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MySQL

2013-12-29T15:23:14Z

Jeffjeff: how to see which SQL database belongs to which Moodle installation

{{Installing Moodle}}
MySQL is one of the supported databases that underpins a Moodle installation.

== Installing MySQL ==

* If you are running Linux your preference should be to install using your distributions package manager. This ensures you will get any available updates.
* There are installers available for most popular operating systems at http://www.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/.
* It is possible and reasonably straightforward to build mysql from source but it is not recommended (the pre-built binaries are supposedly better optimised).
* Make sure you set a password for the 'root' user (see http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/default-privileges.html).
* Consider installing and configuring my.cnf (the MySQL settings file) to suit your needs. The default configuration is usually very conservative in respect of memory usage versus performance.

== Creating Moodle database ==

These are the steps to create an empty Moodle database. Substitute your own database name, user name and password as appropriate.

The instructions assume that the web server and MySQL server are on the same machine. In this case the 'dbhost' is 'localhost'. If they are on different machines substitute the name of the web server for 'localhost' in the following instructions and the 'dbhost' setting will be the name of the database server.

=== Command line ===

* To create a database using the 'mysql' command line client, first log into MySQL
<pre>
$ mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
</pre>
(Enter the password you previously set - or been given - for the MySQL 'root' user). After some pre-amble this should take you to the ''mysql>'' prompt.
* Create a new database (called 'moodle' - substitute your own name if required). We recommend you use '''utf8_unicode_ci''' for collation.
<pre>
mysql> CREATE DATABASE moodle DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
</pre>
* Add a user/password with the minimum needed permissions:
<pre>
mysql> GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES,DROP,INDEX,ALTER ON moodle.* TO moodleuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'yourpassword';
</pre>
...which creates a user called 'moodleuser' with a password 'yourpassword'. Make sure you invent a strong password and resist the temptation to 'GRANT ALL'.

=== phpMyAdmin ===

[http://www.phpmyadmin.net/ phpMyAdmin] is a web based administration tool for MySQL. If this is available you can use it to create a new database. Make sure that you select 'UTF8' as the default character set.

==Which database belongs to which Moodle==
If you have installed several Moodle installations on the same server, there will be several several databases in your MySQL server. The names might be quite poor reflections of the content like _mdl1 _mdl2 _mdl3 . So how do I see which database goes with which Moodle installation? You can go in with phpMyAdmin and in the various databases check for the table "mdl_course". There you will easily see the name of that Moodle Installation. In table mdl_config you can see the Moodle version. (Where can one find the home relative URL of the Moodle installation?)

== See also ==

* [[MariaDB]]
* [http://www.mysql.com/ The MySQL homepage]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL Wikipedia article about ''MySQL'']
* [http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?24,92131,92131 List of articles on MySQL performance tuning]

[[Category:SQL databases]]

[[ja:MySQL]]
[[de:MySQL]]

Diskussion:Calculated question type

2013-03-18T11:00:38Z

Jeffjeff: synchronizing datasets

"However the synchronization will work ONLY if the questions are kept in the SAME category and have the SAME NUMBER OF DATASETS ."
I tried to make a couple questions where the first would be to calculate the m in y = mx+b for 2 points and in the second to calculate b
I couldn't find how to choose the same data set. I tried sychronise but it still complained about I must add a dataset before saving.

I also wonder about the restriction that was to be lifted (and several years have passed).
[[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 19:00, 18 March 2013 (WST)

Calculated question type

2013-03-18T10:31:40Z

Jeffjeff: /* DO NOT PUT THE = sign in the formula. */ cosine of two times another angle

{{Questions}}
Calculated questions offer a way to create individual numerical questions by the use of wildcards (i.e you can use common variables names as '''x''' , '''y''' enclosed in curly braces to create the wildcards '''{x}''' and '''{y}''') that are substituted with random values when the quiz is taken.

For example, if you want to create a large number of '''"Calculate the area of a rectangle"''' problems to drill your students, you could create a question with two wildcards (i.e. '''{base}''', '''{height}''' created from the common '''base''', '''height''' variable names) and put in the "'''Correct Answer Formula='''" input field '''{base}''' * '''{height}''' ( * being the multiplication sign ).

'''Correct Answer Formula=''' {base}*{height}

When a student takes the test, Moodle will randomly select values for '''{base}''' and '''{height}''' and grade the response using the result of the '''Correct Answer Formula'''.

The test will very rarely appear the same way twice.

== Is this really the question type for you? ==
The main purpose of the calculated question is to create multiple versions of a question with different numerical values. This means you must have '''at least one''' wildcard in one of the answers.

If you don't need a random element, use the [[Numerical question type]] instead.
== Simple calculated question type ==

The [[Simple calculated question type|simple calculated]] question offers the most used features of the calculated question with a much simpler creation interface.

==Wildcards and datasets==

When Moodle delivers a Calculated question to the student, the wildcards are replaced with randomly-selected values. However, these values are not completely random - rather, they are randomly selected from a pre-defined ''dataset'' of possible values. This allows you some control over the possible values chosen - for example, in order to make sure the numbers are realistic.

These datasets can be ''private'' or ''shared'' - private datasets are used by one wildcard within one calculated question; shared datasets are used by one wildcard within all calculated questions that use it.

==Question set-up==
To create (or modify) a calculated question there are three pages to work through. The instructions below take you through the pages, step by step:

===Page 1. Editing a Calculated question ===

#Select the question '''category'''
#Any shared wildcards for this category are listed beneath. If you change category, you'll need to click the "Update the category" button to refresh this list. There may not be any shared wildcards yet - if not, you can create them later if you wish.
#Give the question a descriptive '''name''' - this allows you to identify it in the question bank.
#Enter the '''question text'''. This should be the question you want the student to answer, and it must include all the information they need to calculate an answer. Therefore it must contain at least one wildcard, inside curly braces. For example, if you wanted the student to sum numbers A and B, the question text might read: "What is {A} + {B}?" You may also include quantities computed from wildcards using the syntax "{=...}: for example, the question "What is {={A}+{B}} - {A}?" with wildcard values A=4 and B=3 would display as "What is 7 - 4?"
#Select an image to display if you want to add a picture to the question. For the student, it appears immediately after the question text and before the choices. If you want more control over how the image appears, include it in the question text above, using the HTML editor.
#Set the '''default question grade''' (i.e. the maximum number of marks for this question).
#Set the '''Penalty factor''' (see [[Calculated_question_type#Penalty_factor|Penalty factor]] below).
#''Moodle 1.7+:'' If you wish, add general feedback. This is text that appears to the student after he/she has answered the question.
#Next add the '''formula for the answer'''. This formula must contain at least the wildcards that appear in the question text. See [[Calculated_question_type#Correct_answer_formula_syntax|Correct answer formula syntax]] for further details.
# Choose the '''grade''' that the student will get for this question if they give this answer. This should be a percentage of the total marks available. For example, you could give 100% for a correct answer, and 50% for an answer that is nearly right. '''One of the answers must have a 100% grade'''.
#Determine the '''tolerance''' for error that you will accept in the answer. The tolerance and tolerance type settings combine to give a range of acceptable scores. So, if tolerance = t, correct answer = x and the difference between the user's answer and the correct answer is dx, then the tolerance types are as follows:
##Nominal - mark correct if dx <= t
##Relative - mark correct if dx / x <= t
##Geometric - mark correct if dx² / x² <= t²
# The next 2 settings, "Correct answer shows" and "Format" determine the '''precision''' of the answer. Use these to select the number of decimal places or significant figures you want to use.
# Add some '''feedback''' which the student will see if they enter this answer.
# You can specify as many answer formulae as you like - click "Add another answer blank" to add more.
# You can also specify units for the answers. For example, if you enter a unit of 'cm' here, and the accepted answer is 15, then the answers '15cm' and '15' are both accepted as correct. If you add more than one unit, you can also specify a multiplier. So, if your main answer was 5500 with unit W, you can also add the unit kW with a multiplier of 0.001. This means that the answers '5500', '5500W' or '5.5kW' would all be marked correct. Note that the accepted error is also multiplied, so an allowed error of 100W would become an error of 0.1kW.
# Finally (!) you can click "Next page" to save what you've done and move on. If you are editing an existing question, you can click "Next page (new question)" to create a completely new question based on an existing one.

==== Penalty factor ====

The 'penalty factor' only applies when the question is used in a quiz using adaptive mode - i.e. where the student is allowed multiple attempts at a question even within the same attempt at the quiz. If the penalty factor is more than 0, then the student will lose that proportion of the '''maximum''' grade upon each successive attempt. For example, if the default question grade is 10, and the penalty factor is 0.2, then each successive attempt after the first one will incur a penalty of 0.2 x 10 = 2 points.

===Tolerance===

As for numerical questions it is possible to allow a margin within which all responses are accepted as correct. The "Tolerance" field is used for this. However, there are three different types of tolerances. These are Relative, Nominal and Geometric. If we say that the correct answer at quiz time is calculated to 200 and the tolerance is set to 0.5 then the different tolerance types work like this:

Relative: A tolerance interval is calculated by multiplying the correct answer with 0.5, ie in this case we get 100 so for this tolerance the correct response must be between 100 and 300. (200 ± 100)
This is useful if the magnitude of the correct answer can differ greatly between different wildcard values.

Nominal: This is the simplest tolerance type but not very powerful. The correct response must be between 199.5 and 200.5 (200 ± 0.5)
This tolerance type can be useful if the differences between different correct answers are small.

Geometric: The upper limit of the tolerance interval is calculated as 200 + 0.5*200 and is the same as for the relative case. The lower limit is calculated as 200/(1 + 0.5). The correct response must then be between 133.33 and 300.
This is useful for complex calculation that must have great tolerances where relative tolerances of 1 or more would be used for the upper limit but clearly not acceptable for the lower limit as it would make zero a correct answer for all cases.

The field Significant Figures does only relate to how the correct answer should be presented in the review or the reports. Examples: If it is set to 3 then the correct answer 13.333 would be presented as 13.3; 1236 would be presented as 1240; 23 would be presented as 23.0 etc.

===Page 2. Choose dataset properties ===

Each wildcard that you specify in the answer formula must have an associated set of possible values - this is its ''dataset''. Each of the wildcards is listed on this page along with a choice of dataset:
*'''private''' i.e. only used by this question
*'''shared''' i.e shared with other calculated questions in the same category

Using a shared dataset can save time when you are creating a lot of similar calculated questions.

Note that even when creating a question for the first time, this page may say that your wildcard "will use the same existing private dataset as before." This just means that Moodle has already tentatively created a private data set for that wildcard: if a private dataset is what you want, leave this choice selected.

If there is anything in the question text that looks like a wildcard, but does not appear in any of the answer formulae, you can specify whether or not this is meant to be a wildcard. If it is, you can choose whether it should use a private or shared dataset.

To continue, simply choose your preferred dataset for each wildcard, then click "Next Page".

===Page 3. Edit the datasets ===

Now we need to create the set of possible values that each wildcard can take. ''Warning'' - this page is a bit confusing!

There are two ways of creating values - you can type them in yourself and add them to the list, or you can have Moodle generate them for you.

==== Adding/deleting your own values ====

Adding individual values to the list is easy:

# In the 'Param' field for each wildcard, enter the value you want
# Scroll down to the 'Add' section and click the Add button (leaving the number of items set to 1)
# Repeat the above steps as many times as necessary (the maximum number of items is 100)

To delete values from the list:

# In the 'Delete' section, select the number of items to delete
# Click the Delete button

==== Letting Moodle create values ====

# Start with the "Range of Values" fields, and enter the lower and upper limits for the values you would accept
# Choose a number of decimal places for the value
# Choose the distribution of values between the limits - 'uniform' means any value between the limits is equally likely to be generated; 'loguniform' means that values towards the lower limit are more likely.
# Now move down to the 'Add' section and click on "force regeneration"
# In the menu next to the Add button, choose the number of sets of random values (items) you wish to add to the list. (Note that the maximum total number of items in your list is 100.)
# Finally, click Add to append the new values to the list
# '''Note:''' If you want more control over the items that Moodle adds, you can do them one at a time and preview the values before you add them. Click the "Get New Item to Add" button to make Moodle generate new values in the "Item to Add" section at the top. If you like them, click "Add" for 1 item; if not, click "Get New Item to Add" again to get new values.

==== Finishing off ====

Once your list of items (values) is complete, you are finished. It's up to you how many values you add - the more values you add, the more a question can be used by the students without them seeing the same values repeatedly.

Note that if you delete values from the list, you can put them back again. Change the "Next Item to Add" option to "reuse previous value if available", then the next time you add items, Moodle will restore your previously-deleted items from the dataset.

Once your list of values is complete, you can click 'Save changes' to finish.

==== What does the 'Update the datasets parameters' button do? ====

Warning: This button can affect several questions, so be careful before using it.
Assume you have selected dataset parameter for {a} to be any value between 1-10 and generated a question. In the second question also you decide to use a SHARED wildcard called {a}. Inherently, it will show a value between 1-10. However, your need here changes and you want to make it 11-100 instead. Then, you change them in the range and click this button. Voila! the values change and you can add new items here using the 'Get New item to add'. However, if you go back to your previous question, you will see that values would change there too, because it is a shared dataset. If you do not update parameters, then this may not happen and will generate a new set of values and displays them in the "Item to Add" section.

==Correct answer formula syntax==

=== DO NOT PUT THE = sign in the formula. ===

* In the recent versions of the calculated question type, you could have more than one answer formula and applied a specific grading value to each of them as long as there is at least one 100% correct answer formula.
If more than one correct answer formula input field are displayed when editing,
your site has the multiple answer feature.

* As a general rule, write these formulas like you would in a calculator e.g. <code>3 + 5 * sin(3/{x})</code> A notable exception is exponentiation, where x3 cannot be entered as <code>{x}^3</code>, but instead should be entered as <code>pow({x}, 3)</code>.
* Each function's placeholders and other arguments should be in parentheses (brackets). For example, if you want students to calculate the sine of one angle and cosine of two times another angle, you would enter <code>sin({a}) + cos({b}*2)</code> or <code>sin({a}) + cos(2*{b})</code>.
* It's usually better to have too many parentheses (brackets) than too few. The server won't care, and the more specific you are about what you mean, the more likely it will like your complex formulas.
* There is no implicit multiplication. To you, the human editor, "5(23)" or "5x" may seem perfectly obvious. To the server doing the math, it's crazy talk and won't be understood. Always use the "*" for multiplication.
* Any special mathematical function must have parentheses around its values. Take the sine function in the first bullet point for instance. Notice that the ''3 / x'' is wrapped in parentheses (brackets)--this is so the server can understand it properly. Without those parentheses, the server won't know if you mean "(sin 3) / x" or "sin (3 / x)" and will reject the entire formula accordingly.

==Available functions==

Calculated questions can use more than simple arithmetic operators. The following functions are allowed in versions 1.5 and newer.

{| width="97%" border="1px"
!Function
!Explanation
|-
|abs
|Absolute value
|-
|acos
|Arc cosine -- output in radians.
|-
|acosh
|Inverse hyperbolic cosine -- output in radians.
|-
|asin
|Arc sine -- output in radians.
|-
|asinh
|Inverse hyperbolic sine.-- output in radians.
|-
|atan2
|Arc tangent of two variables -- pass in two values like (y, x), and you'll get the atah(y/x), adjusted to the proper quadrant. (Note: The variables are in the reverse order to atan2(x,y) in Excel) Output is radians.
|-
|atan
|Arc tangent -- output in radians.
|-
|atanh
|Inverse hyperbolic tangent-- output in radians.
|-
|bindec
|Binary to decimal
|-
|ceil
|Round fractions up
|-
|cos
|Cosine -- in radians!!! Convert your degree measurement to radians before you take the cos of it.
|-
|cosh
|Hyperbolic cosine -- in radians!!! Convert your degree measurement to radians before you take the cosh of it.
|-
|decbin
|Decimal to binary
|-
|decoct
|Decimal to octal
|-
|deg2rad
|Converts the number in degrees to the radian equivalent
|-
|exp
|Calculates the exponent of e
|-
|expm1
|Returns exp(number) - 1, computed in a way that is accurate even when the value of number is close to zero
|-
|floor
|Round fractions down
|-
|fmod
|Returns the floating-point modulus of two numbers - i.e. the remainder when the first is divided by the second.
|-
|is_finite
|Finds whether a value is a legal finite number
|-
|is_infinite
|Finds whether a value is infinite
|-
|is_nan
|Finds whether a value is not a number
|-
|log10
|Base-10 logarithm
|-
|log1p
|Returns log(1 + number), computed in a way that is accurate even when the value of number is close to zero
|-
|log
|Natural logarithm (''ln'')
|-
|max
|Find highest value
|-
|min
|Find lowest value
|-
|octdec
|Octal to decimal
|-
|pi()
|Get value of pi - the function does not take an argument, like in Excel.
|-
|pow (numberToRaise, NumberRaisedTo)
|Exponential expression
|-
|rad2deg
|Converts the radian number to the equivalent number in degrees
|-
|rand
|Generate a random integer
|-
|round
|Rounds a float
|-
|sin
|Sine -- in radians!!! Convert your degree measurement to radians before you take the sin of it.
|-
|sinh
|Hyperbolic sine -- in radians!!! Convert your degree measurement to radians before you take the sinh of it.
|-
|sqrt
|Square root
|-
|tan
|Tangent -- in radians!!! Convert your degree measurement to radians before you take the tan of it.
|-
|tanh
|Hyperbolic tangent -- in radians!!! Convert your degree measurement to radians before you take the tanh of it.
|}

==Predefined constants==
Actually there is NO Predefined constant that is allowed other than pi() as a function without parameter.

==Synchronization==

You could use shared wild cards to get the same values across questions in a quiz.

A simple example will be to use the same radius in a first question asking for the perimiter of a circle of {radius}cm and a second question asking for the surface of a circle of {radius}cm.

When the quiz will be shown to the student the two questions will shown the same {radius} value.

However the synchronization will work '''ONLY''' if the questions are kept in the '''SAME''' category and have the '''SAME NUMBER OF DATASETS''' .

If you need to move the synchronized questions to another category, you need to do it by editing the questions.

(This restriction should be released by sept. 2010).

==See also==

* Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=150923 couple questions about "edit datasets page" in calculated questions] forum discussion

[[Category:Mathematics]]

[[de:Berechnungsfragen]]
[[fr:Question calculée]]
[[zh:計算題]]
[[ja:計算問題タイプ]]

Private files

2013-03-17T12:24:56Z

Jeffjeff: /* Private files management */ Emphasize "spara"

{{Repositories}}
In Moodle, each user has a private files area for uploading and managing a set of files.

The private files area is accessible via ''Navigation > My home > My profile > My private files'' or the [[My private files block]]. If the private files repository is enabled by a site admin, it is available as a source within the filepicker when selecting files to use in a course.

==Private files management==

To add a file to your private files area
# On the Navigation menu, click My profile > My private files
# The file manager will appear.
# If desired, create a folder for your file(s)
#Click on the Add button to upload from the File picker or drag and drop from your desktop. It will look like the files are already there, but they aren't until you '''do the next step!'''
# Click the 'Save changes' button

[[File:newprivatefiles.png]]

*Once uploaded, files will appear as thumbnails. Clicking the icons top right will display them in table or list view as an alternative.
[[File:uploadedprivatefiles.png]]

===Making an alias/shortcut to a file in the private files area===

If a file is uploaded into your private files area, it is possible when using it elsewhere on Moodle to select it as an alias/shortcut. This means that if you update the file in your private files area, it will automatically update elsewhere on Moodle.

[[File:privatefilesalias.png]]

See [[Working with files]] for more information.

==Private files size limit==

The size limit for each user's private files area is set by a site administrator in User quota in ''Settings > Site administration > Security > Site policies''.

==Preventing access to Private files==
*To prevent all users having access to Private files, the administrator should disable (close the eye) of the repository in ''Settings>Site administration>Plugins>Repositories>Manage repositories.''
*If only students are to be prevented from accessing private files (but teachers etc, allowed) then a new role should be made and assigned system wide. See FAQ 6 in [[Repositories FAQ]] for more information.

==Private files capabilities==

* [[Capabilities/moodle/user:manageownfiles|Manage files in own private file area]]
*[[Capabilities/repository/user:view|View user private files]]

[[eu:Fitxategi_pribatuak]]
[[fr:Fichiers personnels]]
[[ja:プライベートファイル]]
[[de:Eigene Dateien]]

Language customisation

2012-05-03T15:37:32Z

Jeffjeff: /* Use filter to find the strings you want to customize */ Using debugging to find string identifier

{{Language}}
Words or phrases (in any language) used on the site may be easily changed by an administrator using the language customization feature. For example, you may want to change the word "Course" to "Unit". The process consists of 4 steps:

# Check-out the strings
# Filter the strings you wish to customize
# Customize the strings
# Save and check-in the strings

== Quick instructions for the impatient ==

# Go to the ''Settings > Site administration > Language> Language customization'' page.
# Pick the language to customize from the pull down list.
# Click the "Check out strings to translator" button. This may take time to process.
# Click or Ctrl+Click to select files on the "Filter strings" interface. Notice files are grouped. For example, you will find the lesson strings under "mod" and moodle.php under core.
# After selecting the file(s), it is possible to use "string must contain" and other filters. For example, look at only string text that has "teacher" the file(s) you selected.
# Click "Save changes and continue editing" if you want to pick another filter or PHP file(s) to edit.
# Click "Save and check in string into files" to save all changes you have made.

:''Tip:'' Do not see any string changes? Did you remember to use the "Save and check in string into files" button? Did you refresh your browser so it is not looking at a cached page? Did you edit the language file that is actually being used in your site, course or by the user?

:''Tip:'' Can't find the string you wish to change? Tick the 'Show origin of languages strings' checkbox in ''Settings > Site administration > Development > Debugging'' then visit the page containing the string you want to customize.

== Background ==

Moodle is translated into many languages - see [http://download.moodle.org/langpack/ Moodle.org: Language packs] for their list and the translation completion status. The translations are distributed in so called language packages (or just lang packs) that are maintained by kind volunteers, community contributors and Moodle partners. Please read the page [[Translation]] first to understand how the whole localization machinery works.

Moodle site administrators can customize any language pack to fit their individual needs (for example to use the term "Unit" instead of "Course"). You are discouraged from direct editing the files coming as a part official language pack. Such changes would be silently overwritten during the next upgrade. Instead, you should create a local language pack that holds all your changes from the official pack.

Local language packs have the same structure as the official ones. They are saved in your Moodle data directory in moodledata/lang/xx_local/ folder where 'xx' is the code of the language. You have to have the official language pack installed before you can customize it. Local language pack should contain just strings you have customized - you should not copy whole official language packs.

When displaying a string, Moodle first looks if a local customization of it exists in moodledata/lang/xx_local/component_file.php. If so, it is used. If not, the string from the official language pack is used (eventually, if the string has not been translated yet, the original English version is displayed). Please note that the strings are cached for better performance so you have to purge Moodle caches after you modify a file in your xx_local pack (caches are purged automatically if you use the tool described below).

== Using Language customization tool ==

Moodle comes with a tool that allows you to edit your local language pack via web interface. This tool is available for the site administrators in ''Settings > Site administration > Language > Language customization''. Please refer to the following workflow diagram.

[[image:customlang-process.png|800px|thumb|left|Workflow of the language customization (click to enlarge)]]
 

=== Check out strings into translator ===

At the Language customization first page, select a language to customize and press the button 'Check out string into translator'. During the checkout, Moodle loads the language strings from PHP files into its database. The language customization tool works with this database so the files in your xx_local pack are not touched unless your proceed to the final step of this workflow. If the xx_local language pack does not exist yet, Moodle automatically creates an empty one for you.
:''Tip:'' There is currently a problem with "execution time". If you get the "Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 180 seconds exceeded" message, you will have to press the button 'Check out string into translator' several times to get the operation completed. See [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=163375 forum discussion].

=== Use filter to find the strings you want to customize ===

[[Image:Language_string_M2_filter.png|thumb|right|Moodle 2.0 language filter]]
After the checkout, use the "filter strings" form to find strings you want to customize for your site. Not selecting any filters will display all strings in the language pack.

* ''Show strings of these components'' - Click or Ctrl+click to select one or more files that contain the string you want.
* ''Customized only'' - check this field to display only those strings that are already present in your xx_local pack.
* ''Help only''' - check this field to display only help tooltips, that is the texts used when clicking the yellow question mark icon.
:''Note:'' Starting in Moodle 2.0, help string identifiers must end with _help suffix.
* ''Modified only'' - displays only the strings that are modified in the current session.
:''Note:'' The term 'customized' means strings that are saved on disk in your xx_local pack directory. The term 'modified' represents the changes made since the last checkin string into the language pack. Customized strings (already saved in a file) are highlighted with green. Modified strings (not saved in a file yet) are highlighted with blue.
:''Tip:'' You may want to use this option look at your current work before you check it in.
* ''Only strings containing'' - insert a phrase that must appear in the string. For example, if you put a word 'student' here, you will get only those strings that contain this word.
:''Tip:'' The 'Only strings' filter can be used for a total search for a term used in your Moodle site for the selected language pack.
* ''String identifier'' - if you know the string identifier (it is the first parameter of the get_string() function), type it here. For example, the names of activity modules are defined in strings 'modulename'. Finding where a particular string is saved can be difficult sometimes. The administrator can start a debugging function: Site administration>Development>Debugging and choose "Show origin of language strings". Then if you append "?strings=1" (or "&strings=1" if there is already a parameter) to the end of the page URL, beside each string will be shown something like "{rememberusername/admin}". The last part says which php file uses the string, so this one is in admin.php. If there is nothing after the / look in moodle.php. The first part, before the /, is the string identifier.

Use combination of filter settings to get the required set of strings.

Click button 'Show strings' for potential editing.

=== Input your own translation ===

The strings that pass all the conditions defined in the filter are displayed in a table. To replace the standard translation, put your own into the 'Local customization' field.
:''Tip:''If you want to delete your current customization , just delete the content of the 'Local customization' field and click the "Save and continue editing". The modifications that are going to be removed a customized string are highlighted in red. If you made changes to a field previously "Save and continue editing" it will be highlighted in blue.

Click "Save and continue" button before you change the filter settings and show a new set of strings.

=== Saving your work into files ===

As necessary, you may repeat the "show strings", "local customization" and "Save and continue" process. When you have made all the changes you want to make:

Click "Save and check in strings into files" to process all changes made in the translator database to your local language pack.

=== Writing the modifications into files ===

During the checkin, the contents of the translator database are dumped into files in moodledata/lang/xx_local/ directory.

Click "Save and check in strings into files" to process all changes made into your local language pack.
:''Note:'' this operation removes the directory first and then re-creates it with the actual data. Therefore it is reasonable to not to touch the files directly after you have checked out them into the translator.

Upgrading to Moodle 2.2

2012-03-18T10:17:54Z

Jeffjeff: form > from

{{Installing Moodle}}
You can upgrade to Moodle 2.2 from Moodle 2.1, 2.0 or 1.9. If you are upgrading from 2.0, please also read [https://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Upgrading_to_Moodle_2.1 Upgrading to Moodle 2.1] . If upgrading from 1.9, please also read that and [https://docs.moodle.org/20/en/Upgrading_to_Moodle_2.0 Upgrading to Moodle 2.0]. After reading this you can upgrade directly to 2.2.

If you are using an earlier version of Moodle, you must upgrade to the latest Moodle 1.9.x first.

'''We advise that you test the upgrade first on a COPY of your production site, to make sure it works as you expect.'''

==System requirements==

* PHP must be '''5.3.2''' or later
** Required PHP extensions: iconv, curl, ctype, zip, simplexml, spl, pcre, dom, xml, json
** Required PHP memory_limit at least 40MB (64MB or more recommended if you have a choice)
* Databases should be one of the following:
** MySQL 5.0.25 or later (InnoDB storage engine highly recommended)
** PostgreSQL 8.3 or later
** Oracle 10.2 or later
** MS SQL 2005 or later
* Any standards-supporting browser from the past few years, for example:
** Firefox 3 or later
** Safari 3 or later
** Google Chrome 4 or later
** Opera 9 or later
** MS Internet Explorer 7 or later

Note: The above system requirements are unchanged from Moodle 2.1.

==Before upgrading please... ==

'''NOTE''': The upgrade process will irreversibly modify the contents of your database '''and''' your moodledata file storage area. If something goes wrong you '''cannot''' go back. It is vital that you take good backups of both moodledata and the database in case you have problems with the upgrade. If you are not sure how see [[Site backup]] or ask in the moodle.org forums (explaining what your operating system is).

* Read the [[:dev:Moodle 2.2 release notes|Moodle 2.2 release notes]] and check the [[:Category:New features|list of new features]]
* Check your site to make sure it meets all system requirements for 2.2 in ''Settings > Site administration > Server > [[Environment]]''
* '''Do a full database backup!'''
* '''Do a full moodledata backup'''
* '''Check your backups carefully'''
* Remember to purge PHP cache if using any PHP accelerator

==Possible issues that may affect you==

* If you have custom reports, there have been changes that may require (simple) changes to be made to their code. See the developer documentation [[:dev:General report plugins]] for details.
* Global search has been removed from core as it was broken. (A new global search is being written for 2.3.)
* Some web service functions have been deprecated. They still work, but check any web service connections you may have to your Moodle for the future.

==Checking database schema - old sites==

If your Moodle site has been upgraded through many prior versions it is possible that there will be some problems with the database schema (compared to a fresh 2.0 installation). This may cause the upgrade to fail. If your site started life prior to Moodle 2.0 it is a very good idea to check and correct the database schema before upgrading. See [[Verify Database Schema]]. You should also run the database integrity checks in the XMLDB editor, see the 'See also' for a link to extra scripts to check for other discrepancies.

==Now upgrade==

Once you have satisfied the requirements for Moodle 2.2, follow the instructions on the [[Upgrading|upgrading]] page.

On Linux servers, Moodle 2.2 supports running the [[CLI|upgrade from the command line]], rather than through a web browser. This is likely to be more reliable, particularly for large sites.

==After upgrade==

The config.php file from your 2.0 installation should work fine but if you take a look at config-dist.php that came with Moodle 2.0 there are more/different options available (e.g. database drivers and settings). It's a good idea to map your old config.php settings to a new one based on the 2.2 config-dist.php.

==See also==

* [[dev:Moodle 2.2 release notes|Moodle 2.2 release notes]]

[[fr:Mise à jour à Moodle 2.2]]

Community finder block

2011-04-02T18:08:23Z

Jeffjeff: /* Some definitions */ every course(s)

{{Moodle 2.0}}The community block, in Moodle 2.0 onwards, enables users to search for courses to download or enrol in on a community hub and lists courses which the user is enrolled in.
== the block==
[[Image:Community block.png]]
== the search page==
[[Image:Search_for_community_course.jpg]]
==Some definitions ==
*'''This hub is trusted by Moodle.org''': this is a label given by Moodle.org. It recognizes the hub as a safe hub. However Moodle.org didn't check every course on this hub for virus, copyright... As anywhere else, you should remain cautious about anything you download on internet.
*'''Registered on this hub''': your Moodle site is registered on this hub. It means that your Moodle administrator registered to this hub in order to receive email alert or to let teacher publish courses.

