Development talk:Question Engine 2:Overview
Two types of feedback require different handling
Following the discussion in MDL-20269: there are two types of feedback in many questions: general feedback and feedback (we can call it per-asnwer feedback or question-defined feedback). They have different purposes and should be handled differently.
Feedback usually is given on per-answer basis and often used to spot a particular errors in partially incorrect answers, so the student can think more and answer carefully next time. This feedback you will want to be displayed to the student during attempt of quiz if he will be able to do next attempt on question. Actually this feedback is questiontype-dependent and should be left on the question type to handle, thought the interactive model could give it some pointers about whether it desirable.
General feedback actually belongs to question engine, not question type, and serves to give the student some sort of general comments i.e. what question is about, what is a correct answer and why. It often contains correct answer (with explanation), so it should NOT be displayed while question still can be attempted, as it makes further attempts useless.
I think that referring to these two as simply feedback is confusing and may lead to not quite perfect decisions, so I would like to see a description of what will become with each type of feedback in each interaction model.
There maybe a case where general feedback contains only some general hints and pointers, and a teacher want it to be used during the attempt. Probably the perfect solution would be adding to engine a concept of textual hints, with each hint associated with penalty. When you reach -100% penalty you can't further attempt a question and so -100% penalty effectively work for feedback with a correct answer and it's description. There may be two modes of hint using: by student initiative (in which case you may want to have a hint titles) or after each incorrect answer student will get next (more expensive) hint. --Oleg Sychev 10:11, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
