of an exercise: a Quiz (named Quiz 1) and an Assignment (named TP 1), along with documentation for each activity. Now suppose we want to split students randomly among these activities.
We can come up with this:
Course overview for two linked Random activities (teacher)

... which will give one of the following results for each student:
Course overview for two linked Random activities (student 1)
Course overview for two linked Random activities (student 2)

Create and setup one or more Random activities

Prepare your activities pool

You first need to create a pool activities, among which students will be split.
It is recommended to place them in a hidden section of your course, and make them available (this can be done from the course page, or from the settings page of each activity in the "Common module settings" section).
This can also be done by using stealth activities (see https://docs.moodle.org/311/en/Stealth_activities). However, please be aware of an issue with stealth activities appearing on the calendar: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-73535.

Create the Random activity

To create a Random activity in your course, simply proceed the same way as other activity types.
To set up the activities pool for your Random activity, click "Save and display" at the end of the editing form, as the activities pool is set up on the view page.

Activity view page

From here, you can view the current activities pool, and edit it by clicking the "Edit" and "Add activities" buttons. Activities pool view

When you are done editing the activities pool, click "Apply changes and re-assign" to apply the changes.
You should then see students enrolled in your course assigned to the activities you added.

Note: Students will not see this page when accessing the Random activity. They will be automatically redirected to the activity they are assigned to.

Seed

Notice the "Seed" field on the bottom right of the view page. This is the seed for the random splitting of students among activities.
This means that a different seed will lead to a different distribution, and an identical seed will lead to an identical distribution*.
You can thus use an identical seed in several Random activities** to split students among several pool of activities while preserving consistency (eg. our example in Introduction: we had one Random activity "Documentation for exercise 1" and one Random activity "Exercise 1", both with the same seed to ensure a student will always get the correct documentation for his exercise).

* This is only true if the activities pool has the same size (an activities pool of a different size with the same seed will lead to a different distribution).
** This will only work for Random activities with the same seed and the same number of activities in their pools.

Activities pool / seed changes consequences

The Random activity acts as a redirection on students side. Please be aware that if you change a seed or the activities pool after students have accessed it may lead to students being assigned to a new activity, thus leading to them losing some of their work / grades.

Grades

Random activities support grades. If a Random activity is graded, the grades are automatically retrieved from the activities the students are assigned to.
To make a graded assignment with a Random activity, a nice way to proceed is: - Set up grading methods for every activity in the pool, - Set up a grading method for the Random activity, - Head to the gradebook and set the weights for activities in the pool to 0.
That way, only the Random activity grade will be accounted in the gradebook, and every student will have exactly one grade for the graded assignment.

Completion tracking

Random activities support completion tracking.
You can set automatic completion tracking of Random activities, by selecting "Students must complete their assigned activity".
That way, when a user completes its assigned activity, the Random activity will automatically be set as complete.

Future Developments

These features are not currently supported but will be added in future releases:
- CSV export of student affectation on activities

Screenshots

Screenshot #0
Screenshot #1
Screenshot #2
Screenshot #3
Screenshot #4

Contributors

Astor Bizard (Lead maintainer)
Please login to view contributors details and/or to contact them

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  • Plugins bot
    сре, 9. дец 2020, 20:50
    Approval issue created: CONTRIB-8331
  • Astor Bizard
    пон, 12. апр 2021, 22:06
    Hi @Geraldo Verweij,

    Groups are not supported yet. However, this will be possible with the next update I am working on. It should be released during this week - worst case next week.

    Best regards,
    Astor
  • Zabelle Motte
    уто, 11. јан 2022, 02:57
    Hello,

    This great plugin is installed in our university and helps professors to have assign for exams with random statements while correcting each statement in a separate assign.

    We suggested the professors to configure their assign as [stealth activities|https://docs.moodle.org/311/en/Stealth_activities] so that they may be coupled with the random activity. But we noticed a problem : stealth activities are shown in the timeline dashboard block. It is therefore important to configure each assign with access restrictions. In your documentation, you tell to put assigns in an hidden section but when assigns are hidden they may not be accessed by students, so assigns must be made visible at the exam moment manually or using a restriction.

    We find it to be a bug that stealth activities appear in the timeline block and we declared this bug here :
    https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-73535

    Wathever happens, it would be important to have a remark on the use of stealth activities in your plugin documentation.

    Kisses

    Zabelle
  • Astor Bizard
    уто, 11. јан 2022, 17:47
    Hello @Zabelle,

    Thank you for pointing out this problem. I will add a note.

    Best regards,
    Astor
  • Trent McNeeley
    сре, 5. апр 2023, 04:20
    This has been of great use to some faculty at my university. Has it been tested in Moodle 4.1 yet? We plan o upgrade to Moodle 4.1.2+ soon. Thanks!
  • Astor Bizard
    сре, 5. апр 2023, 21:19
    Hello @Trent McNeeley,
    I just tested it on Moodle 4.1 and everything seems fine, as expected. I updated the version information to include Moodle 4.1 as supported.
  • Stephan Romer
    сре, 21. феб 2024, 16:52
    Hello Astor,
    thank you very much for this great plugin.
    Is an update planned soon?
    Or have you even stopped further development?
    Kind regards,
    Stephan
  • Astor Bizard
    сре, 21. феб 2024, 22:11
    Hi @Stephan Romer,
    About supporting newer Moodle versions, I updated version status as compatible with currently available Moodle versions.
    About another update, what would you want the update to bring?
    Best regards,
    Astor
  • Stephan Romer
    пон, 26. феб 2024, 03:11
    Dear Astor,
    I was unsure whether I could update to moodle 4.3.3.
    After your reply, I was able to successfully update to the current version.
    Thank you very much for your support - and this useful plugin.
    Yours sincerely,
    Stephan
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