==Capabilities==
As Moodle administrator you need to assign the following capabilities:
* [[Capabilities/moodle/community:add|moodle/community:add]] - allows a user to use the Community block to search for courses on a hub
* [[Capabilities/moodle/community:download|moodle/community:download]] - allows a user to use the Community block to download courses from a hub

==See also==

* [[Community hub]]

[[Category:Block]]
[[Category:Hub]]

AMOS

2011-02-04T07:59:44Z

Jeffjeff: /* Using stashes */ peekabo buttons

{{Moodle 2.0}}

'''AMOS stands for Automated Manipulation Of Strings. AMOS is a central repository of Moodle strings and their history. It tracks the addition of English strings into Moodle code, gathers translations, handles common translation tasks and generates language packages to be deployed on Moodle servers.'''

The name was chosen in honour of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Amos_Comenius John Amos Comenius], the author of ''Janua linguarum reserata'' (Gate to Languages Unlocked). Sorry Tori ;-)

AMOS is installed at http://lang.moodle.org. If you want to use it, please create an account there. Language pack [[Translation_credits|maintainers]] should then send an email to [mailto:translation@moodle.org translation@moodle.org] (Koen) to get write access for their language.

AMOS provides support for community contributions into the translation. If you want to participate, just create an account at http://lang.moodle.org. There is no need to contact us in this case but you should definitely contact the language maintainer and coordinate your work.

== Basic concepts ==

[[image:amos-screenshot-navigation.png|100px|thumb|right|AMOS tools in the navigation block]]
AMOS consists of several tools available via the main navigation block - Translator, Stage, Stashes, Contributions and Log.

* User - AMOS is used by languages pack maintainers and by the community members who want to contribute
* Translator - is a tool that allows you to filter strings you want to work on and translate them
* Stage - is a temporary working area that holds the strings you have translated during the current session. Maintainers can permanently commit the stage into the strings repository. Contributors can submit the stage for maintainers.
* Stashes - are snapshots of the stage. Imagine them as ordinary files at your computer where you can save your work. You can submit your stash to the language pack maintainers.
* Contributions - is a database tracking all submitted contributions and their current status. Records in this database are like issues in Moodle tracker with the translated strings attached.
* Repository - a database of all Moodle strings and their history running at lang.moodle.org server
* Log - displays the log of all modifications of Moodle strings.

== Translation workflow ==

The following data flow diagram illustrates how AMOS tools are used during the translation process.

[[image:amos-workflow.png]]

The key AMOS component is the staging area or shortly the stage. It holds translated strings temporarily during your current login session. If you log out, the stage is cleared (though there is a backup - see below). There are several ways how translations can be staged, that is how translated strings can be put into the stage:

* by using AMOS translator
* by importing strings from an uploaded file
* by applying a previously created stash
* by applying a submitted contribution

Language pack maintainers have write access into the AMOS strings repository. Therefore they can commit their stage permanently. Once the stage is committed, staged strings are stored in the AMOS repository. Every hour at xx:45, AMOS generates ZIP packages from the most recent snapshot of the repository. These ZIP packages are published at http://download.moodle.org/langpack/2.0/ for download. Moodle sites can install and update language packages automatically from the ''Site administration > Language > Language packs'' page.

Community members do not have write access into the repository so they can't commit their stage. Instead, they can submit it to the maintainers. By submitting a stage, a new contribution record is created and language pack maintainers are notified by automatic email message. Maintainers can review the submitted contribution and, if they accept it, commit it on behalf of the contributor.

The stage can be also saved so you can interrupt your work and continue next time you come back to the site. The stage is saved into so called stashing area. Stashing area consists of stashes. A new stash is nothing but a snapshot copy of your current stage. AMOS automatically keeps one stash for you as a backup copy of your most recent stage. A stash can be submitted to the maintainers, too.

== AMOS tools ==

=== Using the translator tool ===

[[image:amos-screenshot-translator.png|300px|thumb|right|AMOS Translator tool]]
The translator tool page has two main parts. At the top, there is a filter form (1). You use that filter to get the strings you want to translate. When the filter settings are saved (2), a table with the filtered strings is displayed below.

Every row in the table represents a single string. The table has four columns. The first column (3) describes the version (or branch) where the string is used, its identifier and its component. You can see a text like

2.0 [completiondate,coursereport_completion]

That reads: this string is used in Moodle 2.0, its identifier is 'completiondate' and it belongs to 'courserepor_completion' component.

The second column (4) contains the English original of the string. Below the text, you can see Google icon. Click that icon to get automatic translation of the string into the language being translated. The next column contains a code of the language that this string is being translated to (for example "cs" for Czech).

Finally the last column contains the translation itself. If it is empty, the string is not translated yet, otherwise it displays the current translation. '''Click in the cell to turn it into the input editor.''' Insert the translation and click outside the cell to stage the translation. Note there is no submit button, the text is sent to the stage automatically in the background. You can see that the colour of the cell turned blue. Blue colour signalizes that the translation is currently staged.

You have many options of how to use the strings filter. You can work on a single component or all missing strings at once. You can search for strings containing a given text (either in English or the translated string) etc. You can check for strings in older versions, too but those strings are read-only. They get automatically pulled into AMOS from the CVS repository of 1.x translations.

The 'permalink' below the filter's submit button can be used to keep the current filter settings. For example, you can bookmark a setting use regularly or you can copy the link URL and send it to somebody so they can set their filter just by visiting that URL.

When you finish translating, do not forget to visit the stage page. You probably want either commit it (if you are a lang pack maintainer) or submit it to maintainers so they can review your work and include it into the language pack.

=== Using the stage ===

[[image:amos-screenshot-stage-contrib.png|300px|thumb|right|Strings staged by a contributor]]
The translated strings are put into a temporary area called ''stage'' immediately after the cursor leaves the editor field. The stage holds your work before it is either committed into the repository (if you are language pack maintainer) or submitted to the maintainers for inclusion or stashed.

The stage is cleared when you logout. You have to explicitly commit or stash the stage so it is saved permanently. If you forget to do it, or there is a problem with the connectivity, your browser crashes or whatever, you can find your most recent snapshot of the stage in autosave stash.

If you are language pack maintainer, you can commit the stage into the repository so your work is registered and the translated strings become part of the official language package. Language packages in ZIP format are generated every hour (at xx:45) and are published at http://download.moodle.org/langpack/2.0/. At the same time, they become available for Moodle sites for automatic update.

=== Importing a file ===

[[image:amos-screenshot-stage-empty.png|300px|thumb|right|Empty stage allows you to import strings from a file]]
Strings can be translated offline and uploaded back to AMOS. The only supported format at the moment is common PHP format used by Moodle where strings are defined in associative array called $string. For obvious security reasons, AMOS can not actually execute PHP files uploaded by users. Instead, it parses the uploaded file in a similar way as PHP parser, looking for patterns that are considered as valid string definition. That means that not every valid PHP code is valid string definition. AMOS parser requires following conditions are met:

* the filename is valid component name used by Moodle, for example moodle.php, enrol_manual.php or workshop.php
* the file is valid PHP code without syntax errors - that means is passes the PHP lint check
* strings are defined as elements of global array $string
* strings are single quoted constants

Example of a valid file to import into AMOS (filename countries.php, Czech translation)

<?php

$string['AE'] = 'Spojené Arabské emiráty';
$string['AF'] = 'Afghánistán';
$string['CH'] = 'Švýcarsko';
$string['HU'] = 'Maďarsko';

?>

During the import, strings found in the file are added into your stage as if they were translated via web. You can commit them into repository if you have such privilege.

=== Using stashes ===

At any moment, you can save a snapshot of the current stage. We call such snapshot a ''stash''. Stashed strings are kept forever until you drop them manually (please do not abuse this and keep your stashes reasonable big). To manage your stash, click on Stashes in the right menu of AMOS. You just see a list of the stashes. There are "peekaboo" buttons that appear when you mouse hoover over the stashes. The stash can be ''applied'' so that the stashed strings are copied back to the stage. What the ''pop'' does is apply and drop (delete) the stash. ''drop'' is like delete. ''submit to maintainer'' opens a form for doing just that.

There is one special stash record for every user called autosave stash. This stash keeps the most recent state of the stage. You may find it useful if you loose the current stage for any reason - your browser crashes, your internet connectivity dies or you accidentally unstage all strings. If that happens, just apply the autosave stash to get your work back. The autosave stash is updated every time you stage a string. So if your stage is empty and your autosave stash is full of strings and you go into the translator first without applying the stash, the autosave will be replaced with the new translated string. We recommend to experiment a bit with this feature first.

=== Using the log tool ===

The Log page allows even anonymous users to search in the history of commits tracked by AMOS. At the top of the page there is a filter that allows you to look for a particular information or report. It is important to realize how the filter actually works. Searching and filtering happens in two steps (this was necessary for performance reasons):

* Firstly, commit records are searched based on the criteria specified in the Commit filter form. If there are more commits found matching the filter settings, only 100 most recent commits are processed.
* Then, within the commits found, either all string modification records are returned, or you can filter these records, too. Settings in String filter form section are used in that case.

By default, the filter looks for all commits since the last time you logged in and than displays only strings at the currently translated branch modified by those commits.

== Contributing to a language pack ==

AMOS allows community members to help with the translation of Moodle strings. AMOS Contributions page tracks all submitted translations and their current status. Before you start working on a translation, please communicate with the language pack maintainer (to be found on https://docs.moodle.org/en/Translation_credits).

=== Steps for the contributor ===

[[image:amos-screenshot-contribution-new.png|300px|thumb|right|Submitting a contribution form]]
# Contact the language pack maintainer about your intention to contribute to the language pack
# Use AMOS translator interface to translate missing strings or amend the current translation
# Go to the Stage page
# Click 'Submit to maintainers' button
# At 'Submitting a contribution' page, please provide a message for maintainers describing your work and why you would like to see your contribution included. You can cancel the submission at this moment yet. If you are sure, click 'Submit to maintainers'.
# Your stage will submitted into the contributions database. If there were more languages affected by your contribution, the stage will be divided into separate contribution records, one per each language. The language pack maintainers will be notified by email about your new contribution.
# Language pack maintainers will be able to apply your work into their stage, review it and eventually commit. You will receive automatically generated email when the status of contribution changes (typically when a maintainer starts a review of your work and then when they accept or reject it).
# Use contribution record comments for further communication with the maintainer about the submitted translation.

=== Steps for the maintainer ===

[[image:amos-screenshot-contribution-details.png|300px|thumb|right|Contribution details page]]
# When a user submits new contribution, you will receive automatically generated email from AMOS
# Go to the Contributions page to see a list of all new incoming contributions. Click the link in the table to open the contribution details page
# Press 'Start review' button. That will assign the contribution to yourself, change the status from 'New' to 'In review', send automatically generated email to the contributor and will copy the submitted strings into your stage. You should check that your stage is empty before you apply the submitted strings, unless you want to merge several contributions into one commit.
# Review the submitted strings, eventually edit them. Commit the stage. It is nice to mention the contributor's name in the commit message and attribute the original authorship to them.
# Go back to the contribution record and change the status to Accepted or Rejected. Automatically generated email will be sent to the contributor whenever you change the status.
# Use contribution record comments for further communication with the contributor about the submitted translation.
# Accepted and Rejected contributions are not shown at the contributions page unless you press 'Show resolved contributions' button.

== See also ==

* [[Translation 2.0]] for more information about the process of Moodle 2.x translation
* [[Development:Languages/AMOS]] for the AMOS internals documentation

[[Category:Language]]

[[fr:AMOS]]

Embedded Answers (Cloze) question type

2011-01-15T12:14:33Z

Jeffjeff: /* Importing CLOZE questions */ straight text give ONE question

{{Questions}}
'''Embedded answers (Cloze)''' questions consist of a passage of text (in Moodle format) that has various answers embedded within it, including multiple choice, short answers and numerical answers.

There is currently no graphical interface to create these questions - you need to specify the question format using the text box or by importing them from external files.

Lots of people suggest that [[Hot Potatoes]] software is the easiest way to create Embedded answer (Cloze) questions. Once you have created your questions on your PC, you can then import them into Moodle's quiz module.

==Question set-up==

#Select the question category
#Give the question a descriptive name - this allows you to identify it in the question bank.
#Enter the passage of text (in Moodle format - see [[Embedded_Answers_%28Cloze%29_question_type#Format|Format]] below) into the 'question text' field.
#Select an image to display if you want to add a picture to the question. For the student, it appears immediately above the question text.
#Set the 'default question grade' (i.e. the maximum number of marks for this question).
#Set the 'Penalty factor' (see [[Embedded_Answers_%28Cloze%29_question_type#Penalty_factor|Penalty factor]] below).
#If you wish, add general feedback. This is text that appears to the student after he/she has answered the question.
#The editor has been modified and allows you to test if your syntax is good. The different questions elements decoded will be displayed and syntax errors pinpoint. However, it cannot check if the question decoded is two questions in one because of an error syntax.
#Click Save changes to add the question to the category.

=== Penalty factor ===

The 'penalty factor' only applies when the question is used in a quiz using adaptive mode - i.e. where the student is allowed multiple attempts at a question even within the same attempt at the quiz. If the penalty factor is more than 0, then the student will lose that proportion of the '''maximum''' grade upon each successive attempt. For example, if the default question grade is 10, and the penalty factor is 0.2, then each successive attempt after the first one will incur a penalty of 0.2 x 10 = 2 points.

==Question rendering==

The question answer INPUT HTML ELEMENT ( Short and Numerical) or SELECT HTML ELEMENT (multichoice) are normally displayed in-line with the text.

The size of INPUT HTML ELEMENT ( Short and Numerical) will be adjustable to the length of the longest answer (good or bad) + a random number (0 to 15% total length).([[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 15:37, 26 January 2008 (CST))

The size will adjust to the length of the student response when displayed in the grading and feedback process.

The size of the SELECT HTML ELEMENT (multichoice) adjusts itself automatically to the longest answer.

==Format==

Questions consist of a passage of text (in Moodle format) that has various sub-questions embedded within it, including

* short answers (SHORTANSWER or SA or MW), case is unimportant,
* short answers (SHORTANSWER_C or SAC or MWC), case must match,
* numerical answers (NUMERICAL or NM),
* multiple choice (MULTICHOICE or MC), represented as a dropdown menu in-line in the text
* multiple choice (MULTICHOICE_V or MCV), represented a vertical column of radio buttons, or
* multiple choice (MULTICHOICE_H or MCH), represented as a horizontal row of radio-buttons.

For full details of the format for embedded-answers questions, see the [[Embedded_Answers_%28Cloze%29_question_type#Detailed_syntax_explanations|detailed syntax explanation]] below.

NB: Be careful when copying a cloze type question into the WYSIWYG HTML editor, as line breaks tend to get added, which destroys the question.

If the correct answer contains } # ~ / " or \ you will have to escape them by putting a \ in front of each such character. The { shouldn't be escaped, this can be vital in getting TeX expressions to work. In the feedback ~ and } must be escaped otherwise it will be interpreted as ''the next answer'' or ''end of the short answer section'' respectively. Quotation signs: " can lead to trouble anyhow in both places. Use the HTML entity: & quot; (without the space between ''&'' and ''quot;''). If you want to have Mathematical symbols there can be problems with the \ used in TeX expressions. One alternative can be to use [[unicode]] characters.

See the notes further down about numerical embedded question!

===Examples===

====Example 1====
The following text creates a simple embedded-answers question:

Match the following cities with the correct state:
* San Francisco: {1:MULTICHOICE:=California#OK~Arizona#Wrong}
* Tucson: {1:MULTICHOICE:California#Wrong~%100%Arizona#OK}
* Los Angeles: {1:MULTICHOICE:=California#OK~Arizona#Wrong}
* Phoenix: {1:MULTICHOICE:%0%California#Wrong~=Arizona#OK}
The capital of France is {1:SHORTANSWER:%100%Paris#Congratulations!
~%50%Marseille#No, that is the second largest city in France (after
Paris).~*#Wrong answer. The capital of France is Paris, of course.}.

And the result will be:

[[Image:Cloze.gif|Cloze question type]]

====Example 2====

This question consists of some text with an answer embedded right here {1:MULTICHOICE:Wrong answer#Feedback for this wrong answer~Another wrong answer#Feedback for the other wrong answer~=Correct answer#Feedback for correct answer~%50%Answer that gives half the credit#Feedback for half credit answer}
and right after that you will have to deal with this short answer {1:SHORTANSWER:Wrong answer#Feedback for this wrong answer~=Correct answer#Feedback for correct answer~%50%Answer that gives half the credit#Feedback for half credit answer}
and finally we have a floating point number {2:NUMERICAL:=23.8:0.1#Feedback for correct answer 23.8~%50%23.8:2#Feedback for half credit answer in the nearby region of the correct answer}.
The multichoice question can also be shown in the vertical display of the standard moodle multiple choice.
{2:MCV:1. Wrong answer#Feedback for this wrong answer~2. Another wrong answer#Feedback for the other wrong answer~=3. Correct answer#Feedback for correct answer~%50%4. Answer that gives half the credit#Feedback for half credit answer}
Or in an horizontal display that is included here in a table
{2:MCH:a. Wrong answer#Feedback for this wrong answer~b. Another wrong answer#Feedback for the other wrong answer~=c. Correct answer#Feedback for correct answer~%50%d. Answer that gives half the credit#Feedback for half credit answer}
A shortanswer question where case must match. Write moodle in upper case letters {1:SHORTANSWER_C:moodle#Feedback for moodle in lower case ~=MOODLE#Feedback for MOODLE in upper case ~%50%Moodle#Feedback for only first letter in upper case}
Note that addresses like www.moodle.org and smileys :-) all work as normal:
a) How good is this? {:MULTICHOICE:=Yes#Correct~No#We have a different opinion}
b) What grade would you give it? {3:NUMERICAL:=3:2}

[[Image:Cloze example.png]]

Some things to note:
* The individual embedded answers are represented by the code in braces {}.
* The number at the start is the 'weight', so in this case each answer contributes an equal share of the overall grade.
* The correct option in each case is preceded either by an = sign or by %100%.
:'''Note''': [[Talk:Embedded_Answers_(Cloze)_question_type| The equal sign (=) doesn't seem to work with SHORTANSWER.]]
* The text appearing after the # that follows each option is the feedback that the student will see if they choose that option.
* If the student enters 'Marseille' in the final example, they score 50% of the total grade.
* The asterisk * preceding the "Wrong answer" feedback in the final example means that the student will see this feedback if they enter anything other than "Paris" or "Marseille".
* For multiple choice vertical or horizontal rendering there is no automatic numbering, though can added at each answer.

==Detailed syntax explanations==
# all question items within a cloze-type question are coded inside curled braces { }
# the number which appears between the opening brace and the colon {1: is the weighting of that item; if it is set at 1 for all the items, it needs not be specified, so you can have {:
# after the colon we have the item question type: MULTICHOICE, SHORTANSWER, NUMERICAL
# '''NOTE'''.- If you have installed the [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=338 REGEXP question type plugin] you can also use the REGEXP question type
# the syntax for MULTICHOICE and SHORTANSWER is the same; the only difference is in the displaying of the item to the student
# the order of the various answers is indifferent (except if you want a catch-all for wrong answers, see #13 below)
# a correct answer is preceded with the equal sign = or a percentage (usually %100%) - '''Note''': [[Talk:Embedded_Answers_(Cloze)_question_type| The equal sign (=) doesn't seem to work with SHORTANSWER.]]
# a wrong answer is preceded with nothing or a percentage (usually %0%)
# you can allocate some points between 0 and 100 to some answers, if you put the appropriate percentage
# all answers except the first one are separated from one another by the tilde ~ sign
# answers can be followed by an optional feedback message, preceded with the # sign; if there is no feedback message, the # sign can be present or absent, it does not matter
# note that the feedback message and (since [[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 24 May 2008 )in 1.9 the correct answer are displayed in a small popup window (if and when the correct and or feedback have been declared accessible to the students in the Quiz settings) upon mouse hovering. The popup window has a title "feedback" and you can use HTML tags to format your feedback. In some browsers (For example IE5.5) the form fields can cover part of the feedback windows. It can help to not have the formfields for the answers too close to each other.
# in the SHORTANSWER type you may want to put a catch-all (wrong) answer in order to send a "wrong, try again" feedback; you can do this by inserting an asterisk '''*''' as '''the very last expected answer''' in your formula
# unfortunately in MULTICHOICE MODE it is not possible to get the answers to be scrambled

==Numerical Cloze questions==

From the student perspective, a numerical Cloze question looks just like a short-answer question or ''fill in the blanks''.

The difference is that numerical answers are allowed to have an accepted error. This allows a continuous range of answers to be set. You can also express your answer in some different numerical formats. 23.4 23,4 (some countries use , as a decimal separator) and 2.34E+1 (meaning 2.34*10^1) would be interpreted as the same.

=== False positives ===

'''Note:''' the following examples of false positives do '''not''' apply to Moodle 1.8+, where you cannot use percentages or fractions as the answers in a numerical Cloze test; Moodle will generate an error if you try to save such a question. However the following may be relevant for earlier versions of Moodle.

More examples:
0.5 accepts .5 0.5 ,5 0,5 0.500 5e-1 5E-1 but not 1/2 50%
50% accepts 50% 50.0% 5E1% 50/100 even '''50/1000 50''' but not 500/1000 0.5
1/2 accepts 1/2 '''1/3 1twenty''' but not 2/4 0.5 0,5 3/6 50% ½
½ accepts ½
HALF doesn't even accept HALF (maybe '''0'''?)

If you want to accept several variants you can have them in the same {} but '''be careful, notice the "false positives" in bold'''!

===Syntax for numerical Cloze questions===

The format of a NUMERICAL Cloze question is similar to that of the other Cloze types and they can be mixed in the same question. As with other Cloze tests, you write your question or incomplete text, and add the Cloze code at the point where the student is supposed to enter their numerical answer.

An example of the syntax used is shown below:

'''Note: ''' It is preferable to write the code in 'source code' mode. The WSIWYG editor can insert linebreaks that make the question not function. The linebreak in the example box below is for readability only! A problem with these questions is the readability of the code! :(

{2:NUMERICAL:=23.8:0.1#Feedback for correct answer 23.8
~%50%23.8:2#Feedback for ½credit near correct answer}.

In this example:
* 2: is the question point weight, which means that this question has twice the weight in the final point(s) for this question as other partial answers with weight 1 (or no declared weight - you can start with {: for the default weight 1) in the same question.
* NUMERICAL: says what kind of question it is. It must be in CAPS.
* =23.8:0.1 = or %100% means correct if the answer is 23.8 with an accepted error of 0.1, then any number between 23.7 and 23.9 will be accepted as correct. (In the GIFT numerical question one can express an interval like this 13..15 or 14:1 but in Cloze only 14:1 works.)
* #Feedback for correct answer 23.8 is preceded by #
* ~%50%23.8:2 ~ is the separator for answer alternatives %50% means this answer would get 50% of the score that the more precise answer had gotten. Because the tolerance here is 2, 21.8 to 25.8 would get this point and feedback.

The feedback (which is seen within a popup window when the user hovers over the answer space) is formattable with HTML tags. For example, if you want an exponent, surround it with superscript tags: . You can even include pictures in the feedback popup, but you must clean out all " characters and save while still in source code mode (not WYSIWYG). So, this works in feedback popup:
#See this picture: <img src=Something.gif />}
but not this:
#See this picture: <img src="Something.gif" />}

(ALGEBRA and TEX filters don't work in the feedback popups, but they can be very useful in the question writing for math/science expressions). But you can use [[Unicode]] characters.

If you want to give feedback for any answer that didn't fit the intervals you already have specified feedback for, add some BIG general intervals, like for positive answers (if they aren't bigger than 20000 you could add:
~%0%10000.0001:10000#Feedback for unspecified not_right answers}
This would give feedback for anything from 0.0001 to 20000.0001 (that hadn't already gotten feedback). I didn't want to include 0 since that special case as well as negative ought to have specific reactions.
~%0%0#Hey! It can't be zero
~%0%-10000.0001:10000#We just want the size here,
so a negative value is not what we want}

Numerical questions could, before version 1.7, also have case-insensitive non-numerical answers. This is useful whenever the answer for a numerical question is something like +inf, -inf, NaN etc.
==Importing CLOZE questions==
If you try importing directly as CLOZE this text:
<pre>
Single line per question! Match the following cities with the correct state:
* San Francisco: {1:MULTICHOICE:=California#OK~Arizona#Wrong}
* Tucson: {1:MULTICHOICE:California#Wrong~%100%Arizona#OK}
* Los Angeles: {1:MULTICHOICE:=California#OK~Arizona#Wrong}
* Phoenix: {1:MULTICHOICE:%0%California#Wrong~=Arizona#OK}

The capital of France is {1:SHORTANSWER:%100%Paris#Congratulations!~%50%Marseille#No, that is the second largest city in France (after Paris).~*#Wrong answer. The capital of France is Paris, of course.}.

23+ 0.8 = {2:NUMERICAL:=23.8:0.1#Feedback for correct answer 23.8 ~%50%23.8:2#Feedback for ½credit near correct answer}. </pre>

You would get all three questions as different parts of '''ONE question'''. (NOTE see that there are no linebreaks between the { } !)

Multiple CLOZE questions can be imported using the XML format:
<pre>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<quiz>


<question type="cloze">
<name><text>Book Test #1</text>
</name>
<questiontext>
<text><![CDATA[..............]]></text>
</questiontext>
<generalfeedback>
<text></text>
</generalfeedback>
<shuffleanswers>0</shuffleanswers>
</question>


<question type="cloze">
<name><text>Book Test #2</text>
</name>
<questiontext>
<text><![CDATA[............]]></text>
</questiontext>
<generalfeedback>
<text></text>
</generalfeedback>
<shuffleanswers>0</shuffleanswers>
</question>

</quiz>
</pre>
You would put the question text icluding CLOZE code in the ....... spaces.

==See also==
This information was drawn from:
*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=36521 Is there a guide to using the cloze format?] forum discussion
*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=36430&parent=170308 Cloze-type question syntax] forum post

[[fr:Question Cloze à réponses intégrés]]
[[ja: 穴埋め問題 ( Cloze ) タイプ]]
[[de:Lückentext-Fragen]]
[[zh:填空題(克漏字)]]
[[es:Tipo de Pregunta incrustadas (Cloze)]]

Embedded Answers (Cloze) question type

2011-01-15T11:49:34Z

Jeffjeff: import of CLOZE questions

{{Questions}}
'''Embedded answers (Cloze)''' questions consist of a passage of text (in Moodle format) that has various answers embedded within it, including multiple choice, short answers and numerical answers.

There is currently no graphical interface to create these questions - you need to specify the question format using the text box or by importing them from external files.

Lots of people suggest that [[Hot Potatoes]] software is the easiest way to create Embedded answer (Cloze) questions. Once you have created your questions on your PC, you can then import them into Moodle's quiz module.

==Question set-up==

#Select the question category
#Give the question a descriptive name - this allows you to identify it in the question bank.
#Enter the passage of text (in Moodle format - see [[Embedded_Answers_%28Cloze%29_question_type#Format|Format]] below) into the 'question text' field.
#Select an image to display if you want to add a picture to the question. For the student, it appears immediately above the question text.
#Set the 'default question grade' (i.e. the maximum number of marks for this question).
#Set the 'Penalty factor' (see [[Embedded_Answers_%28Cloze%29_question_type#Penalty_factor|Penalty factor]] below).
#If you wish, add general feedback. This is text that appears to the student after he/she has answered the question.
#The editor has been modified and allows you to test if your syntax is good. The different questions elements decoded will be displayed and syntax errors pinpoint. However, it cannot check if the question decoded is two questions in one because of an error syntax.
#Click Save changes to add the question to the category.

=== Penalty factor ===

The 'penalty factor' only applies when the question is used in a quiz using adaptive mode - i.e. where the student is allowed multiple attempts at a question even within the same attempt at the quiz. If the penalty factor is more than 0, then the student will lose that proportion of the '''maximum''' grade upon each successive attempt. For example, if the default question grade is 10, and the penalty factor is 0.2, then each successive attempt after the first one will incur a penalty of 0.2 x 10 = 2 points.

==Question rendering==

The question answer INPUT HTML ELEMENT ( Short and Numerical) or SELECT HTML ELEMENT (multichoice) are normally displayed in-line with the text.

The size of INPUT HTML ELEMENT ( Short and Numerical) will be adjustable to the length of the longest answer (good or bad) + a random number (0 to 15% total length).([[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 15:37, 26 January 2008 (CST))

The size will adjust to the length of the student response when displayed in the grading and feedback process.

The size of the SELECT HTML ELEMENT (multichoice) adjusts itself automatically to the longest answer.

==Format==

Questions consist of a passage of text (in Moodle format) that has various sub-questions embedded within it, including

* short answers (SHORTANSWER or SA or MW), case is unimportant,
* short answers (SHORTANSWER_C or SAC or MWC), case must match,
* numerical answers (NUMERICAL or NM),
* multiple choice (MULTICHOICE or MC), represented as a dropdown menu in-line in the text
* multiple choice (MULTICHOICE_V or MCV), represented a vertical column of radio buttons, or
* multiple choice (MULTICHOICE_H or MCH), represented as a horizontal row of radio-buttons.

For full details of the format for embedded-answers questions, see the [[Embedded_Answers_%28Cloze%29_question_type#Detailed_syntax_explanations|detailed syntax explanation]] below.

NB: Be careful when copying a cloze type question into the WYSIWYG HTML editor, as line breaks tend to get added, which destroys the question.

If the correct answer contains } # ~ / " or \ you will have to escape them by putting a \ in front of each such character. The { shouldn't be escaped, this can be vital in getting TeX expressions to work. In the feedback ~ and } must be escaped otherwise it will be interpreted as ''the next answer'' or ''end of the short answer section'' respectively. Quotation signs: " can lead to trouble anyhow in both places. Use the HTML entity: & quot; (without the space between ''&'' and ''quot;''). If you want to have Mathematical symbols there can be problems with the \ used in TeX expressions. One alternative can be to use [[unicode]] characters.

See the notes further down about numerical embedded question!

