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Student projects/New question types

From MoodleDocs

Programmer: Adriane Boyd

Mentor: Tim Hunt

Summary

I am planning to update Moodle to add several new types of questions questions and to update the student and teacher interfaces for a number of existing question types to make them easier to use.

New Question Types

Ordering
A student is given a set of items and asked to order them. As suggested in the project ideas, this would be implemented with drag and drop with a version like the current matching question as a fallback. To accommodate different kinds of ordering activities (jumbled sentences, create a timeline), the teacher could specify whether the items were to be ordered horizontally or vertically. Grading options could be available as in existing systems: equally weighted, all or nothing, right minus wrong.
Image Click Questions
The student is given a prompt and responsed by clicking on a certain area of an image. To make the question, the teacher would upload the image and identify the area within the image that counts as the correct area for the answer. A javascript student interface could allow the student to move a bullseye around the image before clicking submit or a simpler version could be handled with a input form image.

Question Types to Modify and Extend

Cloze Questions
Cloze questions have been implemented, but the teacher is required to use an unwieldy syntax to specify the possible answers and feedback. To make this quiz easier for teachers to use, the question editing interface could include small pop-up windows where the teacher could enter the possible answers, feedback, and scores for each type of blank. The pop-up windows would be similar to the link creation dialog windows used by the htmlArea editor in Moodle.
Matching
Matching questions are also already implemented, but the options appear more like multiple choice cloze questions. The matching possibilities are not reduced as the student works on the question, so the student can match the same answer with all three targets. It would be useful to make the matching question a drag and drop exercise where each answer is only allowed to match with one target. Initially, this question type would be developed for text targets and answers since there is an existing plugin for drag and drop questions with images. Working only with text has the advantage that the teacher interface would remain the same.
Multiple Select
Multiple choice questions allow the teacher to use multiple select, but because each choice is graded independently, there is no way to only give credit for choosing one correct set of answers. The multiple choice question could be updated or a new multiple select question type could be created in order to have extra grading options that make sense for multiple select. A simple set of grading options could be similar to those used by existing systems: all or nothing, right answers, right minus wrong.
Likert / Opinion Scale
Likert/opinion scale questions could be useful in gathering student opinions about various topics. Moodle is already using Likert/opinion scale questions in its surveys, so it should not be difficult to adapt this type as a quiz question type. This question type would not need automatic grading.
File Response
The student uploads a file as an answer to a quiz question. Creating this type of question would have the lowest priority since it is already possible for students to upload files as an activity, but it could be useful in cases where a student demonstrates a skill by creating or modifying a file in an external program and uploads the result as part of a quiz. There would be no automatic grading for this type of question.

Database structures

Core functions

Interface mockups

Tasks and Timeline

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