===Examples===

====Example 1====
The following text creates a simple embedded-answers question:

Match the following cities with the correct state:
* San Francisco: {1:MULTICHOICE:=California#OK~Arizona#Wrong}
* Tucson: {1:MULTICHOICE:California#Wrong~%100%Arizona#OK}
* Los Angeles: {1:MULTICHOICE:=California#OK~Arizona#Wrong}
* Phoenix: {1:MULTICHOICE:%0%California#Wrong~=Arizona#OK}
The capital of France is {1:SHORTANSWER:%100%Paris#Congratulations!
~%50%Marseille#No, that is the second largest city in France (after
Paris).~*#Wrong answer. The capital of France is Paris, of course.}.

And the result will be:

[[Image:Cloze.gif|Cloze question type]]

====Example 2====

This question consists of some text with an answer embedded right here {1:MULTICHOICE:Wrong answer#Feedback for this wrong answer~Another wrong answer#Feedback for the other wrong answer~=Correct answer#Feedback for correct answer~%50%Answer that gives half the credit#Feedback for half credit answer}
and right after that you will have to deal with this short answer {1:SHORTANSWER:Wrong answer#Feedback for this wrong answer~=Correct answer#Feedback for correct answer~%50%Answer that gives half the credit#Feedback for half credit answer}
and finally we have a floating point number {2:NUMERICAL:=23.8:0.1#Feedback for correct answer 23.8~%50%23.8:2#Feedback for half credit answer in the nearby region of the correct answer}.
The multichoice question can also be shown in the vertical display of the standard moodle multiple choice.
{2:MCV:1. Wrong answer#Feedback for this wrong answer~2. Another wrong answer#Feedback for the other wrong answer~=3. Correct answer#Feedback for correct answer~%50%4. Answer that gives half the credit#Feedback for half credit answer}
Or in an horizontal display that is included here in a table
{2:MCH:a. Wrong answer#Feedback for this wrong answer~b. Another wrong answer#Feedback for the other wrong answer~=c. Correct answer#Feedback for correct answer~%50%d. Answer that gives half the credit#Feedback for half credit answer}
A shortanswer question where case must match. Write moodle in upper case letters {1:SHORTANSWER_C:moodle#Feedback for moodle in lower case ~=MOODLE#Feedback for MOODLE in upper case ~%50%Moodle#Feedback for only first letter in upper case}
Note that addresses like www.moodle.org and smileys :-) all work as normal:
a) How good is this? {:MULTICHOICE:=Yes#Correct~No#We have a different opinion}
b) What grade would you give it? {3:NUMERICAL:=3:2}

[[Image:Cloze example.png]]

Some things to note:
* The individual embedded answers are represented by the code in braces {}.
* The number at the start is the 'weight', so in this case each answer contributes an equal share of the overall grade.
* The correct option in each case is preceded either by an = sign or by %100%.
:'''Note''': [[Talk:Embedded_Answers_(Cloze)_question_type| The equal sign (=) doesn't seem to work with SHORTANSWER.]]
* The text appearing after the # that follows each option is the feedback that the student will see if they choose that option.
* If the student enters 'Marseille' in the final example, they score 50% of the total grade.
* The asterisk * preceding the "Wrong answer" feedback in the final example means that the student will see this feedback if they enter anything other than "Paris" or "Marseille".
* For multiple choice vertical or horizontal rendering there is no automatic numbering, though can added at each answer.

==Detailed syntax explanations==
# all question items within a cloze-type question are coded inside curled braces { }
# the number which appears between the opening brace and the colon {1: is the weighting of that item; if it is set at 1 for all the items, it needs not be specified, so you can have {:
# after the colon we have the item question type: MULTICHOICE, SHORTANSWER, NUMERICAL
# '''NOTE'''.- If you have installed the [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=338 REGEXP question type plugin] you can also use the REGEXP question type
# the syntax for MULTICHOICE and SHORTANSWER is the same; the only difference is in the displaying of the item to the student
# the order of the various answers is indifferent (except if you want a catch-all for wrong answers, see #13 below)
# a correct answer is preceded with the equal sign = or a percentage (usually %100%) - '''Note''': [[Talk:Embedded_Answers_(Cloze)_question_type| The equal sign (=) doesn't seem to work with SHORTANSWER.]]
# a wrong answer is preceded with nothing or a percentage (usually %0%)
# you can allocate some points between 0 and 100 to some answers, if you put the appropriate percentage
# all answers except the first one are separated from one another by the tilde ~ sign
# answers can be followed by an optional feedback message, preceded with the # sign; if there is no feedback message, the # sign can be present or absent, it does not matter
# note that the feedback message and (since [[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 24 May 2008 )in 1.9 the correct answer are displayed in a small popup window (if and when the correct and or feedback have been declared accessible to the students in the Quiz settings) upon mouse hovering. The popup window has a title "feedback" and you can use HTML tags to format your feedback. In some browsers (For example IE5.5) the form fields can cover part of the feedback windows. It can help to not have the formfields for the answers too close to each other.
# in the SHORTANSWER type you may want to put a catch-all (wrong) answer in order to send a "wrong, try again" feedback; you can do this by inserting an asterisk '''*''' as '''the very last expected answer''' in your formula
# unfortunately in MULTICHOICE MODE it is not possible to get the answers to be scrambled

==Numerical Cloze questions==

From the student perspective, a numerical Cloze question looks just like a short-answer question or ''fill in the blanks''.

The difference is that numerical answers are allowed to have an accepted error. This allows a continuous range of answers to be set. You can also express your answer in some different numerical formats. 23.4 23,4 (some countries use , as a decimal separator) and 2.34E+1 (meaning 2.34*10^1) would be interpreted as the same.

=== False positives ===

'''Note:''' the following examples of false positives do '''not''' apply to Moodle 1.8+, where you cannot use percentages or fractions as the answers in a numerical Cloze test; Moodle will generate an error if you try to save such a question. However the following may be relevant for earlier versions of Moodle.

More examples:
0.5 accepts .5 0.5 ,5 0,5 0.500 5e-1 5E-1 but not 1/2 50%
50% accepts 50% 50.0% 5E1% 50/100 even '''50/1000 50''' but not 500/1000 0.5
1/2 accepts 1/2 '''1/3 1twenty''' but not 2/4 0.5 0,5 3/6 50% ½
½ accepts ½
HALF doesn't even accept HALF (maybe '''0'''?)

If you want to accept several variants you can have them in the same {} but '''be careful, notice the "false positives" in bold'''!

===Syntax for numerical Cloze questions===

The format of a NUMERICAL Cloze question is similar to that of the other Cloze types and they can be mixed in the same question. As with other Cloze tests, you write your question or incomplete text, and add the Cloze code at the point where the student is supposed to enter their numerical answer.

An example of the syntax used is shown below:

'''Note: ''' It is preferable to write the code in 'source code' mode. The WSIWYG editor can insert linebreaks that make the question not function. The linebreak in the example box below is for readability only! A problem with these questions is the readability of the code! :(

{2:NUMERICAL:=23.8:0.1#Feedback for correct answer 23.8
~%50%23.8:2#Feedback for ½credit near correct answer}.

In this example:
* 2: is the question point weight, which means that this question has twice the weight in the final point(s) for this question as other partial answers with weight 1 (or no declared weight - you can start with {: for the default weight 1) in the same question.
* NUMERICAL: says what kind of question it is. It must be in CAPS.
* =23.8:0.1 = or %100% means correct if the answer is 23.8 with an accepted error of 0.1, then any number between 23.7 and 23.9 will be accepted as correct. (In the GIFT numerical question one can express an interval like this 13..15 or 14:1 but in Cloze only 14:1 works.)
* #Feedback for correct answer 23.8 is preceded by #
* ~%50%23.8:2 ~ is the separator for answer alternatives %50% means this answer would get 50% of the score that the more precise answer had gotten. Because the tolerance here is 2, 21.8 to 25.8 would get this point and feedback.

The feedback (which is seen within a popup window when the user hovers over the answer space) is formattable with HTML tags. For example, if you want an exponent, surround it with superscript tags: . You can even include pictures in the feedback popup, but you must clean out all " characters and save while still in source code mode (not WYSIWYG). So, this works in feedback popup:
#See this picture: <img src=Something.gif />}
but not this:
#See this picture: <img src="Something.gif" />}

(ALGEBRA and TEX filters don't work in the feedback popups, but they can be very useful in the question writing for math/science expressions). But you can use [[Unicode]] characters.

If you want to give feedback for any answer that didn't fit the intervals you already have specified feedback for, add some BIG general intervals, like for positive answers (if they aren't bigger than 20000 you could add:
~%0%10000.0001:10000#Feedback for unspecified not_right answers}
This would give feedback for anything from 0.0001 to 20000.0001 (that hadn't already gotten feedback). I didn't want to include 0 since that special case as well as negative ought to have specific reactions.
~%0%0#Hey! It can't be zero
~%0%-10000.0001:10000#We just want the size here,
so a negative value is not what we want}

Numerical questions could, before version 1.7, also have case-insensitive non-numerical answers. This is useful whenever the answer for a numerical question is something like +inf, -inf, NaN etc.
==Importing CLOZE questions==
Multiple CLOZE questions can be imported using the XML format:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<quiz>


<question type="cloze">
<name><text>Book Test #1</text>
</name>
<questiontext>
<text><![CDATA[..............]]></text>
</questiontext>
<generalfeedback>
<text></text>
</generalfeedback>
<shuffleanswers>0</shuffleanswers>
</question>


<question type="cloze">
<name><text>Book Test #2</text>
</name>
<questiontext>
<text><![CDATA[............]]></text>
</questiontext>
<generalfeedback>
<text></text>
</generalfeedback>
<shuffleanswers>0</shuffleanswers>
</question>

</quiz>

You would put the question text icluding CLOZE code in the ....... spaces.
==See also==
This information was drawn from:
*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=36521 Is there a guide to using the cloze format?] forum discussion
*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=36430&parent=170308 Cloze-type question syntax] forum post

[[fr:Question Cloze à réponses intégrés]]
[[ja: 穴埋め問題 ( Cloze ) タイプ]]
[[de:Lückentext-Fragen]]
[[zh:填空題(克漏字)]]
[[es:Tipo de Pregunta incrustadas (Cloze)]]

GIFT format

2010-11-30T13:22:11Z

Jeffjeff: /* Numerical questions */ Added that newer Moodle supports multiple numeric answers in GUI

'''GIFT format''' allows someone to use a text editor to write multiple-choice, true-false, short answer, matching missing word and numerical questions in a simple format that can be imported. The GIFT format is also an export file format available in Question bank. The format has been developed within the Moodle Community but other software may support it to a greater or lesser degree.

*When creating a large numbers of questions, GIFT can provide a quick way of bulk loading questions either into a [[Question bank|question category]], or into a [[Adding_a_question_page#Importing_questions|Lesson]].
*Sometimes it is easier proofing questions in a question category by viewing them in a GIFT file.

== General instructions ==
At least one blank line must be left between each question.

In the simple form, the question comes first, then the answers are set in between brackets, with an equal sign indicating the correct answer(s) and tilde the wrong answers. A Number sign will insert a response. Questions can be weighted by placing percentage signs around the weight. Comments are preceded by double slashes and are not imported.

Here are some useful [http://moodle.org/file.php/5/moddata/forum/121/236161/GIFT-examples.zip GIFT examples] than can be imported or used as rough template. Many of the examples below used the questions in the file as a starting point.

=== UTF-8 encoding ===
Any GIFT file '''must''' be correctly encoded in [[UTF8]]. You can use Microsoft's text editor Notepad which comes with Windows to save your file in UTF-8. '''Note''': ANSI format will (only) work for languages without any special characters (like ä, ö, ü, æ, å, ø, œ or ß). And don't use "Unicode" as format as this is actually UTF-16 and won't work. See [[Converting files to UTF-8]] for further information.

===Format symbols===

Here are some common GIFT symbols and their use.

{|
! Symbols !! Use
|-
| // text || Comment until end of line (optional)
|-
| ::title:: || Question title (optional)
|-
| text || Question text (becomes title if no title specified)
|-
| [...format...] || The format of the following bit of text. Options are [html], [moodle], [plain] and [markdown]. The default is [moodle] for the question text, other parts of the question default to the format used for the question text.
|-
| { || Start answer(s) -- without any answers, text is a description of following questions
|-
| {T} or {F} || True or False answer; also {TRUE} and {FALSE}
|-
| { ... =right ... } || Correct answer for multiple choice, (multiple answer? -- see page comments) or fill-in-the-blank
|-
| { ... ~wrong ... } || Incorrect answer for multiple choice or multiple answer
|-
| { ... =item -> match ... } || Answer for matching questions
|-
| #feedback text || Answer feedback for preceding multiple, fill-in-the-blank, or numeric answers
|-
| {# || Start numeric answer(s)
|-
| answer:tolerance || Numeric answer accepted within ± tolerance range
|-
| low..high || Lower and upper range values of accepted numeric answer
|-
| =%n%answer:tolerance || n percent credit for one of multiple numeric ranges within tolerance from answer
|-
| } || End answer(s)
|-
| \character || Backslash escapes the special meaning of ~, =, #, {, }, and :
|-
| \n || Places a newline in question text -- blank lines delimit questions
|}

Here are some quick examples:

// true/false
::Q1:: 1+1=2 {T}

// multiple choice with specified feedback for right and wrong answers
::Q2:: What's between orange and green in the spectrum?
{ =yellow # right; good! ~red # wrong, it's yellow ~blue # wrong, it's yellow }

// fill-in-the-blank
::Q3:: Two plus {=two =2} equals four.

// matching
::Q4:: Which animal eats which food? { =cat -> cat food =dog -> dog food }

// math range question
::Q5:: What is a number from 1 to 5? {#3:2}

// math range specified with interval end points
::Q6:: What is a number from 1 to 5? {#1..5}
// translated on import to the same as Q5, but unavailable from Moodle question interface

// multiple numeric answers with partial credit and feedback
::Q7:: When was Ulysses S. Grant born? {#
=1822:0 # Correct! Full credit.
=%50%1822:2 # He was born in 1822. Half credit for being close.
}

// essay
::Q8:: How are you? {}

===Format symbols explained===
The multiple choice format below as a comment line // for the question, when Moodle exports it the question unique id number will appear here. The first set of :: precedes the question title. The second :: precedes the actual question. The first { indicates the start of the answers. The correct answer is preceded by an = sign and wrong answers by a ~. Teacher responses have a # in front of them. The question ends with a } and then a blank line. NOTE it is { } not ( ) parenthesis! Usually these are gotten with help of the [AltGr] key.

//Comment line
::Question title
:: Question {
=A correct answer
~Wrong answer1
#A response to wrong answer1
~Wrong answer2
#A response to wrong answer2
~Wrong answer3
#A response to wrong answer3
~Wrong answer4
#A response to wrong answer4
}

The shortest format for a multiple choice question is:
Question{= A Correct Answer ~Wrong answer1 ~Wrong answer2 ~Wrong answer3 ~Wrong answer4 }

:''Tip:'' If you don't specify a question title the WHOLE question will be used as the title at the time of import into Moodle. There are pros and cons to allowing this to happen. Cons: This can add a lot of unnecessary words. This can include characters which might confuse the export GIFT process. Pros: On the other hand. if the start of each question is different, it can make finding a single question easier in a category list of questions. It will save you typing. Having the same title for every question is a very bad idea.

==Question format examples==
There are several ways to use a text editor to write a GIFT format. We will try to show the simple version for example and in some formats we will introduce some more complex features that can be imported into many Moodle Question formats.

===Multiple choice===
For multiple choice questions, wrong answers are prefixed with a tilde (~) and the correct answer is prefixed with an equal sign (=).

Here is a simple acceptable GIFT multiple choice format:
Who's buried in Grant's tomb?{=Grant ~no one ~Napoleon ~Churchill ~Mother Teresa }

Here is a longer format that uses most of the GIFT elements:

// question: 1 name: Grants tomb
::Grants tomb::Who is buried in Grant's tomb in New York City? {
=Grant
~No one
#Was true for 12 years, but Grant's remains were buried in the tomb in 1897
~Napoleon
#He was buried in France
~Churchill
#He was buried in England
~Mother Teresa
#She was buried in India
}

===True-false===

In this question-type the answer indicates whether the statement is true or false. The answer should be written as {TRUE} or {FALSE}, or abbreviated to {T} or {F}.

// question: 0 name: TrueStatement using {T} style
::TrueStatement about Grant::Grant was buried in a tomb in New York City.{T}

// question: 0 name: FalseStatement using {FALSE} style
::FalseStatement about sun::The sun rises in the West.{FALSE}

===Short answer===

Answers in Short Answer question-type are all prefixed by an equal sign (=), indicating that they are all correct answers. The answers must not contain a tilde.

Here are two examples using the simple method showing possible right answers for credit.
Who's buried in Grant's tomb?{=Grant =Ulysses S. Grant =Ulysses Grant}

Two plus two equals {=four =4}

If there is only one correct Short Answer, it may be written without the equal sign prefix, as long as it cannot be confused as True-False.

===Matching===
Matching pairs begin with an equal sign (=) and are separated by this symbol "->". There must be at least three matching pairs.

Match the following countries with their corresponding capitals. {
=Canada -> Ottawa
=Italy -> Rome
=Japan -> Tokyo
=India -> New Delhi
}

Matching questions do not support feedback or percentage answer weights.

===Missing word===
The Missing Word format automatically inserts a fill-in-the-blank line (like this _____) in the middle of the sentence. To use the Missing Word format, place the answers where you want the line to appear in the sentence.
Moodle costd{~lots of money =nothing ~a small amount} to download from moodle.org.

If the answers come before the closing punctuation mark, a fill-in-the-blank line will be inserted for the "missing word" format. All question types can be written in the Missing Word format.

There must be a blank line (double carriage return) separating questions. For clarity, the answers can be written on separate lines and even indented. Some examples:

Mahatma Gandhi birthday is an Indian holiday on {
~15th
~3rd
=2nd
} of October.

Since {
~495 AD
=1066 AD
~1215 AD
~ 43 AD
}
the town of Hastings England has been "famous with visitors".

===Numerical questions===

The answer section for Numerical questions must start with a number sign (#). Numerical answers can include an error margin, which is written following the correct answer, separated by a colon. So for example, if the correct answer is anything between 1.5 and 2.5, then it would be written as follows {#2:0.5}. This indicates that 2 with an error margin of 0.5 is correct (i.e., the span from 1.5 to 2.5). If no error margin is specified, it will be assumed to be zero.

Here is a simple numerical format question. It will accept a range of 5 years.
When was Ulysses S. Grant born?{#1822:5}
It is a good idea to check the margins of the range, 3.141 is not counted as correct and 3.142 is considered in the range.
What is the value of pi (to 3 decimal places)? {#3.14159:0.0005}.

Optionally, numerical answers can be written as a span in the following format {#MinimumValue..MaximumValue}.

What is the value of pi (to 3 decimal places)? {#3.141..3.142}.

Moodle's browser interface does not support multiple numerical answers, but Moodle's code can and so does GIFT. This can be used to specify numerical multiple spans, and can be particularly usefully when combined with percentage weight grades. If multiple answers are used, they must be separated by an equal sign, like short answer questions.

When was Ulysses S. Grant born? {#
=1822:0
=%50%1822:2
}

Note that since Moodle's browser GUI didn't support multiple answers for Numerical questions, there's no way in older Moodle versions to see them or edit them through Moodle. The only way to change a numerical answer beyond the first, is to delete the question and re-import it (or use something like phpMyAdmin). But better would be to upgrade your Moodle to at least 1.9.

===Essay===
An essay question is simply a question with an empty answer field. Nothing is permitted between the curly braces at all.

Write a short biography of Dag Hammarskjöld. {}

===Description===
A description "question" has no answer part at all

You can use your pencil and paper for these next math questions.

==Options==

In addition to these basic question types, this filter offers the following options: line comments, question name, feedback and percentage answer weight.

===Line Comments===
Comments that will not be imported into Moodle can be included in the text file. This can be used to provide headers or more information about questions. All lines that start with a double backslash (not counting tabs or spaces) will be ignored by the filter.

// Subheading: Numerical questions below
What's 2 plus 2? {#4}

Comments will be exported from Moodle and will include the unique question id. The above question after it was imported and then exported from Moodle:
// question: 914 name: What's 2 plus 2?
::What's 2 plus 2?::What's 2 plus 2?{#
=4:0#
}

===Question Name===
A question name can be specified by placing it first and enclosing it within double colons.

::Kanji Origins::Japanese characters originally
came from what country? {=China}

::Thanksgiving Date::The American holiday of Thanksgiving is
celebrated on the {~second ~third =fourth} Thursday of November.

If no question name is specified, the entire question will be used as the name by default.

===Feedback===
Feedback can be included for each answer by following the answer with a number sign (# also known as a hash mark) and the feedback.

What's the answer to this multiple-choice question? {
~wrong answer#feedback comment on the wrong answer
~another wrong answer#feedback comment on this wrong answer
=right answer#Very good!
}

//From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Deep Thought said " {
=forty two#Correct according to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!
=42#Correct, as told to Loonquawl and Phouchg
=forty-two#Correct!
} is the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything."

42 is the Absolute Answer to everything.{
FALSE#42is the Ultimate Answer.#You gave the right answer.}

For Multiple Choice questions, feedback is displayed only for the answer the student selected. For short answer, feedback is shown only when students input the corresponding correct answer. For true-false questions, there can be one or two feedback strings. The first is shown if the student gives the wrong answer. The second if the student gives the right answer.

===Percentage Answer Weights===
Percentage answer weights are available for both Multiple Choice and Short Answer questions. Percentage answer weights can be included by following the tilde (for Multiple Choice) or equal sign (for Short Answer) with the desired percent enclosed within percent signs (e.g., %50%). This option can be combined with feedback comments.

Difficult question.{~wrong answer ~%50%half credit answer =full credit answer}

::Jesus' hometown::Jesus Christ was from {
~Jerusalem#This was an important city, but the wrong answer.
~%25%Bethlehem#He was born here, but not raised here.
~%50%Galilee#You need to be more specific.
=Nazareth#Yes! That's right!
}.

::Jesus' hometown:: Jesus Christ was from {
=Nazareth#Yes! That's right!
=%75%Nazereth#Right, but misspelled.
=%25%Bethlehem#He was born here, but not raised here.
}

Note that the last two examples are essentially the same question, first as multiple choice and then as short answer.

Note that it is possible to specify percentage answer weights that are NOT available through the browser interface. The Match Grades drop-down on the import page determines how these are handled. You can either request that an error be reported or that the answer weight be adjusted to the nearest valid answer weight.

Specify text-formatting for the question
The question text (only) may have an optional text format specified. Currently the available formats are moodle (Moodle Auto-Format), html (HTML format), plain (Plain text format) and markdown (Markdown format). The format is specified in square brackets immediately before the question text. See [[Formatting text]] for further information.

[markdown]The *American holiday of Thanksgiving* is celebrated on the {
~second
~third
=fourth
} Thursday of November.

===Multiple Answers===
The Multiple Answers option is used for multiple choice questions when two or more answers must be selected in order to obtain full credit. The multiple answers option is enabled by assigning partial answer weight to multiple answers, while allowing no single answer to receive full credit.

What two people are entombed in Grant's tomb? {
~No one
~%50%Grant
~%50%Grant's wife
~Grant's father
}

Note that there is no equal sign (=) in any answer and the answers should total no more than 100%, otherwise Moodle will return an error. To avoid the problem of students automatically getting 100% by simply checking all of the answers, it is best to include negative answer weights for wrong answers.

What two people are entombed in Grant's tomb? {
~%-50%No one
~%50%Grant
~%50%Grant's wife
~%-50%Grant's father
}

===Special Characters ~ = # { }===
These symbols ~ = # { } : control the operation of this filter and cannot be used as normal text within questions. Since these symbols have a special role in determining the operation of this filter, they are called "control characters." But sometimes you may want to use one of these characters, for example to show a mathematical formula in a question. The way to get around this problem is "escaping" the control characters. This means simply putting a backslash (\) before a control character so the filter will know that you want to use it as a literal character instead of as a control character. For example:

Which answer equals 5? {
~ \= 2 + 2
= \= 2 + 3
~ \= 2 + 4
}

::GIFT Control Characters::
Which of the following is NOT a control character for the GIFT import format? {
~ \~ # \~ is a control character.
~ \= # \= is a control character.
~ \# # \# is a control character.
~ \{ # \{ is a control character.
~ \} # \} is a control character.
= \ # Correct! \ (backslash) is not a control character. BUT,
it is used to escape the control characters.
}

When the question is processed, the backslash is removed and is not saved in Moodle.

===Specifying Categories===

It is possible to change the category into which the questions are added within the GIFT file. You can change the category as many times as you wish within the file. All questions after the modifier up to the next modifier or the end of the file will be added to the specified category. Up to the first category modifier the category specified on the import screen will be used. Note that for this to work the from file: box must be ticked on the import screen.

To include a category modifier include a line like this (with a blank line before and after):

$CATEGORY: tom/dick/harry

or simply

$CATEGORY: mycategory

...the first example specifies a path of nested categories. In this case the questions will go into harry. The categories are created if they do not exist.

===Making questions case sensitive===
Short Answer questions can be made case sensitive by changing "0" to "1" in the following line:
$question->usecase = 0; // Ignore case

==Hints and Tips==
* Use the ::title:: at the beginning of every question to organize your questions when Moodle presents a list or exports them as another GIFT file. When the title is left blank, Moodle will put the beginning of the question as the title. Some teachers want to see something like "001 LIT101 Poe ref Purloin Letter" or "The Purloin Letter was written by (AmLit pg 254)" in the title.

* You can specify markup if you need to format the question by setting [html], [moodle], [plain] or [markdown] just before the question text. See more about this in the reference pdf below.
* In the Lesson module, in a question page, correct answers jump by default to Next page and incorrect answers jump to This page (i.e. student has to "try again"). When importing from a GIFT format file, this is exactly the mechanism which is used.
* If you want a student to be taken directly from one question to the next irrespective of their answer being correct or incorrect: in the Lesson Settings, set Maximum number of attempts: to 1.
**Please note, however, that a message "correct / incorrect" will still be displayed to the student upon answering each question. If you do not want this (default) feedback message to be displayed then enter your own feedback message (i.e. "continue", "---", etc.)
**In case you want no visible message displayed then enter a non-breaking space as feedback. Moodle will not put it's automatic response because it sees the blank space. To do this, put a # after the answer and write [[Image:Nbsp.png]] (without spaces between these characters).
* Need to use a special GIFT character in your question or answer? Put a \ in front of the GIFT character.
**For example if you want to use curly braces, { or }, or equal sign, =, or # or ~ in a GIFT file (in a math question including TeX expressions) you must "escape" them by preceding them with a \ directly in front of each { or } or =. It is possible to use a replace program/macro/editor filter to do this conversion before importing to Moodle.
* Want to change T/F type questions to multiple choice? Consider exporting the T/F questions as a GIFT file, then using a text editor to replace the (T) with (=True ~False). Perhaps change the title slightly so you will recognize the new questions.
* Alphabetic case-sensitive comparison is disabled by default. If you need case-sensitive comparison for short answer questions (an unusual need), precede them with:
$question->usecase = 1;
surrounded by blank lines.

==Word processors and Spreadsheets tools that create GIFTs==
Several contributors have used macros to generate GIFT files from a more familiar popular programs.
* There are Word macros available for easily creating GIFT files. See [http://www.moodleschool.co.nz/mod/resource/view.php?id=83 Moodle4Teachers] for downloads and instructions for use.
* There are several Excel spreadsheets for generating GIFT files. Several people have built upon other contributors work.
**The latest version was posted on 10 April 2007 and can be found in this thread with this file name: [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=66660 Excel2GIFTv1.1.zip by Timothy Takemoto]. There is also a set of instructions Excel2GIFTv1.1_Instructions.rtf by Jeff Shek on the same day in that thread.
** [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6612645502883459334# video tutorial] for using Excel2GIFTv2.xls
**An earlier version of this Excel spreadsheet for generating multiple choice GIFT files [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=45245 initially created by Olga Forlani and improved by A. T. Wyatt].
*There are Open Office templates for generating GIFT files in Writer. These are located in the Quiz forum in the[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=20705&parent=168385 OOo template to write exams and convert to GIFT format thread].
**The most recent for OO 2.x is "OOo2GIFT_Template_05.zip" postes 17 December 2005 by Enrique Castro.
**An earlier version is "GIFT_template_OOo.zip" posted 22 March 2005 by Enrique Castro.
*There is an easy to use on line multiple question generator at [http://a4esl.org/c/qw.html a4esl.org]. Here you write your question(s) without formating marks, select Moodle and press the generate quiz button. This creates GIFT formatted text that can be pasted into a file for importing into Moodle.
**The initial format requires fewer keystrokes (it uses line position and returns) than the GIFT format, so you should save time and be less likely to create invalid data.
** Quiz authoring template for Microsoft Word [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=578 link]

==See also==

* Here is a 2-column PDF [http://buypct.com/gift_reference.pdf GIFT Reference Sheet]
*[[Export questions]]
*[[Import questions]]
*[[Import and export FAQ]]
*[[Aiken Format]]
*[[Moodle XML format]]

==External links==
*[http://www.kingsley.k12.mi.us/documents/gift_format.pdf Formatting quizzes in GIFT format]
*[http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2010_Proposal:_GIFT_Conversion Google Summer of Code 2010 Proposal: GIFT Conversion] (Wikiversity)

[[Category:Questions]]

[[de:GIFT]]
[[fr:Format GIFT]]
[[ja:GIFTフォーマット]]

Användare:Jeff Forssell

2010-11-23T09:52:05Z

Jeffjeff:

I was Born In Buffalo NY USA 1945. I have lived in Sweden since 1964.

I have a Swedish Fil. Lic. (about Masters degree) in physics and have been a Math Physics teacher for many years. I worked with adult distant education at the [[http://web.archive.org/web/20041009224241/http://www.cfl.se/?sid=60 Swedish Agency for Flexible Learning]], in Härnösand from 1996-2008. After that I've taken Moodle certification 100, 101 and 200 and am starting to learn PHP. Any interesting jobs, especially in English-speaking countries, especially involving Moodle, would be interesting to hear about!). I have given distance consulting to several Moodle sites and have registered a firm, Tupo Media.

I have also worked 2*2 years in Tanzania. (see: http://biphome.spray.se/jeff.forssell/index.html but I've learned a lot of html since I made that.) I speak (Am.) English, Swedish and Swahili (and rusty German in an emergency)

I have a site at http://www.tupo.biz

Användare:Jeff Forssell

2010-11-22T12:07:24Z

Jeffjeff:

I was Born In Buffalo NY USA 1945. I have lived in Sweden since 1964.

I have a Swedish Fil. Lic. (about Masters degree) in physics and have been a Math Physics teacher for many years. I worked with adult distant education at the [[http://web.archive.org/web/20041009224241/http://www.cfl.se/?sid=60 Swedish Agency for Flexible Learning]], in Härnösand from 1996-2008. After that I've taken Moodle certification 100, 101 and 200 and am starting to learn PHP. Any interesting jobs, especially in English-speaking countries, especially involving Moodle, would be interesting to hear about!). I have given distance consulting to several Moodle sites and have a firma, Tupo Media.

I have also worked 2*2 years in Tanzania. (see: http://biphome.spray.se/jeff.forssell/index.html but I've learned a lot of html since I made that.) I speak (Am.) English, Swedish and Swahili (and rusty German in an emergency)

I have a site at http://www.tupo.biz

Automated course backup

2010-11-18T13:13:28Z

Jeffjeff: /* Setting a backup schedule */ Suggest possible pathways for backup

Location: ''Administration > Courses > Backups''

The backups page enables administrators to configure automated course backups and a backup schedule.
Automated course backups runs the same functions as individual [[Course backup|course backups]]. It's a good idea to schedule backups for when your server isn't usually busy. Running the backup tool over all the courses can be processor-intensive, so you shouldn't run it when there are a lot of students trying to access the server. You should always alert users with an announcement on the first page that if they log on during the backup hours they may notice a decrease in performance.

In order to make scheduled backups, you have to set up CRON to run periodically. Please refer to the [[Cron|cron instructions]].

==Setting a backup schedule==

To set the backup schedule:
#Click the Active checkbox. This turns on the automated backup system.
#Click the days of the week to run the backup.
#Set the execution time for the backup process. For most servers, early morning will be the best time. Keep in mind the time zone your server is using.
#Set the "Save to..." path. If you can, choose a backup path on another machine or on a different drive than the one Moodle is on. You don’t want to lose your backups at the same time you lose your Moodle site if the drive fails. If you leave the field blank, then backup zip files will be saved in the backup folder of each course files folder. On a Linux server the path might look like: /home/(your user or domain)/public_html/archive/ or if it's below the publicly accessible folders: /home/(your user or domain)/archive/ if the path is not recognized a red X is shown after saving, otherwise a green check.
#Click the "Save changes" button.

Once you've set up your backup schedule, Moodle will automatically create archives of all the courses on the server at the time you specified. Once the backup is complete, Moodle will send you an email describing the status of the backup.

Note: From 1.6 onwards, course backups automatically skip courses which are unavailable to students and have not been changed in the last month.

==Course versus site backups==

*Automated course backups are more expensive in terms of time and CPU usage. The recovery time to have your site running again is longer.
*Course backups are useful for obtaining "fresh" copies of courses to be re-used or distributed individually, however they should never be used as a primary backup system (unless your hosting doesn't allow the preferred [[Site backup|site backups]]).

==See also==

*[[Backup and restore FAQ]]

[[Category:Backup]]

[[eu:Ikastaroen_segurtasun-kopia_automatikoa]]
[[fr:Sauvegarde (administrateur)]]
[[ja:自動コースバックアップ]]

Authentication FAQ

2010-11-05T08:53:00Z

Jeffjeff: /* Where are users' details stored? */ changed indicate to is called

==What is an authentication plugin?==

An authentication plugin is a method of handling user authentication i.e. enabling certain people to login to your Moodle site.

==How do I enable the "Create new account" button on the login page?==

To display the "Is this your first time here?" instructions and the "Create new account" button:

# Make sure that the [[Email-based self-registration|email-based self-registration plugin]] (or any other plugin that can support self-registration, such as LDAP) is enabled in ''Administration > Users > Authentication > [[Manage authentication]]''.
# Select the self-registration plugin in the common module settings.

Warning: Enabling self registration results in the possibility of spammers creating accounts in order to use forum posts, blog entries etc. for spam. See [[Reducing spam in Moodle]] for ways of minimizing the risk.

==How can I change the "Is this your first time here?" instructions?==
#Access ''Site administration block> Users > Authentication > [[Manage authentication]]''.
#Write the instructions in the ''auth_instructions'' text field.
#Click the "Save changes" button at the bottom of the page.

If your site caters to more than one language you can edit the language via ''Site administration > [[Language editing]]. Choose the languages (one at a time) and click "edit words or phrases". Choose "file to edit" : moodle.php
Go to the string called "loginsteps" and put in the instruction text you want (for that language). Then repeat for the other languages you want offered.

==How do I set up LDAP authentication?==

See [[LDAP authentication]] for full instructions.

==How is the "No login" authentication plugin used?==

The [[No login]] authentication plugin can be used to suspend particular user accounts. To do so:

# Access the user's profile page.
# Click the edit profile tab.
# Select "No login" as the authentication method. (If the setting isn't shown, click the "Show advanced" button to reveal it.)
# Click the "Update profile" button at the bottom of the page.

==Since upgrading, users are reporting that they can no longer login. What should be done?==

If users are unable to login following an upgrade to 1.8 or 1.9, then most likely their account authentication method, such as [[Email-based self-registration]], requires enabling in ''Administration > Users > Authentication''.

Note: The [[No authentication|No authentication (none)]] type should not be enabled on any production server. You can use phpmyadmin to convert all existing accounts created with 'none' to 'manual' or an admin can change the authentication type in [[Edit profile]].

==What is the difference between enabling the email-based self-registration auth plugin and selecting it as the self registration method?==

The [[Email-based self-registration| email-based self-registration authentication plugin]] must be enabled to allow users who previously self-registered to login.

Selecting email-based self-registration as the self registration method allows potential users to self register.

Warning: Enabling self registration results in the possibility of spammers creating accounts in order to use forum posts, blog entries etc. for spam. This risk can be minimized by limiting self registration to particular email domains with the allowed email domains setting in ''Administration > Users > Authentication > [[Authentication|Manage authentication]]'' (or in ''Administration > Server > [[Email settings|Email]]'' prior to Moodle 1.9). Alternatively, self registration may be enabled for a short period of time to allow users to create accounts, and then later disabled.

==How can I create an authentication plugin?==

See [[Development:Authentication plugins]].

==How can students without email addresses have Moodle accounts?==

See [[No Email]].

==Where are users' details stored?==

Users' details can be stored in local Moodle database or externally.

If Users' details are stored in the local Moodle database, it is called "internal authentication". Storing users' details externally is called "external authentication".

See [[Manage authentication]] for more information.

==See also==

* Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=42 User authentication forum]

[[Category:Authentication]]
[[Category:FAQ]]

[[de:Authentifizierung FAQ]]

Embedded Answers (Cloze) question type

2010-11-04T12:42:24Z

Jeffjeff: /* Format */ { should not be escaped in answers

{{Questions}}
'''Embedded answers (Cloze)''' questions consist of a passage of text (in Moodle format) that has various answers embedded within it, including multiple choice, short answers and numerical answers.

There is currently no graphical interface to create these questions - you need to specify the question format using the text box or by importing them from external files.

Lots of people suggest that [[Hot Potatoes]] software is the easiest way to create Embedded answer (Cloze) questions. Once you have created your questions on your PC, you can then import them into Moodle's quiz module.

==Question set-up==

#Select the question category
#Give the question a descriptive name - this allows you to identify it in the question bank.
#Enter the passage of text (in Moodle format - see [[Embedded_Answers_%28Cloze%29_question_type#Format|Format]] below) into the 'question text' field.
#Select an image to display if you want to add a picture to the question. For the student, it appears immediately above the question text.
#Set the 'default question grade' (i.e. the maximum number of marks for this question).
#Set the 'Penalty factor' (see [[Embedded_Answers_%28Cloze%29_question_type#Penalty_factor|Penalty factor]] below).
#If you wish, add general feedback. This is text that appears to the student after he/she has answered the question.
#The editor has been modified and allows you to test if your syntax is good. The different questions elements decoded will be displayed and syntax errors pinpoint. However, it cannot check if the question decoded is two questions in one because of an error syntax.
#Click Save changes to add the question to the category.

=== Penalty factor ===

The 'penalty factor' only applies when the question is used in a quiz using adaptive mode - i.e. where the student is allowed multiple attempts at a question even within the same attempt at the quiz. If the penalty factor is more than 0, then the student will lose that proportion of the '''maximum''' grade upon each successive attempt. For example, if the default question grade is 10, and the penalty factor is 0.2, then each successive attempt after the first one will incur a penalty of 0.2 x 10 = 2 points.

==Question rendering==

The question answer INPUT HTML ELEMENT ( Short and Numerical) or SELECT HTML ELEMENT (multichoice) are normally displayed in-line with the text.

The size of INPUT HTML ELEMENT ( Short and Numerical) will be adjustable to the length of the longest answer (good or bad) + a random number (0 to 15% total length).([[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 15:37, 26 January 2008 (CST))

The size will adjust to the length of the student response when displayed in the grading and feedback process.

The size of the SELECT HTML ELEMENT (multichoice) adjusts itself automatically to the longest answer.

==Format==

Questions consist of a passage of text (in Moodle format) that has various sub-questions embedded within it, including

* short answers (SHORTANSWER or SA or MW), case is unimportant,
* short answers (SHORTANSWER_C or SAC or MWC), case must match,
* numerical answers (NUMERICAL or NM),
* multiple choice (MULTICHOICE or MC), represented as a dropdown menu in-line in the text
* multiple choice (MULTICHOICE_V or MCV), represented a vertical column of radio buttons, or
* multiple choice (MULTICHOICE_H or MCH), represented as a horizontal row of radio-buttons.

For full details of the format for embedded-answers questions, see the [[Embedded_Answers_%28Cloze%29_question_type#Detailed_syntax_explanations|detailed syntax explanation]] below.

NB: Be careful when copying a cloze type question into the WYSIWYG HTML editor, as line breaks tend to get added, which destroys the question.

If the correct answer contains } # ~ / " or \ you will have to escape them by putting a \ in front of each such character. The { shouldn't be escaped, this can be vital in getting TeX expressions to work. In the feedback ~ and } must be escaped otherwise it will be interpreted as ''the next answer'' or ''end of the short answer section'' respectively. Quotation signs: " can lead to trouble anyhow in both places. Use the HTML entity: & quot; (without the space between ''&'' and ''quot;''). If you want to have Mathematical symbols there can be problems with the \ used in TeX expressions. One alternative can be to use [[unicode]] characters.

See the notes further down about numerical embedded question!

===Examples===

====Example 1====
The following text creates a simple embedded-answers question:

Match the following cities with the correct state:
* San Francisco: {1:MULTICHOICE:=California#OK~Arizona#Wrong}
* Tucson: {1:MULTICHOICE:California#Wrong~%100%Arizona#OK}
* Los Angeles: {1:MULTICHOICE:=California#OK~Arizona#Wrong}
* Phoenix: {1:MULTICHOICE:%0%California#Wrong~=Arizona#OK}
The capital of France is {1:SHORTANSWER:%100%Paris#Congratulations!
~%50%Marseille#No, that is the second largest city in France (after
Paris).~*#Wrong answer. The capital of France is Paris, of course.}.

And the result will be:

[[Image:Cloze.gif|Cloze question type]]

====Example 2====

This question consists of some text with an answer embedded right here {1:MULTICHOICE:Wrong answer#Feedback for this wrong answer~Another wrong answer#Feedback for the other wrong answer~=Correct answer#Feedback for correct answer~%50%Answer that gives half the credit#Feedback for half credit answer}
and right after that you will have to deal with this short answer {1:SHORTANSWER:Wrong answer#Feedback for this wrong answer~=Correct answer#Feedback for correct answer~%50%Answer that gives half the credit#Feedback for half credit answer}
and finally we have a floating point number {2:NUMERICAL:=23.8:0.1#Feedback for correct answer 23.8~%50%23.8:2#Feedback for half credit answer in the nearby region of the correct answer}.
The multichoice question can also be shown in the vertical display of the standard moodle multiple choice.
{2:MCV:1. Wrong answer#Feedback for this wrong answer~2. Another wrong answer#Feedback for the other wrong answer~=3. Correct answer#Feedback for correct answer~%50%4. Answer that gives half the credit#Feedback for half credit answer}
Or in an horizontal display that is included here in a table
{2:MCH:a. Wrong answer#Feedback for this wrong answer~b. Another wrong answer#Feedback for the other wrong answer~=c. Correct answer#Feedback for correct answer~%50%d. Answer that gives half the credit#Feedback for half credit answer}
A shortanswer question where case must match. Write moodle in upper case letters {1:SHORTANSWER_C:moodle#Feedback for moodle in lower case ~=MOODLE#Feedback for MOODLE in upper case ~%50%Moodle#Feedback for only first letter in upper case}
Note that addresses like www.moodle.org and smileys :-) all work as normal:
a) How good is this? {:MULTICHOICE:=Yes#Correct~No#We have a different opinion}
b) What grade would you give it? {3:NUMERICAL:=3:2}

[[Image:Cloze example.png]]

Some things to note:
* The individual embedded answers are represented by the code in braces {}.
* The number at the start is the 'weight', so in this case each answer contributes an equal share of the overall grade.
* The correct option in each case is preceded either by an = sign or by %100%.
:'''Note''': [[Talk:Embedded_Answers_(Cloze)_question_type| The equal sign (=) doesn't seem to work with SHORTANSWER.]]
* The text appearing after the # that follows each option is the feedback that the student will see if they choose that option.
* If the student enters 'Marseille' in the final example, they score 50% of the total grade.
* The asterisk * preceding the "Wrong answer" feedback in the final example means that the student will see this feedback if they enter anything other than "Paris" or "Marseille".
* For multiple choice vertical or horizontal rendering there is no automatic numbering, though can added at each answer.

==Detailed syntax explanations==
# all question items within a cloze-type question are coded inside curled braces { }
# the number which appears between the opening brace and the colon {1: is the weighting of that item; if it is set at 1 for all the items, it needs not be specified, so you can have {:
# after the colon we have the item question type: MULTICHOICE, SHORTANSWER, NUMERICAL
# '''NOTE'''.- If you have installed the [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=338 REGEXP question type plugin] you can also use the REGEXP question type
# the syntax for MULTICHOICE and SHORTANSWER is the same; the only difference is in the displaying of the item to the student
# the order of the various answers is indifferent (except if you want a catch-all for wrong answers, see #13 below)
# a correct answer is preceded with the equal sign = or a percentage (usually %100%) - '''Note''': [[Talk:Embedded_Answers_(Cloze)_question_type| The equal sign (=) doesn't seem to work with SHORTANSWER.]]
# a wrong answer is preceded with nothing or a percentage (usually %0%)
# you can allocate some points between 0 and 100 to some answers, if you put the appropriate percentage
# all answers except the first one are separated from one another by the tilde ~ sign
# answers can be followed by an optional feedback message, preceded with the # sign; if there is no feedback message, the # sign can be present or absent, it does not matter
# note that the feedback message and (since [[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 24 May 2008 )in 1.9 the correct answer are displayed in a small popup window (if and when the correct and or feedback have been declared accessible to the students in the Quiz settings) upon mouse hovering. The popup window has a title "feedback" and you can use HTML tags to format your feedback. In some browsers (For example IE5.5) the form fields can cover part of the feedback windows. It can help to not have the formfields for the answers too close to each other.
# in the SHORTANSWER type you may want to put a catch-all (wrong) answer in order to send a "wrong, try again" feedback; you can do this by inserting an asterisk '''*''' as '''the very last expected answer''' in your formula
# unfortunately in MULTICHOICE MODE it is not possible to get the answers to be scrambled

==Numerical Cloze questions==

From the student perspective, a numerical Cloze question looks just like a short-answer question or ''fill in the blanks''.

The difference is that numerical answers are allowed to have an accepted error. This allows a continuous range of answers to be set. You can also express your answer in some different numerical formats. 23.4 23,4 (some countries use , as a decimal separator) and 2.34E+1 (meaning 2.34*10^1) would be interpreted as the same.

=== False positives ===

'''Note:''' the following examples of false positives do '''not''' apply to Moodle 1.8+, where you cannot use percentages or fractions as the answers in a numerical Cloze test; Moodle will generate an error if you try to save such a question. However the following may be relevant for earlier versions of Moodle.

More examples:
0.5 accepts .5 0.5 ,5 0,5 0.500 5e-1 5E-1 but not 1/2 50%
50% accepts 50% 50.0% 5E1% 50/100 even '''50/1000 50''' but not 500/1000 0.5
1/2 accepts 1/2 '''1/3 1twenty''' but not 2/4 0.5 0,5 3/6 50% ½
½ accepts ½
HALF doesn't even accept HALF (maybe '''0'''?)

If you want to accept several variants you can have them in the same {} but '''be careful, notice the "false positives" in bold'''!

===Syntax for numerical Cloze questions===

The format of a NUMERICAL Cloze question is similar to that of the other Cloze types and they can be mixed in the same question. As with other Cloze tests, you write your question or incomplete text, and add the Cloze code at the point where the student is supposed to enter their numerical answer.

An example of the syntax used is shown below:

'''Note: ''' It is preferable to write the code in 'source code' mode. The WSIWYG editor can insert linebreaks that make the question not function. The linebreak in the example box below is for readability only! A problem with these questions is the readability of the code! :(

{2:NUMERICAL:=23.8:0.1#Feedback for correct answer 23.8
~%50%23.8:2#Feedback for ½credit near correct answer}.

In this example:
* 2: is the question point weight, which means that this question has twice the weight in the final point(s) for this question as other partial answers with weight 1 (or no declared weight - you can start with {: for the default weight 1) in the same question.
* NUMERICAL: says what kind of question it is. It must be in CAPS.
* =23.8:0.1 = or %100% means correct if the answer is 23.8 with an accepted error of 0.1, then any number between 23.7 and 23.9 will be accepted as correct. (In the GIFT numerical question one can express an interval like this 13..15 or 14:1 but in Cloze only 14:1 works.)
* #Feedback for correct answer 23.8 is preceded by #
* ~%50%23.8:2 ~ is the separator for answer alternatives %50% means this answer would get 50% of the score that the more precise answer had gotten. Because the tolerance here is 2, 21.8 to 25.8 would get this point and feedback.

The feedback (which is seen within a popup window when the user hovers over the answer space) is formattable with HTML tags. For example, if you want an exponent, surround it with superscript tags: . You can even include pictures in the feedback popup, but you must clean out all " characters and save while still in source code mode (not WYSIWYG). So, this works in feedback popup:
#See this picture: <img src=Something.gif />}
but not this:
#See this picture: <img src="Something.gif" />}

(ALGEBRA and TEX filters don't work in the feedback popups, but they can be very useful in the question writing for math/science expressions). But you can use [[Unicode]] characters.

If you want to give feedback for any answer that didn't fit the intervals you already have specified feedback for, add some BIG general intervals, like for positive answers (if they aren't bigger than 20000 you could add:
~%0%10000.0001:10000#Feedback for unspecified not_right answers}
This would give feedback for anything from 0.0001 to 20000.0001 (that hadn't already gotten feedback). I didn't want to include 0 since that special case as well as negative ought to have specific reactions.
~%0%0#Hey! It can't be zero
~%0%-10000.0001:10000#We just want the size here,
so a negative value is not what we want}

Numerical questions could, before version 1.7, also have case-insensitive non-numerical answers. This is useful whenever the answer for a numerical question is something like +inf, -inf, NaN etc.

==See also==
This information was drawn from:
*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=36521 Is there a guide to using the cloze format?] forum discussion
*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=36430&parent=170308 Cloze-type question syntax] forum post

[[fr:Question Cloze à réponses intégrés]]
[[ja: 穴埋め問題 ( Cloze ) タイプ]]
[[de:Lückentext-Fragen]]
[[zh:填空題(克漏字)]]
[[es:Tipo de Pregunta incrustadas (Cloze)]]

Broken/Setting up Netbeans

2010-08-15T21:04:39Z

Jeffjeff:

== CVS instructions ==

I copied the instructions from [[User:Gary_Anderson| Gary Anderson]]'s ''NetBeans for Moodle Development course'' (http://moodle2.seattleacademy.org/wiki/index.php/Get_the_Moodle_Software, http://moodle2.seattleacademy.org/course/view.php?id=5). There might be some redundancies which still have to be amended. --[[User:Frank Ralf|Frank Ralf]] 09:43, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

: I was in the Gary Andersson course and there was a prepared package there with both NetBeans and Moodle. But Right now I can't get to that course at all. I am setting up on another computer and would like to have the latest NetBeans 6.7, and set up Moodle preferably both 1.9.5+ and HEAD 2.0.

: When I see the instructions here I don't see anything about getting the xamp server setup.

: I also wonder about if one should maybe use a complete install package first than connect that to NetBeans and after that try doing CVS updating through NetBeans. (I maybe wrong, but I assume that doing a complete install via CVS would take much longer.) I also assume that I must than create an extra Moodle database in MySQL and of course a separate folder if I want to install 2.0 also. [[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 13:02, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

:: Hi Jeff, If you want to use CVS you should do a manual installation.
::* Setting up XAMPP is nothing more than downloading and unpacking it, really painless. The web server's directory will be \htdocs\.
::* Then you install NetBeans 6.7 and do separate CVS checkouts for HEAD (2.0) and 1.9.5 into separate directories (e.g. \htdocs\moodle19\ and \htdocs\moodle20\.
::* Then you can run Moodle 1.9.5 under "localhost/moodle19/" in your browser and Moodle "localhost/moodle20/".
:: Further details for manually setting up Moodle you'll find under [[Windows installation using XAMPP]]. hth --[[User:Frank Ralf|Frank Ralf]] 13:42, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

:::Thanx

:::I've done lots of xampp installs of the Moodle complete packages, but never just xampp alone. Should I interpret your answer as I have to install Moodle via CVS if I want to use CVS to keep it updated? And that it won't be ridiculously long time doing the original checkout? In the GA course we did a CVS update of the original install, but I don't know if he had done that package by doing a CVS checkout. (It just doesn't feel like that was what was going on!)
:::: The first checkout might take some time, but as far as I remember it's done in about 15 minutes. --[[User:Frank Ralf|Frank Ralf]] 16:02, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

::: Oh well I suppose it's time to learn to create MySQL databases for Moodle without complete packages or Fantastico! [[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 15:04, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
:::: XAMPP comes with PHPMyAdmin for MySQL administration. That's a very useful tool and worth exploring. --[[User:Frank Ralf|Frank Ralf]] 16:02, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

:::: Just another thing: Moodle 2.0 requires quite recent versions of PHP and MySQL. So for using HEAD I had to install a new version of XAMPP (I have two versions installed on my development machine which is no problem, you only should not run them at the same time). --[[User:Frank Ralf|Frank Ralf]] 16:14, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
::::: I have now CVSed moodle 1.9 with NetBeans - it took less than 10 mins. Created a new project. Then it started "scanning projects" - I didn't know what it is doing and it wasn't finished after more than 10 minutes. I see now that it has stopped. Anyhow now I\ve also done the same with HEAD / moodle20.

:::::I have some hesitation about trying to "run" them. Anything one should do before that other than creating the projects? [[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 08:55, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

::::: I see when trying to RUN that my moodle 2.0 is in http://localhost/moodle20/moodle/install.php while i thought it would be in http://localhost/moodle20/install.php. Maybe that's good because the NB proj files are in a folder there too.

:::::When I get to the "web address" page that is greyed out. I was hoping to try out setting the computer name so I could access from others on my intranet. How can I change that (from "localhost")?

:::::: Hi Jeff, I would suggest moving this discussion to the appropriate forum to give more people the chance to join. This here is quite a private place and should preferably only be used for issues directly connected to this Moodle Docs page. Thanks in advance! --[[User:Frank Ralf|Frank Ralf]] 10:29, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

::::::: Which is "the appropriate forum" for this subject? [[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 21:04, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
:::::: "localhost" is always the local PC itself. You can access it from other computers by using the PC's IP address (use "ipconfig" in a DOS box) or by modifying the "hosts" file on your PC.

Language editing

2010-07-12T11:32:32Z

Jeffjeff: /* Changes in 1.9 */ set to "prevent" + dd in adition

Location: ''Administration > Language > Language editing''

== Edit words or phrases ==
[[Image:Editing-language-moodle-19.gif|thumb|Edit words or phrases in Moodle 1.9.5]]The language editing interface enables you to easily change any word or phrase used on the site. For example, you may want to change the word "Course" to "Area".

To edit a word or phrase:
#Access ''Administration > Language > Language editing''.
#Click the "Edit words or phrases" link in the middle of the page.
#Choose a file to edit. You may need to search through a few files before finding the file containing the word you wish to change. The file ''moodle.php'' contains all common site-wide phrases.
#Change the word or phrase.
#Click the "Save changes" button. The changed phrase will be highlighted in a different color.

Note: In versions of Moodle prior to 1.9, it is necessary to click the "Switch lang directory" button on the edit words or phrases page. A local language folder, ''parentlanguage_local'', will then be automatically created in ''moodledata/lang''. Files of edited strings will then be saved in this folder. This is necessary to prevent changes that you make being overwritten by a newer language pack when updating. In Moodle 1.9 onwards, the option to switch is no longer provided as edited strings are automatically saved in the local language folder.

If you wish to make further changes later, be sure to check that files of edited strings will again be saved to the folder ''parentlanguage_local'', switching folder if necessary.

==Changes in 1.9==
[[Image:screenshot-admin-lang-19.png|thumb|Language pack maintaining in Moodle 1.9]]
{{Moodle 1.9}}* From Moodle 1.9 onwards, only users with the capability [[Capabilities/moodle/site:langeditmaster|moodle/site:langeditmaster]] may modify the master language packages (i.e. those being saved in ''moodledata/lang/''). By default, the admin role has this capability set to "''prevent''". It is expected that only language maintainers will manually allow this for themselves. Language pack maintainers have an additional "Language pack maintaining" tab.
* From Moodle 1.9 onwards, only users with the capability [[Capabilities/moodle/site:langeditlocal|moodle/site:langeditlocal]] may customize the site translation (i.e. files being saved in ''moodledata/lang_local/''). Admins are allowed to do this by default.
* Added ability to edit language files in non-standard locations, i.e. string files for various types of plugin (e.g. blocks, database presets, 3rd party modules etc.)
* Features coming soon: The ability to edit help files in non-standard locations and translate local modifications of help files.

== See also ==

* [[Language FAQ]]
* [[Translation]]
* [[Development:Places to search for lang strings]]
* [[Talk:Language editing]] for information on language editing in Moodle 1.5
* [http://www.moodletutorials.org/view_video.php?viewkey=4a10e0db5e4b97fc2af3 Tutorial Showing How to Change a Word or Phrase in Moodle 1.9]
Using Moodle forum discussions:
* [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=49150 Local language]
* [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=78225 Editing help files]

[[Category:Language]]

[[es:admin/lang]]
[[fr:Langue]]
[[ja:言語]]
[[pt:Edição da língua]]
[[zh:语言]]
[[sk:Jazyk]]

Formatting text

2010-05-11T09:57:45Z

Jeffjeff: /* Markdown text format */ SPACE after .

When writing text in Moodle there are several formats you can choose to produce your text, depending on your expertise and the type of browser you are using.

Usually you can just leave this setting to the default value and things should work as you expect.

==Moodle auto-format==

This format is best for when you are using normal web forms for entry (instead of the Richtext HTML editor). Just type text normally, as if you were sending an email.

When you save your text, Moodle will do a number of things to automatically format your text for you.

For example, URLs such as http://yahoo.com or even www.yahoo.com will be turned into links. Your line breaks will be retained, and blank lines will start new paragraphs.

Smiley characters such as :-) will automatically become their graphical equivalents.

You can even embed HTML code if you want to and it will be retained.

More info about Moodle auto-formatting: http://moodle.org/help.php?file=text.html

==HTML format==

This format assumes the text is pure HTML. If you are using the HTML editor to edit text then this is the default format - all the commands in the toolbar are producing HTML for you.

Even if you are not using the Richtext HTML editor, you can use HTML code in your text and it should come out exactly as you intended.

Unlike the Moodle auto-format, no automatic formatting is performed.

More info about HTML in Moodle: http://moodle.org/help.php?file=html.html

More info about the Richtext HTML editor: http://moodle.org/help.php?file=richtext.html

==Plain text format==

This format is useful when you need to include lots of code or HTML that you want to be displayed exactly as you wrote it.

It still translates spaces and new lines, but otherwise your text isn't touched.

==Markdown text format==

[http://moodle.org/help.php?file=markdown.html Markdown] format tries to make it easy as possible to type well-formatted XHTML pages using nothing but text written more or less like you would write an email.

It's very good for writing clean text pages with some headings and some lists but without many links or images. It is an excellent choice when accessibility of the generated page is important.

For complete syntax description, see: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax Moodle 1.6 has extended features called Markdown Extra: for ''additional'' features see http://www.michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/

==Tips and Tricks==
* ''Wrong Characters Showing'' - If some users do not see the same characters or figures, have them check their browser settings for their character settings. At Moodle.org, the recommended default character decoding set is UTF-8. On a Firefox browser, this can be found in Tools>Options>Fonts & colors>advanced>default character decoding pull down menu.

If that doesn't work you can try installing a UTF-8 Unicode font from: http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/unicode/tituut.asp. (This has at least helped XP users that weren't seeing stars in the ratings.)

[[Category:Teacher]]

[[de:Formatierung]]

Formatting text

2010-05-10T10:32:49Z

Jeffjeff: /* Markdown text format */ put in URL to markdown

When writing text in Moodle there are several formats you can choose to produce your text, depending on your expertise and the type of browser you are using.

Usually you can just leave this setting to the default value and things should work as you expect.

==Moodle auto-format==

This format is best for when you are using normal web forms for entry (instead of the Richtext HTML editor). Just type text normally, as if you were sending an email.

When you save your text, Moodle will do a number of things to automatically format your text for you.

For example, URLs such as http://yahoo.com or even www.yahoo.com will be turned into links. Your line breaks will be retained, and blank lines will start new paragraphs.

Smiley characters such as :-) will automatically become their graphical equivalents.

You can even embed HTML code if you want to and it will be retained.

More info about Moodle auto-formatting: http://moodle.org/help.php?file=text.html

==HTML format==

This format assumes the text is pure HTML. If you are using the HTML editor to edit text then this is the default format - all the commands in the toolbar are producing HTML for you.

Even if you are not using the Richtext HTML editor, you can use HTML code in your text and it should come out exactly as you intended.

Unlike the Moodle auto-format, no automatic formatting is performed.

More info about HTML in Moodle: http://moodle.org/help.php?file=html.html

More info about the Richtext HTML editor: http://moodle.org/help.php?file=richtext.html

==Plain text format==

This format is useful when you need to include lots of code or HTML that you want to be displayed exactly as you wrote it.

It still translates spaces and new lines, but otherwise your text isn't touched.

==Markdown text format==

[[http://moodle.org/help.php?file=markdown.html Markdown]] format tries to make it easy as possible to type well-formatted XHTML pages using nothing but text written more or less like you would write an email.

It's very good for writing clean text pages with some headings and some lists but without many links or images.

==Tips and Tricks==
* ''Wrong Characters Showing'' - If some users do not see the same characters or figures, have them check their browser settings for their character settings. At Moodle.org, the recommended default character decoding set is UTF-8. On a Firefox browser, this can be found in Tools>Options>Fonts & colors>advanced>default character decoding pull down menu.

If that doesn't work you can try installing a UTF-8 Unicode font from: http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/unicode/tituut.asp. (This has at least helped XP users that weren't seeing stars in the ratings.)

Feedback link for all elements

2010-05-05T10:48:56Z

Jeffjeff: /* Page */ how much effort did YOU put forth to use page?

This is a work in progress when I find the time. Sometimes there is obvious repetition that I haven't cleaned up yet.

The web is more and more social in that the users/readers of content are more and more invited to influence the content. This is especially true for support pages that are for helping ie. [http://documents.google.com/support/spreadsheets/bin/answer.py?answer=87589 Google "was this helpful?"]; [http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/HP030713791033.aspx?pid=CH063500491033 Microsofts ditto].

Therefore it seems very important that this feature is lacking in Moodle, especially considering its social constructivistic underpinnings. It seems natural that this should be implemented, indeed almost a glaring miss.

There is a form for collecting feedback ([https://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Feedback documentation] [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=95 download]) in Moodle which can be used for making course evaluations etc. The problem is that it is difficult to get people to spontaneously report suggestions, criticisms etc at all. If they have to find and go to another page, formulate a description of where they came from and what they want, felt etc, there are few that will do it, and the quality of the feedback will often lack crucial details so it may be useless.

Collecting feedback in a general form at the end of a course has many lacks. The students are poorly motivated (they won't be getting any use of changes that are made). Many annoyances, suggestions will have been forgotten. Those that are remembered will be difficult to describe accurately.

One way of nicely collecting feedback for an HTML page is to use a forum page as if it were an ordinary webpage. Then, after the content you put into the top, there is a forum at the bottom which can receive feedback and can have some soc. const. advantages over my proposal. But this wouldn't work for other kinds of pages/elements.

Having some kind of general course feedback early in a course is a good idea and can, of course, meet the first problem (that the pupil's feedback usually doesn't effect the on-going course).

=Which Elements?=
==Page==
The properties that would be good to include:
*No response
*General rating
*Lacking:
**Linkage
**Content
**Language
***grammar
***spelling
*Suggestions
* Automatically (javascript) generated info about the browser, operating system, screen and window size, plugin availability. Often the user wouldn't even know these things, and they could be critically helpful for the page editor.

Here is an example of [http://tupo.biz/kurser/gemensam/kommunikation/PageFeedbackFormExpand.htm a page feedback form]. The form has many of the things that I'd like to include. I would be like to have a small page with expandable fields connected to checked types. Only the first two checks are implemented in this. It does have a JavaScript that in the background includes auto-generated information in the form submission.

This microSoft page had some interesting questions:

Provide feedback on this information
Did this information solve your problem?
Yes
No
I don't know

Was this information relevant?
Yes
No

How much effort did you personally put forth to use this article?
Very low
Low
Moderate
High
Very high

What can we do to improve this information?

==Quiz questions (even lesson and feedback and questionnaire?)==
This is very important. If I had to chose between Page and Question, I'd chose question feedback.

Since evaluation questions are very important to the learners, they are very motivated to see that they are clear.

This can also be a way to make students an active part of the quiz creation/improvement process. Dennis Daniels has been trying to [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5678154150724088700&q=dennis+daniels+moodle+quiz&total=35&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=7 push for this possibility]. He calls it "question challenge". A possible use scenario: The teacher quickly prepares a quiz with minimal answer alternatives and makes it available to the fastest students. These are encouraged to add more answer alternatives with motivations, and react to the existing formulation, grading and feedback. The teacher reviews their feedback and easily incorporates the useful suggestions into the test before the main body of students try the quiz.

There are many possible parts that can be specific to the feedback for questions.

Is the question itself clear? This might be able to be covered by the same fields that are of interest for general feedback for pages.

Is my answer considered wrong though I feel it is right? It would be good to include a "certainty" rating. Certainty Based Marking, CBM, is a very valuable form of quiz feedback. It would be good to think about it at the same time as other quiz feedback. It is often a 3-step scale.: C1 C2 C3 where 1 is quite uncertain and 3 is very certain. Many teachers would appreciate the ability to connect the certainty to the grading of the question. But even while the grading implementation has not been successfully made yet, it would be valuable feedback for the teacher. "Hmm a lot of students have this right, but almost all of them are very uncertain about it." or "Hmm, this student was very certain about this incorrect answer."

Is the feedback I get for my answer: unclear, incorrect, possible to improve?

Does the user have other answers that (s)he was tempted to try? Usually people make similar mistakes and this could be a valuable resource for giving better feedback to common mistakes and for creating good "distractors" for multiple choice questions.

When a quiz editor receives feedback on a question it should be easy to use it to develop the question. Prepared fields may depend on the question type. "the answer I would have used", "an answer I might have used", "my motivation". The first 2 could be used to make new answer alternatives. The last as foundation for feedback for that answer. There should be a field for explaining how the learner got the answer. This could be the basis for the feedback field for that answer, if the teacher should chose to include that answer.There should be a field for explaining how the learner got the answer. This could be the basis for the feedback field for that answer, if the teacher should chose to include that answer.

===Question feedback form fields===

There are prepared fields below to help you formulate your
feedback, but in case you feel like
"''I would rather just explain in my own words''": ...............
............................................................
............................................................

[_]question/[X]word in this question unclear
(check on word-> expand to: which word: ____________ )
a)possible interpretation 1 __________________________
b)possible interpretation(s) 2, ... _____________________________

[_]grade questionable, motivation: ______________________________
(this perspective maybe the teacher should be able to choose not to ask about)

answer feedback [_]wrong/[_]unclear (this would be for the answer that was active
when the feedback button was pushed, and automatically included)
What was wrong/unclear: ________________________________
Suggested improvement: _________________________________

Other possible answers:
[_]Best possible, [_]acceptable, [_]should get partial credit, [_]Not right but probable
(if last two are checked expand to: Suggested credit [____]% )
answer: ________________________________________________
motivation: ____________________________________________
(how one would get this answer.)

[_]More possible answers? (gives more fields like above)

Social bookmarking is important since what's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander! The grade goal of students varies and this can mean that a highly rated resource for one person could be useless for another. Therefore a rating should be able to be connected to information about the user. Anonymous (though visible for admin if breaking netiquette) ratings are better than none, though the value would be increased if complemented by some info like grade goal, special branch, language proficiency, disabilities, etc.

=Who would the feedback go to?=

There could be some parts of a Moodle distribution that are default set to collect feedback. The pages that are for administrators, teacher editors should be of interest to Moodle developers. Help pages should collect to the documenters. It should be possible to turn off these default settings if a site doesn't want to participate.

The other parts could choose at different levels, admin, course developer, teacher, to invite feedback for specific courses, pages, questions and which recipients would get it.

Another consideration is making feedback easier/possible for people using Moodle off line. There are many situations, especially in many places in developing countries, where Internet access is poor, slow or nonexistent. Moodle is still usable on LAN or even a single computer or on a USB memory stick that can be used on different computers, some on line some off line. It would be good if there were preparations made for saving up feedback for when coming on line or for exporting to a file that could be sent on a floppy, through a mobile phone etc to someone on line.

==Some Examples==

Developers have made a new version of some component in Moodle and are really not sure about if it will be easily understood and function well. They can than choose to set a VERY Inviting feedback link. "This page is new and we would really like suggestions about how to make it better"
The feedback choice will be default in Moodle packages and the developers will get the feedback from any site that doesn't turn it off (and has a user giving feedback). The form should contain all the fields, as many as possible automatically, that would be needed to interface with the Tracker: first for search, then for entering a new bug/feature.

A school administrator would like to collect any views that anyone using the site has about pages and turns on a more general feedback invitation: "If this page doesn't meet your needs, please tell us!" (S)he choses to have the feedback go to (her)him and to the course teacher in charge of the course containing the page. Some administrators have wished for a channel for getting info, questions, suggestions even from non-registered visitors (usually on the front page but perhaps even in other guest open courses). Feedback from non-registered visitors should probably include a reCaptcha antispam protection.

A teacher could want to have students rate pages to be able to give other students a Social bookmarking guide especially if there is a lot of varied material that everybody isn't expected to go through. Or compare the webpages with the textbook. [the book was better][Both were needed][the webpage better][Neither helped much]. This particular type of feedback would be good to be able to display for the students, perhaps tagged according to grade goals, previous experience, math love/hate, etc.

=Links=

[http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-18067 The Moodle tracker issue for this suggestion.]

[http://blog.pbwiki.com/2008/03/28/the-foolproof-5-step-way-to-answer-tough-questions/ A blog post about answering tough questions] includes "Check afterwards to see if the questioner feels satisfied."

Editing question page

2010-03-18T09:23:34Z

Jeffjeff: /* See Also */ Link to forum thread about media in quiz answers

{{Lessons}}
Editing a question page in the Lesson Module is like editing other lesson pages. There are several types of questions. Almost mandatory reading should be the [http://moodle.org/help.php?module=lesson&file=questiontypes.html Question types help files] that can also be reached with the "?" next to Question Types (see Figure 1). [[Lesson module| Lessons page in MoodleDocs]] has a great deal of information on types of questions and their uses, in addition to [[Lesson module#Answers|answers]] and [[Lesson module#Grading|grading]]. We will spend the most time on multiple choice because most of the general use of '''title''', '''content''',''' response''', '''score''' and '''save''' are the same for all.

You may use a variety of types of questions:
{| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="text-align: center;"
| [[Image:Question_type_tabs.GIF]]
|-
| | '''Figure 1 - Version 1.6 tabs with question types'''
|}

==Multiple choice==
Moodle provides you with a lot of flexibility when creating this common question type. Figure 3 shows an example question. You can create single answer and multiple answer questions, display pictures in the question or as an answer and weight individual answers.

There are two types of multiple choice questions - single or multi correct answer questions. See figure 1 which shows the multi answer option.

;Single-answer questions
:These questions allow one and only one answer to be chosen by providing radio buttons next to the answers for students to select their answer.

{| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="text-align: center;"
| [[Image:Question_multiplechoice_expanded_med.gif]]
|-
| | '''Figure 3 - Edit mode, expanded view, multiple choice question page'''
|}

To set up a multiple choice question you proceed as follows:

#Check the multianswer box if you want to allow students to select more than one answer.(see box in Figure 1)
#'''Question title'''. Start out by giving the question a title. Remember the student will see this and it will also be used as a page name.
#'''Question context.''' Generally, this is where your question will be placed. The HTML editor tool bar is useful. It has a few simple formating tools.
##If you want students to fill in a blank with an answer, indicate the place with an underscore.
##It has the basic word processing icons, centering text, bold and others
##It has tools for linking, images to the question (content area), you have two options
###If you’ve already uploaded an image to your Files area (see Chapter 4 for details), it will be available to add to the question stem in a dropdown menu under the Question text area
###You can use the image icon to add a picture. [[Insert image|Click here for more insert image help.]]
#There are several options to format the appearance of answers in multiple choice questions.
##The simpliest is to write your answer in text in Answer 1 field. Repeat this for Answer 2 and so on.
##Adding picture or using the HTML editor in an answer or response requires a few more steps.
### AFTER YOU HAVE SAVED AND REOPENED THE QUESTION,
### click on the use editor box on, then the redisplay button at the bottom of the question screen. For example if a student has to choice one of two 2 pictures, then click on the box in Answer1 and Answer2 before clicking on the redisplay button. Help explains this process.
#Select a grade percentage for the answer. This is the percentage of the total points for the question that selecting this response is worth. You can select negative percentages as well as positive percentages. So if a question is worth 10 points, selecting a correct response in a multiple answer question may give you 50% of the possible points. Selecting a wrong answer may take away 10%.
#'''Response.''' If you wish, you can add comments for each question.
#'''Score'''. Review or enter in the [[Lesson module#Grading|score]] for each answer if you have turned on [https://docs.moodle.org/en/Adding/editing_a_lesson#Custom_Scoring custom_scoring] in lesson settings .
#'''Save.''' Select the “Insert Question” button at the bottom of the screen to save the question.

You have now added a multiple choice question to the question category.
*A true false question could be set up as a multiple choice question.
=== Multi-answer questions ===
A type of multiple choice question. The student must select every correct answer or the question is scored wrong. In edit mode, all the correct answers are at the top and the wrong answer below them. All correct answers must have the same score, response and jump. The wrong answers should also have the same score, response and jump.
[[Image:Lesson Question multianswer student.png|thumb|center|Multianswer question, student view with both graphics and text]]

==Short answer==
In this kind of question, the student answers by typing a word or phrase. There may be several possible correct answers, similar to a multi-answer question. By carefully constructing the answers, it is possible to give different grades for each correct answer.

Special considerations:
In version 1.6 there are two types of answer evaluations. The question type help files give more information on Simple analysis also used in Version 1.5 and both types in 1.6. [http://moodle.org/help.php?module=lesson&file=questiontypes.html Question types help files] will lead you to more information about short answers.

#Simple analysis. The answer does not depend upon the case of the text. You can use the asterisk character (*) as a wildcard to match any series of characters. For example, use ran*ing to match any word or phrase starting with "ran" and ending with "ing". If you really do want to match an asterisk then use a backslash like this: \*

The matching process goes through the answers in the order they appear on the screen. Once a match is found the process stops and the corresponding result (and response, if present) is returned.

#Regular expressions analysis. This uses a more complex notation method. For example, in Answer 1 the teacher types in the expression: "it’s blue, white(,| and) red/i". This will match any of those four student answers:

* it’s blue, white, red
* it’s blue, white and red
* It’s blue, white, red
* It’s blue, white and red
Please see the question type link above for more information.

You may like to prototype your short answer questions to catch common acceptable answers you hadn’t thought of. Start out by creating a few acceptable answers, then include the question in a quiz for no points. Be sure to tell students you are testing a new question. Once the quiz is over, review students’ answers and add their acceptable answers to the list.

==Numerical==

From the student perspective, a numerical question looks just like a short-answer question. The difference is that numerical answers are allowed to have an accepted error. This allows a continuous range of answers to be set.

==True/false==

In response to a question, the respondent selects from two options: True or False.

==Matching==

After an optional introduction or instruction, the student is presented with a list of sub-questions that have the same pull down list of answers. There is one correct match for each sub-part.

The student must select an answer to match each sub-question.

==Essay==

In response to a question (that may include an image) the respondent writes an answer in essay format. Three fields may be edited when creating the essay question: the question title, the body of the question, and feedback that can be displayed at a time chosen by the facilitator.

The essay question will not be assigned a grade until it has been reviewed by a teacher or facilitator by using the Manual Grading feature. When manually grading an essay question, the grader will be able to enter a custom comment in response to the respondent's essay and be able to assign a score for the essay.

==See Also==

*Please see the [[Drag and Drop question tutorial]] for more information.
*Quiz Questions in the [[Question bank]]
*[http://moodle.org/help.php?module=lesson&file=questiontypes.html Question types help files]
*[[Multiple choice question (Lesson)]]: more about multianswer scoring
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=87073 including graphics and sound in question answers (forum thread)]

[[Category:Teacher]]
[[Category:Lesson]]

GIFT format

2010-02-05T14:28:35Z

Jeffjeff: /* Format symbols */

GIFT format allows someone to use a text editor to write multiple-choice, true-false, short answer, matching missing word and numerical questions in a simple format than can be imported. The GIFT format is also an export file format available in Question bank.

*When creating a large numbers of questions, GIFT can provide a quick way of bulk loading questions either into a [[Question bank|question category]], or into a [[Adding_a_question_page#Importing_questions|Lesson]].
*Sometimes it is easier proofing questions in a question category by viewing them in a GIFT file.

==General instructions==
At least one blank line must be left between each question.

In the simple form, the question comes first, then the answers are set in between brackets, with an equal sign indicating the correct answer(s) and tilde the wrong answers. A Number sign will insert a response. Questions can be weighted by placing percentage signs around the weight. Comments are preceded by double slashes and are not imported.

Here are some useful [http://moodle.org/file.php/5/moddata/forum/121/236161/GIFT-examples.zip GIFT examples] than can be imported or used as rough template. Many of the examples below used the questions in the file as a starting point.

:''TIP:'' Any GIFT file '''must''' be correctly encoded in [[UTF8]]. Beware of some of Microsoft's "fake" Unicode implementation which is not compatible and may result in strange characters appearing in your quizzes. When in doubt, save as a simple MS-DOS text file.

===Format symbols===

Here are some common GIFT symbols and their use.

{|
! Symbol !! Use
|-
| // text || Comment until the end of the line (optional)
|-
| ::title:: || Question title (optional)
|-
| text || Question text (becomes title if no title specified)
|-
| { || Start answer(s)
|-
| {T} or {F} || True or False answer
|-
| { ... =right ... } || Correct answer for multiple choice, multiple answer, or fill-in-the-blank
|-
| { ... ~wrong ... } || Incorrect answer for multiple choice or multiple answer
|-
| #answer feedback || Answer feedback which should be given to the answer just preceding (can be right, partially right, wrong and of different types: mc, short answer, numerical ...)
|-
| { ... =item -> match ... } || Answer for matching questions
|-
| {# || Start numeric answer(s)
|-
| answer:tolerance || Answer ± tolerance for numeric question
|-
| low..high || Lower and upper range end points of accepted numerical answer
|-
| =%n%answer:tolerance || n percent credit for numeric range within tolerance from answer
|-
| } || End answer(s)
|}

Here are some quick examples:

// true/false
::Q1:: 1+1=2 {T}

// multiple choice
::Q2:: What's between orange and green in the spectrum? {=yellow ~red ~blue}

// fill-in-the-blank
::Q3:: Two plus {=two =2} equals four.

// matching
::Q4:: Which animal eats which food? { =cat -> cat food =dog -> dog food }

// math range question
::Q5:: What is a number from 1 to 5? {#3:2}

// math range specified with interval end points
::Q6:: What is a number from 1 to 5? {#1..5}
// translated on import to the same as Q5, but unavailable from Moodle question interface

===Format symbols explained===
The multiple choice format below as a comment line // for the question, when Moodle exports it the question unique id number will appear here. The first set of :: precedes the question title. The second :: precedes the actual question. The first { indicates the start of the answers. The correct answer is preceded by an = sign and wrong answers by a ~. Teacher responses have a # in front of them. The question ends with a } and then a blank line. NOTE it is { } not ( ) parenthesis! Usually these are gotten with help of the [AltGr] key.

//Comment line
::Question title
:: Question {
=A correct answer
~Wrong answer1
#A response to wrong answer1
~Wrong answer2
#A response to wrong answer2
~Wrong answer3
#A response to wrong answer3
~Wrong answer4
#A response to wrong answer4
}

The shortest format for a multiple choice question is:
Question{= A Correct Answer ~Wrong answer1 ~Wrong answer2 ~Wrong answer3 ~Wrong answer4 }

:''Tip:'' If you don't specify a question title the WHOLE question will be used as the title at the time of import into Moodle. There are pros and cons to allowing this to happen. Cons: This can add a lot of unnecessary words. This can include characters which might confuse the export GIFT process. Pros: On the other hand. if the start of each question is different, it can make finding a single question easier in a category list of questions. It will save you typing. Having the same title for every question is a very bad idea.

==Question format examples==
There are several ways to use a text editor to write a GIFT format. We will try to show the simple version for example and in some formats we will introduce some more complex features that can be imported into many Moodle Question formats.

===Multiple choice===
Here is a simple acceptable GIFT multiple choice format:
Who's buried in Grant's tomb?{=Grant ~no one ~Napoleon ~Churchill ~Mother Teresa }

Here is a longer format that uses most of the GIFT elements:

// question: 1 name: Grants tomb
::Grants tomb::Who is buried in Grant's tomb in New York City? {
=Grant
~No one
#Was true for 12 years, but Grant's remains were buried in the tomb in 1897
~Napoleon
#He was buried in France
~Churchill
#He was buried in England
~Mother Teresa
#She was buried in India
}

===True-false===

// question: 0 name: TrueStatement
::TrueStatement about Grant::Grant was buried in a tomb in New York City.{T}

===Short answer===
Here are two examples using the simple method showing possible right answers for credit.
Who's buried in Grant's tomb?{=Grant =Ulysses S. Grant =Ulysses Grant}

Two plus two equals {=four =4}

===Matching===
The matching uses the equal sign before the list item with a -> (dash and greater than) before the correct match.

Match the following countries with their corresponding capitals. {
=Canada -> Ottawa
=Italy -> Rome
=Japan -> Tokyo
=India -> New Delhi
}

===Missing word===
This is a simple missing word format
Grant {~is not buried =is buried ~might be buried} in Grant's tomb.

===Numerical questions===
Here is a simple numerical format question. It will accept a range of 5 years.
When was Ulysses S. Grant born?{#1822:5}

Here is a more complex numerical format with a ranged and partial credit given for 1 answer.
//this comment will be ignored in the import process
::Numerical example::
When was Ulysses S. Grant born? {#
=1822:0 #Correct! you will get full credit for this answer
=%50%1822:2 #He was born in 1822.
You get 50% credit for being close.
}

==Hints and Tips==
* Use the ::title:: at the beginning of every question to organize your questions when Moodle presents a list or exports them as another GIFT file. When the title is left blank, Moodle will put the beginning of the question as the title. Some teachers want to see something like "001 LIT101 Poe ref Purloin Letter" or "The Purloin Letter was written by (AmLit pg 254)" in the title.
* You can specify which question category the following questions will be in with
$CATEGORY: myParentCat/myCategory
(that line must be preceded and followed by an empty line. See more about this in the reference pdf below.
* You can specify markup if you need to format the question by setting [html], [moodle], [plain] or [markdown] just before the question text. See more about this in the reference pdf below.
* In the Lesson module, in a question page, correct answers jump by default to Next page and incorrect answers jump to This page (i.e. student has to "try again"). When importing from a GIFT format file, this is exactly the mechanism which is used.
* If you want a student to be taken directly from one question to the next irrespective of their answer being correct or incorrect: in the Lesson Settings, set Maximum number of attempts: to 1.
**Please note, however, that a message "correct / incorrect" will still be displayed to the student upon answering each question. If you do not want this (default) feedback message to be displayed then enter your own feedback message (i.e. "continue", "---", etc.)
**In case you want no visible message displayed then enter a non-breaking space as feedback. Moodle will not put it's automatic response because it sees the blank space. To do this, put a # after the answer and write [[Image:Nbsp.png]] (without spaces between these characters).
* Need to use a special GIFT character in your question or answer? Put a \ in front of the GIFT character.
**For example if you want to use curly braces, { or }, or equal sign, =, or # or ~ in a GIFT file (in a math question including TeX expressions) you must "escape" them by preceding them with a \ directly in front of each { or } or =. It is possible to use a replace program/macro/editor filter to do this conversion before importing to Moodle.
* Want to change T/F type questions to multiple choice? Consider exporting the T/F questions as a GIFT file, then using a text editor to replace the (T) with (=True ~False). Perhaps change the title slightly so you will recognize the new questions.

==Word processors and Spreadsheets tools that create GIFTs==
Several contributors have used macros to generate GIFT files from a more familiar popular programs.
* There are Word macros available for easily creating GIFT files. See [http://www.soberit.hut.fi/sprg/resources/moodle/GiftConverter.html this non-Moodle site] for downloads and instructions for use.
* There are several Excel spreadsheets for generating GIFT files. Several people have built upon other contributors work.
**The latest version was posted on 10 April 2007 and can be found in this thread with this file name: [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=66660 Excel2GIFTv1.1.zip by Timothy Takemoto]. There is also a set of instructions Excel2GIFTv1.1_Instructions.rtf by Jeff Shek on the same day in that thread.
**An earlier version of this Excel spreadsheet for generating multiple choice GIFT files [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=45245 initially created by Olga Forlani and improved by A. T. Wyatt].
*There are Open Office templates for generating GIFT files in Writer. These are located in the Quiz forum in the[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=20705&parent=168385 OOo template to write exams and convert to GIFT format thread].
**The most recent for OO 2.x is "OOo2GIFT_Template_05.zip" postes 17 December 2005 by Enrique Castro.
**An earlier version is "GIFT_template_OOo.zip" posted 22 March 2005 by Enrique Castro.
*There is an easy to use on line multiple question generator at [http://a4esl.org/c/qw.html a4esl.org]. Here you write your question(s) without formating marks, select Moodle and press the generate quiz button. This creates GIFT formatted text that can be pasted into a file for importing into Moodle.
**The initial format requires fewer keystrokes (it uses line position and returns) than the GIFT format, so you should save time and be less likely to create invalid data.

==See also==

* Here is a 2-column PDF [http://buypct.com/gift_reference.pdf GIFT Reference Sheet]
*[[Export questions]]
*[[Import questions]]
*[[Import and export FAQ]]
*[[Aiken Format]]
*[[Moodle XML format]]

[[Category:Questions]]

[[de:GIFT]]
[[fr:Format GIFT]]
[[ja:GIFTフォーマット]]

GIFT format

2010-02-05T12:42:28Z

Jeffjeff: /* Format symbols */ added numerical interval and corrected error in tolerance interpretation

GIFT format allows someone to use a text editor to write multiple-choice, true-false, short answer, matching missing word and numerical questions in a simple format than can be imported. The GIFT format is also an export file format available in Question bank.

*When creating a large numbers of questions, GIFT can provide a quick way of bulk loading questions either into a [[Question bank|question category]], or into a [[Adding_a_question_page#Importing_questions|Lesson]].
*Sometimes it is easier proofing questions in a question category by viewing them in a GIFT file.

==General instructions==
At least one blank line must be left between each question.

In the simple form, the question comes first, then the answers are set in between brackets, with an equal sign indicating the correct answer(s) and tilde the wrong answers. A Number sign will insert a response. Questions can be weighted by placing percentage signs around the weight. Comments are preceded by double slashes and are not imported.

Here are some useful [http://moodle.org/file.php/5/moddata/forum/121/236161/GIFT-examples.zip GIFT examples] than can be imported or used as rough template. Many of the examples below used the questions in the file as a starting point.

:''TIP:'' Any GIFT file '''must''' be correctly encoded in [[UTF8]]. Beware of some of Microsoft's "fake" Unicode implementation which is not compatible and may result in strange characters appearing in your quizzes. When in doubt, save as a simple MS-DOS text file.

===Format symbols===

Here are some common GIFT symbols and their use.

{|
! Symbol !! Use
|-
| // text || Comment until the end of the line (optional)
|-
| ::title:: || Question title (optional)
|-
| text || Question text (becomes title if no title specified)
|-
| { || Start answer(s)
|-
| {T} or {F} || True or False answer
|-
| { ... =right ... } || Correct answer for multiple choice, multiple answer, or fill-in-the-blank
|-
| { ... ~wrong ... } || Incorrect answer for multiple choice or multiple answer
|-
| { ... =item -> match ... } || Answer for matching questions
|-
| #answer feedback || Answer feedback or comment following an incorrect answer
|-
| {# || Numeric answer start
|-
| answer:tolerance || Answer and tolerance answering numeric question
|-
| low..high || Specifies lower and higher boundary of accepted numerical answer
|-
| =%n%answer:range || n percent credit for a numeric answer in range specified around answer by tolerance
|-
| } || End answers
|}

Here are some quick examples:

// true/false
::Q1:: 1+1=2 {T}

// multiple choice
::Q2:: What's between orange and green in the spectrum? {=yellow ~red ~blue}

// fill-in-the-blank
::Q3:: Two plus {=two =2} equals four.

// matching
::Q4:: Which animal eats which food? { =cat -> cat food =dog -> dog food }

// math range question
::Q5:: What is a number from 1 to 5? {#3:2}

// math range specified with interval end points (which unfortunately is not offered in the internal Moodle interface!)
::Q6:: What is a number from 1 to 5? {#1..5}
(This get translated on import to the same as Q5

===Format symbols explained===
The multiple choice format below as a comment line // for the question, when Moodle exports it the question unique id number will appear here. The first set of :: precedes the question title. The second :: precedes the actual question. The first { indicates the start of the answers. The correct answer is preceded by an = sign and wrong answers by a ~. Teacher responses have a # in front of them. The question ends with a } and then a blank line. NOTE it is { } not ( ) parenthesis! Usually these are gotten with help of the [AltGr] key.

//Comment line
::Question title
:: Question {
=A correct answer
~Wrong answer1
#A response to wrong answer1
~Wrong answer2
#A response to wrong answer2
~Wrong answer3
#A response to wrong answer3
~Wrong answer4
#A response to wrong answer4
}

The shortest format for a multiple choice question is:
Question{= A Correct Answer ~Wrong answer1 ~Wrong answer2 ~Wrong answer3 ~Wrong answer4 }

:''Tip:'' If you don't specify a question title the WHOLE question will be used as the title at the time of import into Moodle. There are pros and cons to allowing this to happen. Cons: This can add a lot of unnecessary words. This can include characters which might confuse the export GIFT process. Pros: On the other hand. if the start of each question is different, it can make finding a single question easier in a category list of questions. It will save you typing. Having the same title for every question is a very bad idea.

==Question format examples==
There are several ways to use a text editor to write a GIFT format. We will try to show the simple version for example and in some formats we will introduce some more complex features that can be imported into many Moodle Question formats.

===Multiple choice===
Here is a simple acceptable GIFT multiple choice format:
Who's buried in Grant's tomb?{=Grant ~no one ~Napoleon ~Churchill ~Mother Teresa }

Here is a longer format that uses most of the GIFT elements:

// question: 1 name: Grants tomb
::Grants tomb::Who is buried in Grant's tomb in New York City? {
=Grant
~No one
#Was true for 12 years, but Grant's remains were buried in the tomb in 1897
~Napoleon
#He was buried in France
~Churchill
#He was buried in England
~Mother Teresa
#She was buried in India
}

===True-false===

// question: 0 name: TrueStatement
::TrueStatement about Grant::Grant was buried in a tomb in New York City.{T}

===Short answer===
Here are two examples using the simple method showing possible right answers for credit.
Who's buried in Grant's tomb?{=Grant =Ulysses S. Grant =Ulysses Grant}

Two plus two equals {=four =4}

===Matching===
The matching uses the equal sign before the list item with a -> (dash and greater than) before the correct match.

Match the following countries with their corresponding capitals. {
=Canada -> Ottawa
=Italy -> Rome
=Japan -> Tokyo
=India -> New Delhi
}

===Missing word===
This is a simple missing word format
Grant {~is not buried =is buried ~might be buried} in Grant's tomb.

===Numerical questions===
Here is a simple numerical format question. It will accept a range of 5 years.
When was Ulysses S. Grant born?{#1822:5}

Here is a more complex numerical format with a ranged and partial credit given for 1 answer.
//this comment will be ignored in the import process
::Numerical example::
When was Ulysses S. Grant born? {#
=1822:0 #Correct! you will get full credit for this answer
=%50%1822:2 #He was born in 1822.
You get 50% credit for being close.
}

==Hints and Tips==
* Use the ::title:: at the beginning of every question to organize your questions when Moodle presents a list or exports them as another GIFT file. When the title is left blank, Moodle will put the beginning of the question as the title. Some teachers want to see something like "001 LIT101 Poe ref Purloin Letter" or "The Purloin Letter was written by (AmLit pg 254)" in the title.
* You can specify which question category the following questions will be in with
$CATEGORY: myParentCat/myCategory
(that line must be preceded and followed by an empty line. See more about this in the reference pdf below.
* You can specify markup if you need to format the question by setting [html], [moodle], [plain] or [markdown] just before the question text. See more about this in the reference pdf below.
* In the Lesson module, in a question page, correct answers jump by default to Next page and incorrect answers jump to This page (i.e. student has to "try again"). When importing from a GIFT format file, this is exactly the mechanism which is used.
* If you want a student to be taken directly from one question to the next irrespective of their answer being correct or incorrect: in the Lesson Settings, set Maximum number of attempts: to 1.
**Please note, however, that a message "correct / incorrect" will still be displayed to the student upon answering each question. If you do not want this (default) feedback message to be displayed then enter your own feedback message (i.e. "continue", "---", etc.)
**In case you want no visible message displayed then enter a non-breaking space as feedback. Moodle will not put it's automatic response because it sees the blank space. To do this, put a # after the answer and write [[Image:Nbsp.png]] (without spaces between these characters).
* Need to use a special GIFT character in your question or answer? Put a \ in front of the GIFT character.
**For example if you want to use curly braces, { or }, or equal sign, =, or # or ~ in a GIFT file (in a math question including TeX expressions) you must "escape" them by preceding them with a \ directly in front of each { or } or =. It is possible to use a replace program/macro/editor filter to do this conversion before importing to Moodle.
* Want to change T/F type questions to multiple choice? Consider exporting the T/F questions as a GIFT file, then using a text editor to replace the (T) with (=True ~False). Perhaps change the title slightly so you will recognize the new questions.

==Word processors and Spreadsheets tools that create GIFTs==
Several contributors have used macros to generate GIFT files from a more familiar popular programs.
* There are Word macros available for easily creating GIFT files. See [http://www.soberit.hut.fi/sprg/resources/moodle/GiftConverter.html this non-Moodle site] for downloads and instructions for use.
* There are several Excel spreadsheets for generating GIFT files. Several people have built upon other contributors work.
**The latest version was posted on 10 April 2007 and can be found in this thread with this file name: [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=66660 Excel2GIFTv1.1.zip by Timothy Takemoto]. There is also a set of instructions Excel2GIFTv1.1_Instructions.rtf by Jeff Shek on the same day in that thread.
**An earlier version of this Excel spreadsheet for generating multiple choice GIFT files [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=45245 initially created by Olga Forlani and improved by A. T. Wyatt].
*There are Open Office templates for generating GIFT files in Writer. These are located in the Quiz forum in the[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=20705&parent=168385 OOo template to write exams and convert to GIFT format thread].
**The most recent for OO 2.x is "OOo2GIFT_Template_05.zip" postes 17 December 2005 by Enrique Castro.
**An earlier version is "GIFT_template_OOo.zip" posted 22 March 2005 by Enrique Castro.
*There is an easy to use on line multiple question generator at [http://a4esl.org/c/qw.html a4esl.org]. Here you write your question(s) without formating marks, select Moodle and press the generate quiz button. This creates GIFT formatted text that can be pasted into a file for importing into Moodle.
**The initial format requires fewer keystrokes (it uses line position and returns) than the GIFT format, so you should save time and be less likely to create invalid data.

==See also==

* Here is a 2-column PDF [http://buypct.com/gift_reference.pdf GIFT Reference Sheet]
*[[Export questions]]
*[[Import questions]]
*[[Import and export FAQ]]
*[[Aiken Format]]
*[[Moodle XML format]]

[[Category:Questions]]

[[de:GIFT]]
[[fr:Format GIFT]]
[[ja:GIFTフォーマット]]

Converting files to UTF-8

2009-11-07T11:20:51Z

Jeffjeff: added some utf-8 compatible editors

{{Moodle 1.6}}
Some files, like Moodle import and export files and custom language packs or language files from third party modules need to be converted or treated as UTF-8 before they may be used with Moodle 1.6 and later.

==*nix like computers (including Mac OS X)==
Generally, this may be done with the ''iconv'' command on Unix, Linux or a Mac.

<code>iconv -f original_charset -t utf-8 originalfile > newfile</code>

''see also the windows explanation - the script there is one for *nix computers, but used in a cygwin environment''

==Windows computers==
For Windows, there are four methods of performing the conversion.

=== Method 1 ===
* Open the flat file in PSPad (a freeware editor) : http://www.pspad.com (some other editors people use: TextPad or NotePad++ or Crimson Editor, but there are many others. Windows built-in editors Notepad and Wordpad are often giving problems)
* Click on Format, UTF-8
* Save the file

=== Method 2 ===
Download the [http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libiconv.htm Windows version] of the iconv program. Download the "Complete package, except source" and run the setup program. The executable is located in the bin folder. Run from the command prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd) and follow the instructions as above.

=== Method 3 ===
The conversion may also be done by using [http://www.cygwin.com Cygwin], a Linux-like environment for Windows, and excecuting the iconv command in that environment. Here is an example of a working solution on Windows with [http://www.cygwin.com Cygwin]:

* Create a text file, named ToUtf8.txt
* Fill it with the following code

<pre>#!/bin/bash
FROM=iso-8859-1
TO=UTF-8
ICONV="iconv -f $FROM -t $TO"
# Convert
find ToUTF/ -type f -name "*" | while read fn; do
cp ${fn} ${fn}.bak
$ICONV < ${fn}.bak > ${fn}
rm ${fn}.bak
done</pre>

Two things should be changed for your local situation:

# FROM is the originating encoding (the one your original files are in)
# ToUTF is the foldername where the files that need to be converted are in. This folder may contain subfolders. Make sure you have a backup!

* Start Cygwin.
* With the ''cd foldername, cd.., ls'' commands, go to the folder on your windows machine where the ToUtf8.txt script and the ToUTF8 folder are in.
* Execute the script by typing ''sh ToUtf8.txt'' and your files will be converted.

=== Method 4 ===
The default Unicode format for Microsoft Excel and Wordpad is UTF-16.
These files can be converted to UTF-8 using GNU Emacs 22.1

* Open the file with Emacs
* Enter the command <code>C-x RET c utf-8 RET</code>
* You will then be asked what command you want this encoding to apply to
* Enter the command <code>C-x C-w</code> then enter a new file name
* The file you have saved will be UTF-8

==Saving files directly as UTF-8==

Most text editors these days can handle UTF-8, although you might have to tell them explicitly to do this when loading and saving files. (The notable exception to this is probably Notepad on Windows.)

===Windows===

You may save a file using Notepad (sometimes called "Editor") as UTF-8 but not with Wordpad.

# Open Notepad
# File - Save as -> there you see 3 fields set the last one called "encoding" to: UTF-8

===Mac OS X===

The built in text edit application has a 'Plain text encoding' option in the Save as... dialogue.

===Linux===

The standard Gnome Text Editor defaults to UTF-8 and has character set options when loading and saving.

==See also==

[[Category:Administrator]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:UTF-8]]

[[fr:Conversion de fichiers en UTF-8]]
[[ja:ファイルをUTF-8にコンバートする]]

LDAP authentication

2009-10-24T07:10:29Z

Jeffjeff: /* Bind settings */ spelling

{{Moodle 1.9}}
Location: Settings link in ''Administration > Users > [[Authentication]] > LDAP Server''

This document describes how to set up Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) authentication in Moodle. We cover the basic, advanced and some trouble shooting sections to assist the user in the installation and administrating LDAP in Moodle.
==Table of Contents==
__TOC__
==Basic Scenario==
The simple and straightforward approach for most installations.

===Assumptions===

# Your Moodle site is located at '''http://your.moodle.site/'''
# You have configured your PHP installation with the LDAP extension. It is loaded and activated, and it shows when you go to '''http://your.moodle.site/admin/phpinfo.php''' (logged in as user 'admin').
# Your LDAP server has '''192.168.1.100''' as its IP address.
# You are not using LDAP with SSL (also known as LDAPS) in your settings. This might prevent certain operations from working (e.g., you cannot update data if you are using MS Active Directory -- MS-AD from here on --), but should be OK if you just want to authenticate your users.
# You don't want your users to change their passwords the first time they log in into Moodle.
# You are using a single domain as the source of your authentication data in case you are using MS-AD (more on this in the Appendices).
# You are using a top level distinguished name (DN) of '''dc=my,dc=organization,dc=domain''' as the root of your LDAP tree.
# You have a non-privileged LDAP user account you will use to bind to the LDAP server. This is not necessary with certain LDAP servers, but MS-AD requires this and it won't hurt if you use it even if your LDAP server doesn't need it. Make sure '''this account and its password don't expire''', and make this password as strong as possible. Remember you only need to type this password once, when configuring Moodle, so don't be afraid of making it as hard to guess as possible. Let's say this user account has a DN of '''cn=ldap-user,dc=my,dc=organization,dc=domain''', and password '''hardtoguesspassword'''.
# All of your Moodle users are in an organizational unit (OU) called '''moodleusers''', which is right under your LDAP root. That OU has a DN of '''ou=moodleusers,dc=my,dc=organization,dc=domain'''.
# You '''don't''' want your LDAP users' passwords to be stored in Moodle at all.

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

===Configuring Moodle authentication===

Log in as an admin user and go to Administration >> Users >> Authentication >> Manage authentication. In the table that appears, enable the "LDAP Server" authentication option (click on the closed eye to make it open) and then click on the associated 'Settings' link. You will get a page similar to this one:

[[Image:auth_ldap_config_screenshot.jpg|center]]

Now, you just have to fill in the values. Let's go step by step.

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

====LDAP Server Settings====
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
! Field name
! Value to fill in
|-
| Host URL
| As the IP of your LDAP server is 192.168.1.100, type "'''ldap://192.168.1.100'''" (without the quotes), or just "'''192.168.1.100'''" (some people have trouble connecting with the first syntax, specially on MS Windows servers).
|-
| Version
| Unless you are using a really old LDAP server, '''version 3''' is the one you should choose.
|-
| LDAP Encoding
| Specify encoding used by LDAP server. Most probably utf-8.
|}

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

====Bind settings====
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
! Field name
! Value to fill in
|-
| Hide passwords
| As you '''don't''' want to store the users's password in Moodle's database, choose '''Yes''' here.
|-
| Distinguished Name
| This is the distinguished name of the bind user defined above. Just type "'''cn=ldap-user,dc=my,dc=organization,dc=domain'''" (without the quotes).
|-
| Password
| This is the bind user password defined above. Type "'''hardtoguesspassword'''" (without the quotes).
|}

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

====User lookup settings====
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
! Field name
! Value to fill in
|-
| User type
| Choose:
* '''Novel Edirectory''' if your LDAP server is running Novell's eDdirectory.
* '''posixAccount (rfc2307)''' if your LDAP server is running a RFC-2307 compatible LDAP server (choose this is your server is running OpenLDAP).
* '''posixAccount (rfc2307bis)''' if your LDAP server is running a RFC-2307bis compatible LDAP server.
* '''sambaSamAccount (v.3.0.7)''' if your LDAP server is running with SAMBA's 3.x LDAP schema extension and you want to use it.
* '''MS ActiveDirectory''' if your LDAP server is running Microsoft's Active Directory (MS-AD)
|-
| Contexts
| The DN of the context (container) where all of your Moodle users are found. Type '''ou=moodleusers,dc=my,dc=organization,dc=domain''' here.
|-
| Search subcontexts
| If you have any sub organizational units (subcontexts) hanging from '''ou=moodleusers,dc=my,dc=organization,dc=domain''' and you want Moodle to search there too, set this to '''yes'''. Otherwise, set this to '''no'''.
|-
| Dereference aliases
| Sometimes your LDAP server will tell you that the real value you are searching for is in fact in another part of the LDAP tree (this is called an alias). If you want Moodle to 'dereference' the alias and fetch the real value from the original location, set this to '''yes'''. If you don't want Moodle to dereference it, set this to '''no'''. If you are using MS-AD, set this to '''no'''.
|-
| User attribute
| The attribute used to name/search users in your LDAP tree. This option takes a default value based on the ''User type'' value you choosed above. So unless you need something special, you don't need to fill this in.

By the way, it's usually '''cn''' (Novell eDirectory and MS-AD) or '''uid''' (RFC-2037, RFC-2037bis and SAMBA 3.x LDAP extension), but if you are using MS-AD you could use '''sAMAccountName''' (the pre-Windows 2000 logon account name) if you need too.
|-
| Member attribute
| The attribute used to list the members of a given group. This option takes a default value based on the ''User type'' value you choosed above. So unless you need something special, you don't need to fill this in.

By the way, the usual values are '''member''' and '''memberUid'''.
|-
| Member attribute uses dn
| Whether the member attribute contains distinguished names (1) or not (0).This option takes a default value based on the ''User type'' value you choosed above. So unless you need something special, you don't need to fill this in.
|-
| Object class
| The type of LDAP object used to search for users. This option takes a default value based on the ''User type'' value you choosed above. So unless you need something special, you don't need to fill this in.

Here are the default values for each of the ''ldap_user_type'' values:
* '''User''' for Novel eDirectory
* '''posixAccount''' for RFC-2037 and RFC-2037bis
* '''sambaSamAccount''' for SAMBA 3.0.x LDAP extension
* '''user''' for MS-AD
If you get an error about a problem with updating the ldap server (even if you have specified not to write changes back to the ldap server) try setting the ldap object class to * - see http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=70566 for a discussion on this problem
|}

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

====Force change password====
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
! Field name
! Value to fill in
|-
| Force change password
| Set this to ''Yes'' if you want to force your users to change their password on the first login into Moodle. Otherwise, set this to ''no''. Bear in mind the password they are forced to change is the one stored in your LDAP server.

As you don't want your users to change their passwords in their first login, leave this set to ''No''
|-
| Use standard Change Password Page
|
* Setting this to ''Yes'' makes Moodle use it's own standard password change page, everytime users want to change their passwords.
* Setting this to ''No'' makes Moodle use the the page specified in the field called "Password change URL" (see below).

Bear in mind that changing your LDAP passwords from Moodle might require a LDAPS connection (this is actually a requirement for MS-AD). In addition to that, the bind user specified above must have the rights needed to change other users' passwords.

Also, code for changing passwords from Moodle for anything but Novell eDirectory and Active Directory is almost not tested, so this may or may not work for other LDAP servers.
|-
| Password Format
| Specify how the new password is encrypted before sending it to the LDAP server: Plain text, MD5 hash or SHA-1 hash. MS-AD uses plain text, for example.
|-
| Password change URL
| Here you can specify a location at which your users can recover or change their username/password if they've forgotten it. This will be provided to users as a button on the login page and their user page. if you leave this blank the button will not be printed.
|}

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

====LDAP password expiration settings====
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
! Field name
! Value to fill in
|-
| Expiration
|
* Setting this to ''No'' will make Moodle not to check if the password of the user has expired or not.
* Setting this to ''LDAP'' will make Moodle check if the LDAP password of the user has expired or not, and warn her a number of days before the password expires.

Current code only deals with Novell eDirectory LDAP server and MS-AD.

So unless you have Novell eDirectory server or MS-AD, choose ''No'' here.
|-
| Expiration warning
| This value sets how many days in advance of password expiration the user is warned that her password is about to expire.
|-
| Expiration attribute.
| The LDAP user attribute used to check password expiration. This option takes a default value based on the ''User type'' value you choosed above. So unless you need something special, you don't need to fill this in.
|-
| Grace logins
| This setting is specific to Novell eDirectory. If set to ''Yes'', enable LDAP gracelogin support. After password has expired the user can login until gracelogin count is 0.

So unless you have Novell eDirectory server and want to allow gracelogin support, choose ''No'' here.
|-
| Grace login attribute
| This setting is currently not used in the code (and is specific to Novell eDirectory).

So you don't need to fill this in.
|}

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

====Enable user creation====
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
! Field name
! Value to fill in
|-
| Create users externally
| New (anonymous) users can self-create user accounts on the external LDAP server and confirm them via email. If you enable this, remember to also configure module-specific options for user creation and to fill in some instructions in ''auth_instructions'' field in Administration >> Users >> Authentication >> Manage authentication. Otherwise the new users won't be able to self-create new accounts.

As of now, only Novell eDirectory and MS-AD can create users externally.
|-
| Context for new users
| Specify the context where users are created. This context should be different from other users' contexts to prevent security issues.
|}

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

====Course creation====
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
! Field name
! Value to fill in
|-
| Creators
| The DN of the group that contains all of your Moodle creators. This is typically a posixGroup with a "memberUid" attribute for each user you want to be a creator. If your group is called ''creators'', type '''cn=creators,ou=moodleusers,dc=my,dc=organization,dc=domain''' here. Each memberUid attribute contains the CN of a user who is authorized to be a creator. Do not use the user's full DN (e.g., not '''memberUid: cn=JoeTeacher,ou=moodleusers,dc-my,dc=organizations,dc=domain''', but rather '''memberUid: JoeTeacher''').

In eDirectory, the objectClass for a group is (by default) not '''posixGroup''' but '''groupOfNames,''' whose member attribute is '''member,''' not '''memberUid,''' and whose value is the full DN of the user in question. Although you can probably modify Moodle's code to use this field, a better solution is just to add a new '''objectClass''' attribute of '''posixGroup''' to your creators group and put the CNs for each creator in a '''memberUid''' attribute.

In MS Active Directory, you will need to create a security group for your creators to be part of and then add them all. If your ldap context above is 'ou=staff,dc=my,dc=org' then your group should then be 'cn=creators,ou=staff,dc=my,dc=org'. If some of the users are from other contexts and have been added to the same security group, you'll have to add these as separate contexts after the first one using the same format.
|}

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

====Cron synchronization script====
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
! Field name
! Value to fill in
|-
| Removed ext user
| Specify what to do with internal user account during mass synchronization when user was removed from external source. Only suspended users are automatically revived if they reappear in ext source.
|}

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

====NTLM SSO====
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
! Field name
! Value to fill in
|-
| Enable
| If you want to use NTLM SSO (see details at [[NTLM_authentication]]), choose ''Yes'' here. Otherwise, choose ''No''.
|-
| Subnet
| Specify the subnets of the clients that will use NTLM SSO (see details at [[NTLM_authentication]]).
|-
| MS IE Fast Path?
| If all of you clients (or most of them) are using MS Internet Explorer, you can set this option to bypasses certain steps of the SSO login and speed up login times. This only works with MS Internet Explorer, but deals with other browsers in a sensible way (they are automatically sent to the plain login page).
|}

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

====Data Mapping====
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
! Field name
! Value to fill in
|-
| First name
| The name of the attribute that holds the first name of your users in your LDAP server. This is usually '''givenName'''.

This setting is optional
|-
| Surname
| The name of the attribute that holds the surname of your users in your LDAP server. This is usually '''sn'''.

This setting is optional
|-
| Email address
| The name of the attribute that holds the email address of your users in your LDAP server. This is usually '''mail'''.

This setting is optional
|-
| City/town
| The name of the attribute that holds the city/town of your users in your LDAP server. This is usully '''l''' (lowercase L) or '''localityName''' (not valid in MS-AD).

This setting is optional
|-
| Country
| The name of the attribute that holds the couuntry of your users in your LDAP server. This is usully '''c''' or '''countryName''' (not valid in MS-AD).

This setting is optional
|-
| Language
| '''preferredLanguage'''

This setting is optional
|-
| Description
| '''description'''

This setting is optional
|-
| Webpage
| This setting is optional
|-
| ID Number
|

This setting is optional
|-
| Institution
|

This setting is optional
|-
| Department
| The name of the attribute that holds the department name of your users in your LDAP server. This is usully '''departmentNumber''' (for posixAccount and maybe eDirectory) or '''department''' (for MS-AD).

This setting is optional
|-
| Phone 1
| The name of the attribute that holds the telephone number of your users in your LDAP server. This is usually '''telephoneNumber'''.

This setting is optional
|-
| Phone 2
| The name of the attribute that holds an additional telephone number of your users in your LDAP server. This can be '''homePhone''', '''mobile''', '''pager''', '''facsimileTelephoneNumber''' or even others.

This setting is optional
|-
| Address
| The name of the attribute that holds the street address of your users in your LDAP server. This is usully '''streetAddress''' or '''street'.

This setting is optional
|}

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

===Setting up regular automatic synchronisation using cron===
There is a script located at /auth/ldap/auth_ldap_sync_users.php which will create or suspend/delete (see the setting above) all LDAP accounts automatically. Ideally, this is called from the command line once a day during a quiet time using exactly the same procedure as the standard [[Cron|cron]] job (so you will end up with two cron entries). It is important, however, to make sure that all of the above LDAP settings are working properly before you try this, as well as backing up your database and moodledata folders. Poor LDAP configuration could lead to users being wrongly deleted.

If you find that the script is not running through all of your users properly and you have MS Active Directory + over 1000 users, this is because by default, MS AD only sends back 1000 users at a time. Follow the instructions [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315071 here] to set the MaxPageSize setting to a number higher than your total number of users (both now and in future) to fix it.

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

==Active Directory help==
[[Active Directory]] is Microsoft's directory service. It is included in Windows 2000 Server and later versions of their operating system. For more information about subjects below, '''[[Active Directory|please go here]]'''.

*Warning: The PHP LDAP module does not seem to be present
*LDAP-module cannot connect any LDAP servers
*Getting correct CNs for Contexts and Creators
*Getting the right user_attribute
*Installing ldp.exe Server Tool
*Example Active Directory Configuration
*Child Domains and the Global Catalog in MS Active Directory
*Enabling the Global Catalog
*Active Directory with Moodle 1.8
*MS Active Directory + SSL

==Advanced Scenarios - Multiple servers or locations==
For larger installations with multiple LDAP servers, or multiple locations (contexts) in a LDAP tree.

===Using multiple LDAP Servers===
Entering more than one name in the ldap_host_url field can provide some sort of resilience to your system. Simply use the syntax :
ldap://my.first.server ; ldap://my.second.server ; ...

Of course, this will only work if all the servers share the same directory information, using a replication or synchronization mecanism once introduced in eDirectory and now generalized to the main LDAP-compatible directories.

There is one drawback in Moodle 1.5 - 1.6 implementation of LDAP authentication : the auth_ldap_connect() function processes the servers sequentially, not in a round robin mode. Thus, if the primary server fails, you will have to wait for the connection to time out before switching to the following one.

===Using multiple user locations (contexts) in your LDAP tree===
There is no need to use multiple user locations if your directory tree is flat, i.e. if all user accounts reside in a '''ou=people,dc=my,dc=organization,dc=domain''' or '''ou=people,o=myorg''' container.

At the opposite, if you use the ACL mecanism to delegate user management, there are chances that your users will be stored in containers like '''ou=students,ou=dept1,o=myorg''' and '''ou=students,ou=dept2,o=myorg''' ...

Then there is an alternative :
* Look at the '''o=myorg''' level with the ldap_search_sub attribute set to '''yes'''.
* Set the ldap_context to '''ou=students,ou=dept1,o=myorg ; ou=students,ou=dept2,o=myorg'''.

Choosing between these two solutions supposes some sort of benchmarking, as the result depends heavily on the structure of your directory tree '''and''' on your LDAP software indexing capabilities. Simply note that there is a probability in such deep trees that two users share the same ''common name'' (cn), while having different ''distinguished names''. Then only the second solution will have a deterministic result (returning allways the same user).

===Using LDAPS (LDAP + SSL)===
====Enabling LDAPS on the LDAP server side====

* [[Active_Directory#MS_Active_Directory_.2B_SSL|Enabling LDAPS on MS Active Directory ]]

====Enabling LDAPS on the client side (Moodle server)====

* If you are running Moodle on MS Windows, you need to tell PHP's OpenLDAP extension to disable SSL server certificate checking. You must create a directory called ''C:\OpenLDAP\sysconf''. In this directory, create a file called ''ldap.conf'' with the following content:

TLS_REQCERT never

* If you are running Moodle on Linux or any other Unix-like operating system, and you want to disable SSL server certificate checking, you need to edit the OpenLDAP client configuration file (usually /etc/ldap.conf or /etc/ldap/ldap.conf or even /etc/openldap/ldap.conf) and make sure you have a line like the following one:

TLS_REQCERT never

Now you should be able to use '''ldaps://''' when connecting to your LDAP server.

If you have the certificate of the LDAPS server as a file and want to check the certificate for the connection, copy the certificate file to an arbitary directory (e.g. /etc/ldap/certificate.pem) on your client and change the content of the ''ldap.conf'' as follows:

TLS_REQCERT demand
TLS_CACERT /etc/ldap/certificate.pem

When the requested server certificate is bad or not provided, the connection to the LDAPS server is immediately terminated.

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

==Appendices==
===ldap auth_user_create() only suports Novell===

After configuring user authentication with ldap I realized ldap only support edir (Novell) when combining ldap an email user confirmation. For example in my case (I use openldap) I have the following error after filling the user form:

auth: ldap auth_user_create() does not support selected usertype:"rfc2307" (..yet)

=== Setting Resource Limits RedHat Directory Server ===

Operational attributes can be set for the bind user DN using the command-line.
One can simply use ldapmodify to add the following attributes:

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"
! Attribute Name
! Description
|-
| nsLookThroughLimit
| Specifies how many entries are examined for a search operation. Giving this attribute a value of -1 indicates that there is no limit.
|-
| nsSizeLimit
| Specifies the maximum number of entries the server returns to a client application in response to a search operation. Giving this attribute a value of -1 indicates that there is no limit.
|-
| nsTimeLimit
| Specifies the maximum time the server spends processing a search operation. Giving this attribute a value of -1 indicates that there is no time limit.
|-
| nsIdleTimeout
| Specifies the time a connection to the server can be idle before the connection is dropped. The value is given in seconds. Giving this attribute a value of -1 indicates that there is no limit.
|}

<pre> LDAP Console Command-Line

ldapmodify -h redhat_dir_server -p 389 -D "cn=directory manager" -w secretpwd

dn: uid=MoodleAdmin,ou=system,dc=myschool,dc=edu
changetype: modify
add:nsSizeLimit
nsSizeLimit: 1000
</pre>

[[LDAP_authentication#Table of Contents|Table of Contents]]

==See also==

* [[NTLM_authentication]]
* [[Active_Directory]]
* [[LDAP enrolment]]
* [http://download.moodle.org/download.php/docs/en/how-to_guides/ldap_auth_and_enrolment_set-up.pdf LDAP auth and enrolment set-up guide] (PDF 227KB)

Using Moodle:
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=42 User authentication forum]
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=32168 PHP LDAP module does not seem to be present] forum discussion

[[Category:Authentication]]

[[es:LDAP_authentication]]
[[fr:Utiliser un serveur LDAP]]
[[ja:LDAP認証]]
[[zh:LDAP认证]]
[[de:Authentifizierung über LDAP]]

Setting up Netbeans

2009-10-16T07:55:20Z

Jeffjeff: /* Coding faster */

[http://www.netbeans.org/features/php/index.html NetBeans] has got a good PHP support. You find a host of information on the website (tutorials, developer blog, screen casts, etc.).

== Features ==
* CVS integration: see all changes, lines deletion, diff in real time, show annotations, diff history...
* Ctrl+Click: Go to declaration
* Export/Import Diff Patch
* Easy navigation
* List of functions
* Code completion
* Instant rename
* HTML, CSS, JavaScript support
* MySQL manager
* Quick Search
* Very few bugs

== Installation ==

* I recommend downloading the latest [http://www.netbeans.org/downloads/indexB.html 6.7.1 version with PHP support ]. It's only a 26 MB download.
* Install and run it.

== Set up for Moodle development ==

* Checkout your Moodle project with a '''CVS client''' - see [[CVS for Administrators]] or [[Development:CVS for developers|CVS for Developers]].

* Open File > New Project > PHP > PHP Application > Next
: You're going to set the project now. ''Name'', ''Location'' and ''Folder'' are used by NetBeans and are not related to the source code. So you can choose whatever you like, except your source folder. ''Sources'' has to be your checked out Moodle branch/head folder. The rest is clear enough. Don't forget to choose UTF-8 for ''Default Encoding''.

: Example:

Project Name: Moodle 1.9 Stable
Project Location: C:\Users\jerome\Documents\NetBeansProjects
Project Folder: C:\Users\jerome\Documents\NetBeansProjects\Moodle 1.9 Stable
Project Sources: C:\Users\jerome\Projects\branch19_STABLE\moodle
Project URL: http://localhost/moodle19/
Index File: index.php
Create: unchecked
Default Encoding: UTF-8
Set as Main Project: unchecked

* Click on Finish.

* Start coding!

== CVS with NetBeans ==

NetBeans comes with '''integrated CVS support''' which might be the easiest way to check out Moodle.

* In NetBeans, select Window->Versioning->CVS->Checkout
* Select Team->CVS->Checkout
* Enter into CVS Root: '':pserver:anonymous@us.cvs.moodle.org:/cvsroot/moodle''
: (Non-US-residents might use one of the other [https://docs.moodle.org/en/CVS_for_Administrators#CVS_Servers Moodle CVS servers] nearer to them.)
* Click ''Next''
* Browse or enter into ''Module:'' moodle
* Browse or enter into ''Branch:'' MOODLE_19_STABLE
* Browse or enter into ''Local Folder:'' C:\xampp\htdocs
* Click ''Finish'' (and wait a few minutes for Moodle to be checked out)
* When you get the dialog box "Do you want to create an IDE project from the checked-out sources?", Click "Create Project..."
* Select PHP Application with Existing Sources, and click Next
* Browse or enter into ''Sources Folder'' C:\xampp\htdocs\moodle
* Enter into ''Project Name:'' moodle
* Keep the other defaults and click next
* ''Run As:'' should have selected ''Local Web Site (running on local web server)''
* Enter into Project URL http://localhost/moodle/
* Browse or enter into ''Index File:'' index.php
* Click ''Finish''

=== Few warnings ===
Some of these warnings could also apply to other IDE:
* If you want to delete a file from your computer but not from CVS, delete it from Windows Explorer/Nautilus/Finder. Otherwise your next commit could delete the file from CVS. In case you have already deleted a wrong file from Netbeans: with Windows Explorer/Nautilus/Finder, delete all the folder content of this deleted file (including the CVS folder) and update the folder.
* If you rename files and that other people are working on them, Netbeans could end up to mess up your CVS folder (even though that is quite rare). Then Netbeans CVS will refuse to update your code displaying a no explicit error as '''Update Failed'''. In this case, delete the content of the damaged folder with Windows Explorer/Nautilus/Finder. Then update this folder.
* If you create a patch or a new php file with Netbeans on Microsoft Windows, please check that it's a Unix format file. You may want to use another software to create Unix format patch/php file.

== Optimization ==

1. You may want to run Netbeans with the Sun JDK. Netbeans seems to work a bit better with the Sun JDK. Download it from [http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp]. You'll have to edit Netbeans config file. Open netbeans/etc/netbeans.conf. Then uncomment and edit:

netbeans_jdkhome="your_JDK_path"

2. To change the Netbeans look and feel run netbeans in the command line with this parameter:
"netbeans" --laf javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel

3. If Netbeans starts to slow down, give it more memory
"netbeans" -J-Xmx600m

== Coding faster ==
You may want to have a look at the [http://wiki.netbeans.org/KeymapProfileFor60 keyboard shortcuts]. 
You can also follow the [http://blogs.sun.com/netbeansphp/ Netbeans PHP blog].

== See also: ==
* Moodle forum: [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=112972 NetBeans 6.5 for moodle/PHP/debugging is a better experience v.s Eclipse]
* [http://www.netbeans.org/kb/trails/php.html NetBeans PHP Learning Trail]
* [http://wiki.netbeans.org/PHP NetBeans PHP Wiki]

[[Category:Developer|NetBeans]]
[[Category:Developer tools|NetBeans]]

Tracking Moodle CVS with git

2009-10-14T10:43:26Z

Jeffjeff: /* Anyone got any experience with NetBeans and GIT? */

I am currently doing a bit of an overhaul of this page to remove obsolete coigto stuff - dont really see a reason why anyone would use it or want docs for it.--[[User:Dan Poltawski|Dan Poltawski]] 17:04, 1 October 2008 (CDT)
:Great! Thanks! --[[User:Eloy Lafuente (stronk7)|Eloy Lafuente (stronk7)]] 17:05, 1 October 2008 (CDT)

== Mass merge ==

"...If you are applying patches to CVS, you can then use git-cvsexportcommit or plain old patch -p1 filename..."

can anybody please elaborate a bit? Provide and example? TIA --[[User:David Mudrak|David Mudrak]] 15:30, 18 December 2008 (CST)

== Anyone got any experience with NetBeans and GIT? ==

I've just started getting into CVS and am using netBeans. I like NetBeans so far and using the usual CVS seems to work OK.

GIT seem to be "quite the rage" now. Now I'm wondering should I try to get into that while I'm still learning CVS? A google search reveals at least one plugin for GIT and NetBeans: NBgit. [[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 10:43, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

=== CVS Export ===

Is that command example even correct - "GIT_DIR=../moodle-19/.git git cvsexportcommit b38cb61" doesn't look like any correct syntax and is nothing like the example in the manual page.. --[[User:Howard Miller|Howard Miller]] 10:22, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

$ export GIT_DIR=~/project/.git
$ cd ~/project_cvs_checkout
$ git cvsexportcommit -v <commit-sha1>
$ cvs commit -F .msg <files>

Also, this paragraph:

''"If the patches merge cleanly, future updates will recognise the already-applied patch. In that sense the merger in git is smarter than the merger in Cogito, consider using git-pull rather than cg-update. Note that if you see conflicts using git-pull you will have to work a bit harder to resolve them. Make sure you are familiar with handling merge conflicts with pure git before trying this."''

...doesn't mean anything to me at all (what's Cogito and cg-update?). It needs contextualised in some way. This is probably a very useful feature while Moodle is CVS and could use some more explanation. --[[User:Howard Miller|Howard Miller]] 10:22, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Open protocol for accessing question engines

2009-10-14T08:18:16Z

Jeffjeff: /* The parts of the system */ tale->take

==History==

Previously (2004 to early 2005) there was an attempt (by the Serving Maths Project, Gustav Delius and others) to create something called [http://mantis.york.ac.uk/moodle/course/view.php?id=14 Remote Question Protocol]. This was a web service interface designed to allow question from different question engines (for example [http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/C.J.Sangwin/aim/ AIM] and [http://stack.bham.ac.uk/ STACK]) to be included in Moodle quizzes. The effort ran out of resources at a time when the code was not in a working state. Several groups have an interest in getting RQP working again, although no one is currently working on it.

During 2005, The Open University (mainly Sam Marshall) developed in-house an online assessment system called [http://www.open.ac.uk/openmarkexamples/ OpenMark]. Its architecture was of separate question engines and a test navigator, communicating via a web service link which we call Opaque (Open Protocol for Accessing QUestion Engines).

Then in May 2006, I (Tim Hunt) took over maintenance of the quiz module from Gustav. At which point I learned about RQP. I was immediately struck by how similar Opaque and RQP were conceptually, although they differed in details.

In autumn 2006, the OU wanted to be able to include OM question in Moodle quizzes. Our choices are to either
# change OM to use RQP; or
# change (add to) Moodle to support Opaque.
We have pretty-much decided to do 2., because it is less work for us, and becuase Opaque currenly works and RQP doesn't. Therefore, RQP implementing question engines will have to change anyway, and since Opaque is conceptually similar to RQP, changing to Opaque won't be much more work that changed to whatever the next iteration of RQP would have been.

OpenMark was released under an open source license (hosted at [http://openmark.dev.java.net/ dev.java.net]) in Spring 2007; and STACK 2.0 (http://stack.bham.ac.uk/) was released just before Christmas 2007, so there are now at least two freely available Opaque compatible systems.

==Rationale==

Why are people interested in this sort of protocol? The answer is separation of concerns. The things an online assessment system has to do are:
# Identify students, test, which students can do which tests at what times, and which questions make up each test.
# Record the scores and other information that results from students attempting test, and provide reporting fascilities for this information.
# Display questions to students and process the responses the students make to generate scores, feedback, etc.
# Allow teachers to create and configure the questions.

Moodle is very good at points 1 and 2, there is a lot of boring book-keeping do be done here, and it is already implemented in Moodle.

For the developers who are interested in Opaque/RQP, the really interesting part of an assessment system is 3. They want to be able to pose really intersting types of questions to students to really make them think, and then use sophisticated algorithms to analyse the student's response and give targeted feedback when they get things wrong.

Doing this may require specialist tools. For example, STACK and AIM both use Computer algebra systems to set and mark interesting mathematical questions. OpenMark lets question authors write answer marking and feedback generation algorithms in Java code, with a library of helpful classes and functions. It is simply not feasible to rewrite these question engines in PHP and turn them into Moodle question types. Hence the search for another way to get these questions into Moodle.

Of course, each of STACK, AIM, OM, etc. could programme their own solutions to the administration parts 1 and 2. However, this is a needless duplication of effort. It does not allow questions from different question engines to be combined in the same test. And people who are interested in writing advanced question engines are normally not very interested in writing student administration systems.

Finally, there is point 4, question authoring. Authoring advanced question types is a complicated task that will probably need a specialised interface. For example STACK provides its own editing interface. OM questions are authored in a Java IDE, then complied to a JAR file and uploaded to the server. This is all beyond the scope of Opaque. RQP started trying to address authoring at about the point that it was abandoned.

Our approach is that Opaque should be optimised point 3 above - presenting questions to students and processing their responses. This is the point where interoperability is required. Interoperability is hard, so let us keep the scope of the protocol as small as possible. Interoperability of student data and results is a separate problem. Authoring of advanced question types is specialised to the paticular question engine, and interoperability is not possible.

All this is in the context of an online assessment system. Therefore, we are interested in questions that get presented to students in their web browser as HTML, with accompanying CSS, Javascript, Images and other media files. Student responses get sent back as form sumissions, that is HTTP POST requests. Concievably the trendy XMLHttpRequest could be used instead, but it is not really necessary. Opaque only works with form submissions, which is simple and sufficient.

==Overview of Opaque==

Opaque is a web service protocol based on SOAP.

===The parts of the system===

[[Image:OPAQUE_block_diagram.png]]

Opaque is only used at the point when questions are being presented to students, and possibly later when a student's attempt is being reviewed by a teacher.

It allows the test management system (TMS) to delegate the rendering of questions, the scoring of responses and the generation of feedback to a remote question engine.

There may be a separate question bank where question definitions are stored, or question definitions may be stored within the question engine (e.g. Stack) or the test management system may also take the role of question bank (e.g. OM).

The TMS takes full responsibility for authenticating students and controlling which questions they see. It asks an appropriate question engine to render each question. The question just had to process the questions and responses it is told to process.

Although Opaque is designed to allow interoperability between arbitrary different '''types''' of question engines and TMSs, the expectation is that any online assessment system will only use particular instances of each component.

===Identifying questions===

When the TMS asks the question engine to render a particular qustion, it needs to identify that question. This is done using three pieces of information:

;questionbank base URL
:If the question engine is designed to fetch question definitions from a remote question bank, then this is base URL for fetching questions from. For example '''<nowiki>http://example.com/questionbank</nowiki>'''.
;question id
:This is a string conatining only the characters [_a-z0-9.], and also matching the syntactic rules for Java package names. That is, it is one or more 'words' separated by '.'s, each word matching the regexp '''[_a-z][_a-z0-9]*'''. This identifies the question withing the question bank. For example '''calculus.diff01a''' or '''_12345'''.
;question version
:This is a string of the fomat major.minor, where major and minor are both decimal integers with no leading zero. Version with the same major version number should all behave roughly the same way. minor version changes are things like bug fixes. Therefore, a test definition would probably only specify which major version of the question to use, and the most recent minor version would be picked by the TMS. The full version number is needed for resuming interrupted sessions and reviewing student responsees. See [[#uestion_sessions_and_the_reproducability_guarantee|reproducability guarantee]] below. For example '''1.1''', '''1.2'''.

If the question engine fetches question definitions from a remote question bank, then it will fetch a particular question by requesting the URL ''questionbankBaseURL''/''questionId''.''questionVersion'' (e.g. '''<nowiki>http://example.com/questionbank/calculus.diff01a.1.1</nowiki>'''). This returns a single block of data (e.g. OM questions are jar files conaining XML, media files and java code). The format of this data is up to the question engine. It is the responsibility of the TMS to only ask question engines to render questions that they can understand. In the question engine supports different question formats, then it may use the mime type of the response from the question bank to decide how to process this question.

If the question engine stores its own questions, then it can ignore the questionbank base URL, and use the question id and question version to uniquely identify the requested question within its datastore.

===Data passed when a question session is started===

When a new question session is stared, certain information is passed from the test navigator to the question engine:

;randomseed: Any randomisation done be the question engine should be seeded with this number. [[#Question_sessions_and_the_reproducability_guarantee|See below for details]].
;userid: For information only, for example to improve the logging done at the question engine.
;language: Information about the current user's preferred language.
;passkey: This may be used to improve security. The value passed is md5($secret . $userID), where $secret is a shared secret string (8 characters or fewer) specific to this question engine.

The question engine may ignore any of these pieces of data.

===What can be included in rendered questions===

When a question engine is asked to render a question, it returns a response which includes the following parts:

;String XHTML
:Well-formed XML which, when inserted into the body or div of an HTML page, will result in valid HTML.
;String CSS
:any CSS needed to style the content. The TMS will cache this, and include a link to it in the head of the HTML page.
;Resource[] resources
:an array of resources which the TMS must cache and make available.

A Resource has the following fields:

;byte[] content
;String encoding
;String filename
;String mimeType

The content is what is served when the resource is requested. It is served with the specified encoding and mimeType. The filename is used in the URL the resource will be made available at. If the question requires any javascript, this should be returned as a resource.

Both the XHTML and CSS may contain placeholders of the form %%''identifier''%%. These are substituted by the TMS. Recognised placeholders include:

;%%RESOURCE%%
:Path [relative or absolute] at which resources will become available. This should not include the terminating /. Example: If a resource has the name myfile.png, then <img src="%%RESOURCES%%/myfile.png"/> should work to include that image.
;%%IDPREFIX%%
:This should be prepended to any id or class attribute in the XHTML and references to them in the CSS or Javascript. This allows multiple questions to be diplayed on one page, without conflict. [Note, this is not currently implemented since OM only ever displays one question per page. There is a problem here with javascript, since placeholders are not substituted in resources.
;%%%%
:Replaced with %%.

For perfomance reasons, whenever the TMS asks the question engine to render a question, it may send a list of resources that it already has cached for that question. The question engine may choose not to resend any of these resources.

===How the student response is represented===

The TMS receives the student's response as a HTML form submission, that is, as a HTTP POST request.

Because there might be more than one question per page, the post response to the TMS may contain many post variables. The TMS separates out the ones with the appropriate %%IDPREFIX%%, and forwards just those key->value pairs to the question engine (with idprefix removed from the key name), when it asks it to process that response.

(Another problem with multiple questions per page is that at the moment for form tag is included in the HTML returned by the question engine, whereas multiple questios per page needs a single form for all questions, provided by the TMS.)

===What sort of results can be returned===

Any request to the question engine to process some results will return HTML and resources etc. to be displayed to the student. In addition, it may (if the student has finished answering the question) include some stuctured results data to be stored in the results database. The Results structure includes:

;String actionSummary
:A log of the actions the student took in getting to their final answer. Intended for reports seen by test administrators.
;String answerLine
:A one-line summary of the student's final answer. For general reporting.
;int attempts
:Number of attempts it took the student to get their final answer.
;String questionLine
:A one line summary of the question that was asked. For reporting. Most useful when a question has different random variants.
;Map<String, int> scores
:The scores for this question. Normally the score will be a single integer, and the corresponding key will by the empty string. However, in some situations (e.g. psychological tests) the question may want to report scores against different 'axes'.

To repeat, these are stored in a database by the TMS, and used for reporting and computing overall test scores without needing to contact the question engines. It it is necessary to reconstruct exactly what the student saw on a particular question, and exactly what they entered, then this can be done using the question engine. See the next section.

===Question sessions and the reproducability guarantee===

Opaque is a stateful protocol, but in a weak sense.

In the protocol, a student's attempt on a question will require a call to the start() method, then one or more calls to the process() method. These calls may be separated by several minutes, but it could be any length of time.

Normally, what will happen is that the the start() call will return a question session id, and then each call to process() will refer to this session. This works most of the time, but on it's own would not be robust. What if a studnet stopped working on a question one day and expected to come back the next day and resume where they left off? What if the question engine server crashed?

To solve these problems, the question engine must guarantee that given a sequence of calls to start() and process() with exactly the same arguments, it will always return the same responses. The TMS should store all the information needed to recreate the sequence of calls it made on behalf of the student (that is, the question identity, the random seed, and the values submitted by students in each POST request). This means that if a question session is interrupted or lost, it can just be recreated.

Question sessions are designed to improve performance since the question definition only has to be read and processed once per session. They should also make implementing question engines easier, since state does not have to be saved in persistent storage, and most languages designed for writing server-side applications have session handling mechanisms.

If the TMS knows that a studnet has suspended thier attempt on a question (for example by navigating to a different question) it should call the stop() method to inform the question engine that that question session is no longer needed. The question enging may discard any question session that has been inactive for a period of time.

===What happens in a typical attempt on a question===

This diagram indicates a typical sequence of calls that happen when a student attempts a question.

[[Image:OPAQUE_sequence_diagram.png]]

==The Opaque data structures==

These are documented in IDL (which I don't really understand, but I am familiar with it from other docs (e.g. http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Core-20001113/) and it is nicely language independent.)

===StartReturn===

interface StartReturn {
readonly attribute string questionSession;
readonly attribute string XHTML;
readonly attribute string CSS;
readonly attribute string progressInfo;
readonly attribute Resource[] resources;
}

===Resource===

interface Resource {
readonly attribute BLOB content;
readonly attribute string encoding;
readonly attribute string filename;
readonly attribute string mimeType;
}

===ProcessReturn===

interface ProcessReturn {
readonly attribute string XHTML;
readonly attribute string CSS;
readonly attribute string progressInfo;
readonly attribute boolean questionEnd;
readonly attribute Resource[] resources;
readonly attribute Results questionLine;
}

===Results===

interface Results {
readonly attribute string questionLine;
readonly attribute string answerLine;
readonly attribute string actionSummary;
readonly attribute integer attempts;
readonly attribute Map<string, float> scores;
readonly attribute Map<string, string> customResults;
}

==The Opaque API methods==

At the moment, I am unlikely to find time to document these in details. Sorry.

===String getEngineInfo()===

This returns some XML data as a string (byte array). The format of the response is

<pre><nowiki>
<engineinfo>
<name>[question engine]</name> ''''
<usedmemory>['123 bytes' or '45 KB' or '67 MB']</usedmemory> ''''
<activesessions>[Number of question sessions active]</activesessions> ''''
</nowiki></engineinfo>
</pre>

This method is only ever used for system monitoring - that is to ask a question engine "are you still there?". It is not essential to the functioning of the system.

The tags inside the outer <engineinfo> tag may be in any order. Other tags may also be included.

===String getQuestionMetadata(String questionID, String questionVersion, String questionBaseURL)===

This returns a snipped of XML like this:

<pre><nowiki>
<questionmetadata>
<scoring>
<marks>3</marks>
</scoring>
<plainmode>yes</plainmode>
</questionmetadata>
</nowiki></pre>

The scoring section is basically giving the maximum score for the question, but because a question can report scores against different 'axes', this may be more complicated.

plain mode is a feature of the OpenMark system designed to enhance accessibility. Since OpenMark use a lot of JavaScript and CSS which may not be accessible to some people, then every question should provide an alternative rendering using just plain HTML and standard from controls. When a student chooses to take a quiz in plain mode, they see the plain mode version of each question. However, not all questions provide a plain-mode version, in which case they should return ,plainmode>no</plainmode>.

===StartReturn start(String questionID, String questionVersion, String questionBaseURL, Map<String, String> initialParams, String[])===

===ProcessReturn process(String questionSession, Map<String, String> response)===

===stop(String questionSession)===

==Opaque WSDL==

<pre><nowiki>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<wsdl:definitions targetNamespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" xmlns:apachesoap="http://xml.apache.org/xml-soap" xmlns:impl="http://om.open.ac.uk/" xmlns:intf="http://om.open.ac.uk/" xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" xmlns:wsdlsoap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<wsdl:types>
<schema targetNamespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<import namespace="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"/>

<complexType name="ArrayOf_soapenc_string">
<complexContent>
<restriction base="soapenc:Array">
<attribute ref="soapenc:arrayType" wsdl:arrayType="soapenc:string[]"/>
</restriction>
</complexContent>
</complexType>

<complexType name="Resource">
<sequence>
<element name="content" nillable="true" type="soapenc:base64Binary"/>
<element name="encoding" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
<element name="filename" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
<element name="mimeType" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
</sequence>
</complexType>

<complexType name="ArrayOfResource">
<complexContent>
<restriction base="soapenc:Array">
<attribute ref="soapenc:arrayType" wsdl:arrayType="impl:Resource[]"/>
</restriction>
</complexContent>
</complexType>

<complexType name="StartReturn">
<sequence>
<element name="CSS" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
<element name="XHTML" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
<element name="progressInfo" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
<element name="questionSession" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
<element name="resources" nillable="true" type="impl:ArrayOfResource"/>
</sequence>
</complexType>

<complexType name="OmException">
<sequence/>
</complexType>

<complexType name="CustomResult">
<sequence>
<element name="name" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
<element name="value" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
</sequence>
</complexType>

<complexType name="ArrayOfCustomResult">
<complexContent>
<restriction base="soapenc:Array">
<attribute ref="soapenc:arrayType" wsdl:arrayType="impl:CustomResult[]"/>
</restriction>
</complexContent>
</complexType>

<complexType name="Score">
<sequence>
<element name="axis" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
<element name="marks" type="xsd:int"/>
</sequence>
</complexType>

<complexType name="ArrayOfScore">
<complexContent>
<restriction base="soapenc:Array">
<attribute ref="soapenc:arrayType" wsdl:arrayType="impl:Score[]"/>
</restriction>
</complexContent>
</complexType>

<complexType name="Results">
<sequence>
<element name="actionSummary" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
<element name="answerLine" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
<element name="attempts" type="xsd:int"/>
<element name="customResults" nillable="true" type="impl:ArrayOfCustomResult"/>
<element name="questionLine" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
<element name="scores" nillable="true" type="impl:ArrayOfScore"/>
</sequence>
</complexType>

<complexType name="ProcessReturn">
<sequence>
<element name="CSS" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
<element name="XHTML" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
<element name="progressInfo" nillable="true" type="soapenc:string"/>
<element name="questionEnd" type="xsd:boolean"/>
<element name="resources" nillable="true" type="impl:ArrayOfResource"/>
<element name="results" nillable="true" type="impl:Results"/>
</sequence>
</complexType>

</schema>

</wsdl:types>

<wsdl:message name="getEngineInfoResponse">
<wsdl:part name="getEngineInfoReturn" type="soapenc:string"/>
</wsdl:message>

<wsdl:message name="processRequest">
<wsdl:part name="questionSession" type="soapenc:string"/>
<wsdl:part name="names" type="impl:ArrayOf_soapenc_string"/>
<wsdl:part name="values" type="impl:ArrayOf_soapenc_string"/>
</wsdl:message>

<wsdl:message name="getEngineInfoRequest">
</wsdl:message>

<wsdl:message name="getQuestionMetadataResponse">
<wsdl:part name="getQuestionMetadataReturn" type="soapenc:string"/>
</wsdl:message>

<wsdl:message name="processResponse">
<wsdl:part name="processReturn" type="impl:ProcessReturn"/>
</wsdl:message>

<wsdl:message name="stopResponse">
</wsdl:message>

<wsdl:message name="OmException">
<wsdl:part name="fault" type="impl:OmException"/>
</wsdl:message>

<wsdl:message name="startResponse">
<wsdl:part name="startReturn" type="impl:StartReturn"/>
</wsdl:message>

<wsdl:message name="stopRequest">
<wsdl:part name="questionSession" type="soapenc:string"/>
</wsdl:message>

<wsdl:message name="getQuestionMetadataRequest">
<wsdl:part name="questionID" type="soapenc:string"/>
<wsdl:part name="questionVersion" type="soapenc:string"/>
<wsdl:part name="questionBaseURL" type="soapenc:string"/>
</wsdl:message>

<wsdl:message name="startRequest">
<wsdl:part name="questionID" type="soapenc:string"/>
<wsdl:part name="questionVersion" type="soapenc:string"/>
<wsdl:part name="questionBaseURL" type="soapenc:string"/>
<wsdl:part name="initialParamNames" type="impl:ArrayOf_soapenc_string"/>
<wsdl:part name="initialParamValues" type="impl:ArrayOf_soapenc_string"/>
<wsdl:part name="cachedResources" type="impl:ArrayOf_soapenc_string"/>
</wsdl:message>

<wsdl:portType name="OmService">

<wsdl:operation name="start" parameterOrder="questionID questionVersion questionBaseURL initialParamNames initialParamValues cachedResources">
<wsdl:input message="impl:startRequest" name="startRequest"/>
<wsdl:output message="impl:startResponse" name="startResponse"/>
<wsdl:fault message="impl:OmException" name="OmException"/>
</wsdl:operation>

<wsdl:operation name="stop" parameterOrder="questionSession">
<wsdl:input message="impl:stopRequest" name="stopRequest"/>
<wsdl:output message="impl:stopResponse" name="stopResponse"/>
<wsdl:fault message="impl:OmException" name="OmException"/>
</wsdl:operation>

<wsdl:operation name="process" parameterOrder="questionSession names values">
<wsdl:input message="impl:processRequest" name="processRequest"/>
<wsdl:output message="impl:processResponse" name="processResponse"/>
<wsdl:fault message="impl:OmException" name="OmException"/>
</wsdl:operation>

<wsdl:operation name="getEngineInfo">
<wsdl:input message="impl:getEngineInfoRequest" name="getEngineInfoRequest"/>
<wsdl:output message="impl:getEngineInfoResponse" name="getEngineInfoResponse"/>
</wsdl:operation>

<wsdl:operation name="getQuestionMetadata" parameterOrder="questionID questionVersion questionBaseURL">
<wsdl:input message="impl:getQuestionMetadataRequest" name="getQuestionMetadataRequest"/>
<wsdl:output message="impl:getQuestionMetadataResponse" name="getQuestionMetadataResponse"/>
<wsdl:fault message="impl:OmException" name="OmException"/>
</wsdl:operation>

</wsdl:portType>

<wsdl:binding name="OmSoapBinding" type="impl:OmService">
<wsdlsoap:binding style="rpc" transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http"/>

<wsdl:operation name="start">
<wsdlsoap:operation soapAction=""/>
<wsdl:input name="startRequest">
<wsdlsoap:body encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" namespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" use="encoded"/>
</wsdl:input>
<wsdl:output name="startResponse">
<wsdlsoap:body encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" namespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" use="encoded"/>
</wsdl:output>

<wsdl:fault name="OmException">
<wsdlsoap:fault encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" name="OmException" namespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" use="encoded"/>
</wsdl:fault>
</wsdl:operation>

<wsdl:operation name="stop">
<wsdlsoap:operation soapAction=""/>
<wsdl:input name="stopRequest">
<wsdlsoap:body encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" namespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" use="encoded"/>
</wsdl:input>

<wsdl:output name="stopResponse">
<wsdlsoap:body encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" namespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" use="encoded"/>
</wsdl:output>
<wsdl:fault name="OmException">
<wsdlsoap:fault encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" name="OmException" namespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" use="encoded"/>
</wsdl:fault>
</wsdl:operation>

<wsdl:operation name="process">
<wsdlsoap:operation soapAction=""/>
<wsdl:input name="processRequest">
<wsdlsoap:body encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" namespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" use="encoded"/>
</wsdl:input>
<wsdl:output name="processResponse">
<wsdlsoap:body encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" namespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" use="encoded"/>
</wsdl:output>
<wsdl:fault name="OmException">
<wsdlsoap:fault encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" name="OmException" namespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" use="encoded"/>
</wsdl:fault>
</wsdl:operation>

<wsdl:operation name="getEngineInfo">
<wsdlsoap:operation soapAction=""/>
<wsdl:input name="getEngineInfoRequest">
<wsdlsoap:body encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" namespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" use="encoded"/>
</wsdl:input>
<wsdl:output name="getEngineInfoResponse">
<wsdlsoap:body encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" namespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" use="encoded"/>
</wsdl:output>
</wsdl:operation>

<wsdl:operation name="getQuestionMetadata">
<wsdlsoap:operation soapAction=""/>
<wsdl:input name="getQuestionMetadataRequest">
<wsdlsoap:body encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" namespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" use="encoded"/>
</wsdl:input>
<wsdl:output name="getQuestionMetadataResponse">
<wsdlsoap:body encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" namespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" use="encoded"/>
</wsdl:output>
<wsdl:fault name="OmException">
<wsdlsoap:fault encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" name="OmException" namespace="http://om.open.ac.uk/" use="encoded"/>
</wsdl:fault>
</wsdl:operation>

</wsdl:binding>

<wsdl:service name="OmServiceService">
<wsdl:port binding="impl:OmSoapBinding" name="Om">
<wsdlsoap:address location="http://kestrel.open.ac.uk/om-qe/services/Om"/>
</wsdl:port>
</wsdl:service>

</wsdl:definitions>
</nowiki></pre>

-----

See also:
* [[Opaque question type]] for instructions on installing and using the Moodle Opaque question type.

[[Category:Developer|Open protocol ]]

Tracking Moodle CVS with git

2009-09-19T16:10:21Z

Jeffjeff: /* Anyone got any experience with NetBeans and GIT? */ new section

Broken/Numerical question units and intervals

2009-09-18T11:00:16Z

Jeffjeff: /* Allow fraction type 2 1/2 as 2.5 */ link to wikipedia about intervals

This is my proposal for how the numerical question function and interface should be improved. [_] means checkboxes that teachers could use for specifying different question behaviours. (o) or (_) is a radio button.

==Allow evaluation of expressions==

Checking this would accept
'''5/2 0.5*5 5^2/10 5^(5-3)/10 25*10^-1 sqrt(25)/2'''

The main value of calculated or numerical question is that the student really does the
calculation and gives a real number (which means in decimal format).
I suggested that you use the short answer (or the multichoice) question type with the different
answer forms that you allow.

[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 04:25, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

To me the real value of the numerical question type is it's ability to really see the
answers as numbers and be able to see what things are equivalent. I have for many years
used a PERL script which could treat 3/2 and 1+1/2 and 1.5 and (1,5 for us Swedes) as
the same thing, and especially to accept well defined intervals.

Often I am more interested in students knowing HOW to create the right expression moreso
than doing the last step, evaluating it. It is also interesting when looking at the
statistics for a question, to see how they "thought" which can aid the teacher when
adding new feedback for other answers.

Real numbers include rational numbers include 1/3 which cannot be correctly represented
as a decimal. (Which doesn't bother me as a physicist, but a pure matematician ought to
value being able to use expressions like 1/3.

(Even if a programmer may say it'll only work from 0.33333333333333333333333333333 to
0.333333333333333333333334 :-))

[[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 06:21, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

If your answers are necessarily expressed as rational numbers then the short answer type
is the way to do it. You could use as many answers as necessary to express the various
formats that you accept as correct.

[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 07:21, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

But that would mean that the teacher looses the possibility to give feedback for numerical
intervals. Having questions that are as open as possible for different kinds of answers
while still being able to give meaningful feedback is one of the strengths of Moodle that
I like and would like to increase![[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 07:01, 4 October 2007 (CDT)

This is not the case if you use as many answers as you want to express the desired feedback.
Just defined the other answers in the range that you think reflect a given problem.
i.e. if a factor of 2 reflect a given error use this value as an answer and write the feedback text.
[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 15:40, 9 October 2008 (CDT)

5/2 0.5*5 5^2/2 5^(5-3)/2 25*10^-1 sqrt(25)/2

These value are not the same 5^2/2 and 5^(5-3)/2 are equal to 12.5!
I think it is very difficult to define which expressions are to be accepted. The numerical answer should somehow be the result. Otherweise the answer to a question like sqrt(50-2*17)=? could be the question itself.

[[User: Stefan Büchler|Stefan Büchler]] 25. Jan. 08

I have for many years used a Perl script that worked very well with numerical questions. It had the ability to evaluate expressions also and compare the value with the intervals that gave various feedback. Usually I felt that it was a good possibility. A lot of times in physics the main problem is figuring out HOW to get the result and the the actual computation can be, easy though time consuming. (Also good if they weren't getting the right answer, I could see HOW they were figuring.) But sometimes I wanted to be able to turn it off, just because of the possibility of "the answer being the question". That's why I suggest that this possibility should not be the default, but something that a teacher can chose If s/he wants it. (thanks for the pointing out the unequal expressions, which I have {hopefully} corrected. [[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 08:26, 22 September 2008 (CDT)

==Allow fraction type 2 1/2 as 2.5==

Translate "½" as "+.5" but give warning "Avoid ½ character in numerical expressions! We have translated ½ as +.5 to evaluate your answer."

In the student question interface the answer box should:
1) have an easy way to access with keyboard
a) good "tab order": when opening a quiz question page the student will
usually want to answer the first question as his/her first option
(tab order =10)
Assuming there are no other taborders set this would be first.
"BASIC" numbering allows later refinements without renumbering.
if available "send in question" (tab order =15)
answer next question (tab order= 20)
if available "send in question" (tab order =25)
(how this looks would depend on how many question blanks are on a page
and would end up at NEXT page link)
b) Acesskeys (This is mined territory since there are no real standards (or
rather several DIFFERENT standards) It would probably be best to let
people chose whether they want this activated and maybe which keys
for which targets. People that are really into this kind of thing can
use "Mouseless Browsing" extension for FireFox)
2) Have a (?) after the answer box linked to a popup explanation, which depends
on which options were checked by question author, saying for example:
This is for a numerical answer. The answer can contain a unit at the right
end after a space. As decimal character you may use . or , . Mixed fractions
can be written as 2 1/2 which is interpreted as 2+1/2 (2½) In this question
you may enter an expression which is evaluated to a number before comparing to
the correction key. [link to examples of allowable expressions]

Answer 1:[ 2.5 ] Accepted error ± [0.5] Grade: [100%]
Feedback:

Answer 2: [ '''100.4..100.5)''' ] Accepted error ± [_empty_] Grade: [90%]

Which would be interpreted '''110.4 <= right < 100.5'''
i.e. the round parentheses would mean that that boundary not included
in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_%28mathematics%29 interval]. The .. notation for an interval is already used in the GIFT format.

Another useful possibility: that one could enter evaluation strings like
'''110.4<=ans<100.5||100.5<ans<=100.6'''
''(I know that this particular thing can be addressed by having
100.5 +/-0 first than 100.5 +/-0.1)''
Feedback:

Answer 3: ...
Feedback: (for answer 3)

Show 3 more alternative answer fields

==Units mandatory or not==

===How the question has treated use of units===

The actual philosophy of units in the question at present (2008) is that the units are used to allow the student to answer the question in another unit than the one prescribed or implied by the question.
However this unit must have been specified when creating the question.

This is why you set a multiplier to convert from your implied or expressed unit with a default 1 multiplier.
For example, if you enter a unit of 'cm' here, and the accepted answer is 15, then the answers '15cm' and '15' are both accepted as correct. You can also specify a multiplier. So, if your main answer was 5500 with unit W, you can also add the unit kW with a multiplier of 0.001. This means that the answers '5500', '5500W' or '5.5kW' would all be marked correct. Note that the accepted error is also multiplied, so an allowed error of 100W would become an error of 0.1kW.
For the response where the multiplier is 1 the unit is not mandatory.i.e.'5500', '5500W'
However when the multiplier is not 1 then the units is mandatory. i.e. '5.5kW'

===How most science/math teachers expect students to answer regarding units===
Usually a numerical answer without a unit is not considered complete. (At least in Sweden and when I grew up in the states 1960s) If one has an automatic correction of numerical values only, one must sacrifice the openness of the question by stipulating units.

What Moodle's questions have often provided is the possibility of allowing quite open responses from the students and still it can give meaningful feedback and points. If we must say "your answer must be expressed in kilonewtons" we won't be able to discover the weaknesses that might have lead to the student thinking Joules. Knowing what unit is involved it an important part of the ability we try to teach the students and we must be able to evaluate it. That is not possible with the question's present way of functioning.

A student can answer "5.2" and gets full points without writing any unit whereas a student answering "52 millimeters" would get zero if no multiplier was stipulated OR the unit only expressed as "mm" or "millimeter". The student with the 5.2 answer might have even been thinking "m" rather than the the teacher's expected "cm". This would not be the case if it were a "paper" test/assignment.

==Unit feedback options==

differentiated unit feedback, which is all of:
* If there is no SPACE between the number and unit "There should always be a space between the number and the unit, except for degree sign ° and other planal angle units."
* translate dimensionless "units": % = *0.01; ppm=*1E-6 ppb. promille
* feedback for lacking unit [_]Feedback for accepted UNIT but wrong number
* feedback for "possibly right number" if unit is adjusted
* feedback for "Unit not recognized, either misspelled, wrong type, or just not expected"

(o) missed unit gives standard retry reduction of points
(_)no reduction for missed unit
(_)this reduction [___]

[http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html|SI Unit rules and style conventions] (#17 I don't understand. Otherwise a good collection of rules, at least about SI units. #16 is a rule that could be good to be able to choose to enforce.)

===Unit: [ ] (optional)===

Should accept arrays like '''kg, kilogram, kilograms , kilogramme, {"kilo gram", keelograhm} '''
where the ones enclosed in {} would be given feedback like
''We have interpretted '''keelograhm''' as a misspelling av '''kg''' Be aware that small spelling
mistakes like '''M''' in stead of '''m''' can lead to huge errors M=Mega=million
m=milli= one thousandth''"

Alternative Units:
Multiplier:[ ] Unit: [_______]

There should be the same possibility of unit arrays here.

Allow prefix units ($,£ maybe there are others )

==The Multiplier should have an explanation (?)==

''If the student answers with this unit, the student answer will be multiplied with this number
before being compared with the expected answer. Example:
Answer [_10__] Unit [cm]

alternative unit
multiplier [_2.54_] unit [", in, in., inch]
(That " could be a tricky unit to handle!)

==Then there are some things that I would be interested in having as options for all [maybe?] questiontypes (including numerical):==

1) "Challenge" That a student is given (perhaps with a linked "!" or "Hmm.." or button) a chance to give his/her preferred answer and his/her motivation (or why they didn't understand, like, agree with the grade or feedback they got for their answer or how the question was phrased.) This might be implemented with similar code to number 4 below.

2) Hints option: option to include a click-able link that could display a/some hint(s), if the student didn't know how to attack a question. (It is possible, though hardly for html-illiterate, to use the OverLib.js which is included in Moodle to do this even now.

3) Certainty (in the past sometimes called "confidence") declaration option
[__answer___] certainty: Hi(o)|Med( )|Low( )
if possible with CBM/CBG grading scale including negative

4) An easy reordering tool for alternative answers. It might be possible to have two models:
*Automatic based on grade for alternative. Because the question engine processes them in order it seems logical that alternative answer patterns that have higher points should be tested before others.
*BASIC numbering 10 20 30 40 so if I wanted 40 moved to between 20 and 30 I could change it to 25

5) All Internet pages (that the maintainer cares about) should have a [[Feedback link for all elements|feedback link]] something like this:

[[http://tupo.biz/kurser/gemensam/kommunikation/PageFeedbackFormExpand.htm Completely satisfied with this page?]]

Broken/Numerical question units and intervals

2009-09-18T10:42:53Z

Jeffjeff: /* Allow fraction type 2 1/2 as 2.5 */ point out .. for intervals in GIFT

This is my proposal for how the numerical question function and interface should be improved. [_] means checkboxes that teachers could use for specifying different question behaviours. (o) or (_) is a radio button.

==Allow evaluation of expressions==

Checking this would accept
'''5/2 0.5*5 5^2/10 5^(5-3)/10 25*10^-1 sqrt(25)/2'''

The main value of calculated or numerical question is that the student really does the
calculation and gives a real number (which means in decimal format).
I suggested that you use the short answer (or the multichoice) question type with the different
answer forms that you allow.

[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 04:25, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

To me the real value of the numerical question type is it's ability to really see the
answers as numbers and be able to see what things are equivalent. I have for many years
used a PERL script which could treat 3/2 and 1+1/2 and 1.5 and (1,5 for us Swedes) as
the same thing, and especially to accept well defined intervals.

Often I am more interested in students knowing HOW to create the right expression moreso
than doing the last step, evaluating it. It is also interesting when looking at the
statistics for a question, to see how they "thought" which can aid the teacher when
adding new feedback for other answers.

Real numbers include rational numbers include 1/3 which cannot be correctly represented
as a decimal. (Which doesn't bother me as a physicist, but a pure matematician ought to
value being able to use expressions like 1/3.

(Even if a programmer may say it'll only work from 0.33333333333333333333333333333 to
0.333333333333333333333334 :-))

[[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 06:21, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

If your answers are necessarily expressed as rational numbers then the short answer type
is the way to do it. You could use as many answers as necessary to express the various
formats that you accept as correct.

[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 07:21, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

But that would mean that the teacher looses the possibility to give feedback for numerical
intervals. Having questions that are as open as possible for different kinds of answers
while still being able to give meaningful feedback is one of the strengths of Moodle that
I like and would like to increase![[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 07:01, 4 October 2007 (CDT)

This is not the case if you use as many answers as you want to express the desired feedback.
Just defined the other answers in the range that you think reflect a given problem.
i.e. if a factor of 2 reflect a given error use this value as an answer and write the feedback text.
[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 15:40, 9 October 2008 (CDT)

5/2 0.5*5 5^2/2 5^(5-3)/2 25*10^-1 sqrt(25)/2

These value are not the same 5^2/2 and 5^(5-3)/2 are equal to 12.5!
I think it is very difficult to define which expressions are to be accepted. The numerical answer should somehow be the result. Otherweise the answer to a question like sqrt(50-2*17)=? could be the question itself.

[[User: Stefan Büchler|Stefan Büchler]] 25. Jan. 08

I have for many years used a Perl script that worked very well with numerical questions. It had the ability to evaluate expressions also and compare the value with the intervals that gave various feedback. Usually I felt that it was a good possibility. A lot of times in physics the main problem is figuring out HOW to get the result and the the actual computation can be, easy though time consuming. (Also good if they weren't getting the right answer, I could see HOW they were figuring.) But sometimes I wanted to be able to turn it off, just because of the possibility of "the answer being the question". That's why I suggest that this possibility should not be the default, but something that a teacher can chose If s/he wants it. (thanks for the pointing out the unequal expressions, which I have {hopefully} corrected. [[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 08:26, 22 September 2008 (CDT)

==Allow fraction type 2 1/2 as 2.5==

Translate "½" as "+.5" but give warning "Avoid ½ character in numerical expressions! We have translated ½ as +.5 to evaluate your answer."

In the student question interface the answer box should:
1) have an easy way to access with keyboard
a) good "tab order": when opening a quiz question page the student will
usually want to answer the first question as his/her first option
(tab order =10)
Assuming there are no other taborders set this would be first.
"BASIC" numbering allows later refinements without renumbering.
if available "send in question" (tab order =15)
answer next question (tab order= 20)
if available "send in question" (tab order =25)
(how this looks would depend on how many question blanks are on a page
and would end up at NEXT page link)
b) Acesskeys (This is mined territory since there are no real standards (or
rather several DIFFERENT standards) It would probably be best to let
people chose whether they want this activated and maybe which keys
for which targets. People that are really into this kind of thing can
use "Mouseless Browsing" extension for FireFox)
2) Have a (?) after the answer box linked to a popup explanation, which depends
on which options were checked by question author, saying for example:
This is for a numerical answer. The answer can contain a unit at the right
end after a space. As decimal character you may use . or , . Mixed fractions
can be written as 2 1/2 which is interpreted as 2+1/2 (2½) In this question
you may enter an expression which is evaluated to a number before comparing to
the correction key. [link to examples of allowable expressions]

Answer 1:[ 2.5 ] Accepted error ± [0.5] Grade: [100%]
Feedback:

Answer 2: [ '''100.4..100.5)''' ] Accepted error ± [_empty_] Grade: [90%]

Which would be interpreted '''110.4 <= right < 100.5'''
i.e. the round parentheses would mean that that boundary not included
in the interval. The .. notation for an interval is already used in the GIFT format.

Another useful possibility: that one could enter evaluation strings like
'''110.4<=ans<100.5||100.5<ans<=100.6'''
''(I know that this particular thing can be addressed by having
100.5 +/-0 first than 100.5 +/-0.1)''
Feedback:

Answer 3: ...
Feedback: (for answer 3)

Show 3 more alternative answer fields

==Units mandatory or not==

===How the question has treated use of units===

The actual philosophy of units in the question at present (2008) is that the units are used to allow the student to answer the question in another unit than the one prescribed or implied by the question.
However this unit must have been specified when creating the question.

This is why you set a multiplier to convert from your implied or expressed unit with a default 1 multiplier.
For example, if you enter a unit of 'cm' here, and the accepted answer is 15, then the answers '15cm' and '15' are both accepted as correct. You can also specify a multiplier. So, if your main answer was 5500 with unit W, you can also add the unit kW with a multiplier of 0.001. This means that the answers '5500', '5500W' or '5.5kW' would all be marked correct. Note that the accepted error is also multiplied, so an allowed error of 100W would become an error of 0.1kW.
For the response where the multiplier is 1 the unit is not mandatory.i.e.'5500', '5500W'
However when the multiplier is not 1 then the units is mandatory. i.e. '5.5kW'

===How most science/math teachers expect students to answer regarding units===
Usually a numerical answer without a unit is not considered complete. (At least in Sweden and when I grew up in the states 1960s) If one has an automatic correction of numerical values only, one must sacrifice the openness of the question by stipulating units.

What Moodle's questions have often provided is the possibility of allowing quite open responses from the students and still it can give meaningful feedback and points. If we must say "your answer must be expressed in kilonewtons" we won't be able to discover the weaknesses that might have lead to the student thinking Joules. Knowing what unit is involved it an important part of the ability we try to teach the students and we must be able to evaluate it. That is not possible with the question's present way of functioning.

A student can answer "5.2" and gets full points without writing any unit whereas a student answering "52 millimeters" would get zero if no multiplier was stipulated OR the unit only expressed as "mm" or "millimeter". The student with the 5.2 answer might have even been thinking "m" rather than the the teacher's expected "cm". This would not be the case if it were a "paper" test/assignment.

==Unit feedback options==

differentiated unit feedback, which is all of:
* If there is no SPACE between the number and unit "There should always be a space between the number and the unit, except for degree sign ° and other planal angle units."
* translate dimensionless "units": % = *0.01; ppm=*1E-6 ppb. promille
* feedback for lacking unit [_]Feedback for accepted UNIT but wrong number
* feedback for "possibly right number" if unit is adjusted
* feedback for "Unit not recognized, either misspelled, wrong type, or just not expected"

(o) missed unit gives standard retry reduction of points
(_)no reduction for missed unit
(_)this reduction [___]

[http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html|SI Unit rules and style conventions] (#17 I don't understand. Otherwise a good collection of rules, at least about SI units. #16 is a rule that could be good to be able to choose to enforce.)

===Unit: [ ] (optional)===

Should accept arrays like '''kg, kilogram, kilograms , kilogramme, {"kilo gram", keelograhm} '''
where the ones enclosed in {} would be given feedback like
''We have interpretted '''keelograhm''' as a misspelling av '''kg''' Be aware that small spelling
mistakes like '''M''' in stead of '''m''' can lead to huge errors M=Mega=million
m=milli= one thousandth''"

Alternative Units:
Multiplier:[ ] Unit: [_______]

There should be the same possibility of unit arrays here.

Allow prefix units ($,£ maybe there are others )

==The Multiplier should have an explanation (?)==

''If the student answers with this unit, the student answer will be multiplied with this number
before being compared with the expected answer. Example:
Answer [_10__] Unit [cm]

alternative unit
multiplier [_2.54_] unit [", in, in., inch]
(That " could be a tricky unit to handle!)

==Then there are some things that I would be interested in having as options for all [maybe?] questiontypes (including numerical):==

1) "Challenge" That a student is given (perhaps with a linked "!" or "Hmm.." or button) a chance to give his/her preferred answer and his/her motivation (or why they didn't understand, like, agree with the grade or feedback they got for their answer or how the question was phrased.) This might be implemented with similar code to number 4 below.

2) Hints option: option to include a click-able link that could display a/some hint(s), if the student didn't know how to attack a question. (It is possible, though hardly for html-illiterate, to use the OverLib.js which is included in Moodle to do this even now.

3) Certainty (in the past sometimes called "confidence") declaration option
[__answer___] certainty: Hi(o)|Med( )|Low( )
if possible with CBM/CBG grading scale including negative

4) An easy reordering tool for alternative answers. It might be possible to have two models:
*Automatic based on grade for alternative. Because the question engine processes them in order it seems logical that alternative answer patterns that have higher points should be tested before others.
*BASIC numbering 10 20 30 40 so if I wanted 40 moved to between 20 and 30 I could change it to 25

5) All Internet pages (that the maintainer cares about) should have a [[Feedback link for all elements|feedback link]] something like this:

[[http://tupo.biz/kurser/gemensam/kommunikation/PageFeedbackFormExpand.htm Completely satisfied with this page?]]

Broken/Numerical question units and intervals

2009-09-18T10:37:37Z

Jeffjeff: /* options for all [maybe?] questiontypes (including numerical): */ easy reordering of alternative answers

This is my proposal for how the numerical question function and interface should be improved. [_] means checkboxes that teachers could use for specifying different question behaviours. (o) or (_) is a radio button.

==Allow evaluation of expressions==

Checking this would accept
'''5/2 0.5*5 5^2/10 5^(5-3)/10 25*10^-1 sqrt(25)/2'''

The main value of calculated or numerical question is that the student really does the
calculation and gives a real number (which means in decimal format).
I suggested that you use the short answer (or the multichoice) question type with the different
answer forms that you allow.

[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 04:25, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

To me the real value of the numerical question type is it's ability to really see the
answers as numbers and be able to see what things are equivalent. I have for many years
used a PERL script which could treat 3/2 and 1+1/2 and 1.5 and (1,5 for us Swedes) as
the same thing, and especially to accept well defined intervals.

Often I am more interested in students knowing HOW to create the right expression moreso
than doing the last step, evaluating it. It is also interesting when looking at the
statistics for a question, to see how they "thought" which can aid the teacher when
adding new feedback for other answers.

Real numbers include rational numbers include 1/3 which cannot be correctly represented
as a decimal. (Which doesn't bother me as a physicist, but a pure matematician ought to
value being able to use expressions like 1/3.

(Even if a programmer may say it'll only work from 0.33333333333333333333333333333 to
0.333333333333333333333334 :-))

[[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 06:21, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

If your answers are necessarily expressed as rational numbers then the short answer type
is the way to do it. You could use as many answers as necessary to express the various
formats that you accept as correct.

[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 07:21, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

But that would mean that the teacher looses the possibility to give feedback for numerical
intervals. Having questions that are as open as possible for different kinds of answers
while still being able to give meaningful feedback is one of the strengths of Moodle that
I like and would like to increase![[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 07:01, 4 October 2007 (CDT)

This is not the case if you use as many answers as you want to express the desired feedback.
Just defined the other answers in the range that you think reflect a given problem.
i.e. if a factor of 2 reflect a given error use this value as an answer and write the feedback text.
[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 15:40, 9 October 2008 (CDT)

5/2 0.5*5 5^2/2 5^(5-3)/2 25*10^-1 sqrt(25)/2

These value are not the same 5^2/2 and 5^(5-3)/2 are equal to 12.5!
I think it is very difficult to define which expressions are to be accepted. The numerical answer should somehow be the result. Otherweise the answer to a question like sqrt(50-2*17)=? could be the question itself.

[[User: Stefan Büchler|Stefan Büchler]] 25. Jan. 08

I have for many years used a Perl script that worked very well with numerical questions. It had the ability to evaluate expressions also and compare the value with the intervals that gave various feedback. Usually I felt that it was a good possibility. A lot of times in physics the main problem is figuring out HOW to get the result and the the actual computation can be, easy though time consuming. (Also good if they weren't getting the right answer, I could see HOW they were figuring.) But sometimes I wanted to be able to turn it off, just because of the possibility of "the answer being the question". That's why I suggest that this possibility should not be the default, but something that a teacher can chose If s/he wants it. (thanks for the pointing out the unequal expressions, which I have {hopefully} corrected. [[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 08:26, 22 September 2008 (CDT)

==Allow fraction type 2 1/2 as 2.5==

Translate "½" as "+.5" but give warning "Avoid ½ character in numerical expressions! We have translated ½ as +.5 to evaluate your answer."

In the student question interface the answer box should:
1) have an easy way to access with keyboard
a) good "tab order": when opening a quiz question page the student will
usually want to answer the first question as his/her first option
(tab order =10)
Assuming there are no other taborders set this would be first.
"BASIC" numbering allows later refinements without renumbering.
if available "send in question" (tab order =15)
answer next question (tab order= 20)
if available "send in question" (tab order =25)
(how this looks would depend on how many question blanks are on a page
and would end up at NEXT page link)
b) Acesskeys (This is mined territory since there are no real standards (or
rather several DIFFERENT standards) It would probably be best to let
people chose whether they want this activated and maybe which keys
for which targets. People that are really into this kind of thing can
use "Mouseless Browsing" extension for FireFox)
2) Have a (?) after the answer box linked to a popup explanation, which depends
on which options were checked by question author, saying for example:
This is for a numerical answer. The answer can contain a unit at the right
end after a space. As decimal character you may use . or , . Mixed fractions
can be written as 2 1/2 which is interpreted as 2+1/2 (2½) In this question
you may enter an expression which is evaluated to a number before comparing to
the correction key. [link to examples of allowable expressions]

Answer 1:[ 2.5 ] Accepted error ± [0.5] Grade: [100%]
Feedback:

Answer 2: [ '''100.4..100.5)''' ] Accepted error ± [_empty_] Grade: [90%]

Which would be interpreted '''110.4 <= right < 100.5'''
i.e. the round parentheses would mean that boundary not included
in the intervall or that one could enter evaluation strings like
'''110.4<=ans<100.5||100.5<ans<=100.6'''
''(I know that this particular thing can be addressed by having
100.5 +/-0 first than 100.5 +/-0.1)''
Feedback:

Answer 3: ...
Feedback: (for answer 3)

Show 3 more alternative answer fields

==Units mandatory or not==

===How the question has treated use of units===

The actual philosophy of units in the question at present (2008) is that the units are used to allow the student to answer the question in another unit than the one prescribed or implied by the question.
However this unit must have been specified when creating the question.

This is why you set a multiplier to convert from your implied or expressed unit with a default 1 multiplier.
For example, if you enter a unit of 'cm' here, and the accepted answer is 15, then the answers '15cm' and '15' are both accepted as correct. You can also specify a multiplier. So, if your main answer was 5500 with unit W, you can also add the unit kW with a multiplier of 0.001. This means that the answers '5500', '5500W' or '5.5kW' would all be marked correct. Note that the accepted error is also multiplied, so an allowed error of 100W would become an error of 0.1kW.
For the response where the multiplier is 1 the unit is not mandatory.i.e.'5500', '5500W'
However when the multiplier is not 1 then the units is mandatory. i.e. '5.5kW'

===How most science/math teachers expect students to answer regarding units===
Usually a numerical answer without a unit is not considered complete. (At least in Sweden and when I grew up in the states 1960s) If one has an automatic correction of numerical values only, one must sacrifice the openness of the question by stipulating units.

What Moodle's questions have often provided is the possibility of allowing quite open responses from the students and still it can give meaningful feedback and points. If we must say "your answer must be expressed in kilonewtons" we won't be able to discover the weaknesses that might have lead to the student thinking Joules. Knowing what unit is involved it an important part of the ability we try to teach the students and we must be able to evaluate it. That is not possible with the question's present way of functioning.

A student can answer "5.2" and gets full points without writing any unit whereas a student answering "52 millimeters" would get zero if no multiplier was stipulated OR the unit only expressed as "mm" or "millimeter". The student with the 5.2 answer might have even been thinking "m" rather than the the teacher's expected "cm". This would not be the case if it were a "paper" test/assignment.

==Unit feedback options==

differentiated unit feedback, which is all of:
* If there is no SPACE between the number and unit "There should always be a space between the number and the unit, except for degree sign ° and other planal angle units."
* translate dimensionless "units": % = *0.01; ppm=*1E-6 ppb. promille
* feedback for lacking unit [_]Feedback for accepted UNIT but wrong number
* feedback for "possibly right number" if unit is adjusted
* feedback for "Unit not recognized, either misspelled, wrong type, or just not expected"

(o) missed unit gives standard retry reduction of points
(_)no reduction for missed unit
(_)this reduction [___]

[http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html|SI Unit rules and style conventions] (#17 I don't understand. Otherwise a good collection of rules, at least about SI units. #16 is a rule that could be good to be able to choose to enforce.)

===Unit: [ ] (optional)===

Should accept arrays like '''kg, kilogram, kilograms , kilogramme, {"kilo gram", keelograhm} '''
where the ones enclosed in {} would be given feedback like
''We have interpretted '''keelograhm''' as a misspelling av '''kg''' Be aware that small spelling
mistakes like '''M''' in stead of '''m''' can lead to huge errors M=Mega=million
m=milli= one thousandth''"

Alternative Units:
Multiplier:[ ] Unit: [_______]

There should be the same possibility of unit arrays here.

Allow prefix units ($,£ maybe there are others )

==The Multiplier should have an explanation (?)==

''If the student answers with this unit, the student answer will be multiplied with this number
before being compared with the expected answer. Example:
Answer [_10__] Unit [cm]

alternative unit
multiplier [_2.54_] unit [", in, in., inch]
(That " could be a tricky unit to handle!)

==Then there are some things that I would be interested in having as options for all [maybe?] questiontypes (including numerical):==

1) "Challenge" That a student is given (perhaps with a linked "!" or "Hmm.." or button) a chance to give his/her preferred answer and his/her motivation (or why they didn't understand, like, agree with the grade or feedback they got for their answer or how the question was phrased.) This might be implemented with similar code to number 4 below.

2) Hints option: option to include a click-able link that could display a/some hint(s), if the student didn't know how to attack a question. (It is possible, though hardly for html-illiterate, to use the OverLib.js which is included in Moodle to do this even now.

3) Certainty (in the past sometimes called "confidence") declaration option
[__answer___] certainty: Hi(o)|Med( )|Low( )
if possible with CBM/CBG grading scale including negative

4) An easy reordering tool for alternative answers. It might be possible to have two models:
*Automatic based on grade for alternative. Because the question engine processes them in order it seems logical that alternative answer patterns that have higher points should be tested before others.
*BASIC numbering 10 20 30 40 so if I wanted 40 moved to between 20 and 30 I could change it to 25

5) All Internet pages (that the maintainer cares about) should have a [[Feedback link for all elements|feedback link]] something like this:

[[http://tupo.biz/kurser/gemensam/kommunikation/PageFeedbackFormExpand.htm Completely satisfied with this page?]]

GIFT format

2009-09-18T10:25:23Z

Jeffjeff: /* Hints and Tips */ added about possibily to specify category and format markup

GIFT format allows someone to use a text editor to write multiple-choice, true-false, short answer, matching missing word and numerical questions in a simple format than can be imported. The GIFT format is also an export file format available in Question bank.

*When creating a large numbers of questions, GIFT can provide a quick way of bulk loading questions either into a [[Question bank|question category]], or into a [[Adding_a_question_page#Importing_questions|Lesson]].
*Sometimes it is easier proofing questions in a question category by viewing them in a GIFT file.

==General instructions==
At least one blank line must be left between each question.

In the simple form, the question comes first, then the answers are set in between brackets, with an equal sign indicating the correct answer(s) and tilde the wrong answers. A Number sign will insert a response. Questions can be weighted by placing percentage signs around the weight. Comments are preceded by double slashes and are not imported.

Here are some useful [http://moodle.org/file.php/5/moddata/forum/121/236161/GIFT-examples.zip GIFT examples] than can be imported or used as rough template. Many of the examples below used the questions in the file as a starting point.

:''TIP:'' Any GIFT file '''must''' be correctly encoded in [[UTF8]]. Beware of some of Microsoft's "fake" Unicode implementation which is not compatible and may result in strange characters appearing in your quizzes. When in doubt, save as a simple MS-DOS text file.

===Format symbols===
Here are some common GIFT symbols and their use.

{| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"
!width="40" |Symbol
!width="100"|Use
!width="40"|Symbol
!width="100"|Use
!width="40"|Symbol
!width="100"|Use
!width="40"|Symbol
!width="100"|Use
|-
|//|| Comment ||::Title::||Title || { || Start answer|| } ||After last answer
|-
||= || Correct answer || # ||Answer feedback / comment|| {# ||Numeric question start || : || range in numeric question
|-
|| ~ || Wrong answer || -> || Match ||%50% || Weight 50% || ||
|}
 

===Format symbols explained===
The multiple choice format below as a comment line // for the question, when Moodle exports it the question unique id number will appear here. The first set of :: precedes the question title. The second :: precedes the actual question. The first { indicates the start of the answers. The correct answer is preceded by an = sign and wrong answers by a ~. Teacher responses have a # in front of them. The question ends with a } and then a blank line. NOTE it is { } not ( ) parenthesis! Usually these are gotten with help of the [AltGr] key.

//Comment line
::Question title
:: Question {
=A correct answer
~Wrong answer1
#A response to wrong answer1
~Wrong answer2
#A response to wrong answer2
~Wrong answer3
#A response to wrong answer3
~Wrong answer4
#A response to wrong answer4
}

The shortest format for a multiple choice question is:
Question{= A Correct Answer ~Wrong answer1 ~Wrong answer2 ~Wrong answer3 ~Wrong answer4 }

:''Tip:'' If you don't specify a question title the WHOLE question will be used as the title at the time of import into Moodle. There are pros and cons to allowing this to happen. Cons: This can add a lot of unnecessary words. This can include characters which might confuse the export GIFT process. Pros: On the other hand. if the start of each question is different, it can make finding a single question easier in a category list of questions. It will save you typing. Having the same title for every question is a very bad idea.

==Question format examples==
There are several ways to use a text editor to write a GIFT format. We will try to show the simple version for example and in some formats we will introduce some more complex features that can be imported into many Moodle Question formats.

===Multiple choice===
Here is a simple acceptable GIFT multiple choice format:
Who's buried in Grant's tomb?{=Grant ~no one ~Napoleon ~Churchill ~Mother Teresa }

Here is a longer format that uses most of the GIFT elements:

// question: 1 name: Grants tomb
::Grants tomb::Who is buried in Grant's tomb in New York City? {
=Grant
~No one
#Was true for 12 years, but Grant's remains were buried in the tomb in 1897
~Napoleon
#He was buried in France
~Churchill
#He was buried in England
~Mother Teresa
#She was buried in India
}

===True-false===

// question: 0 name: TrueStatement
::TrueStatement about Grant::Grant was buried in a tomb in New York City.{T}

===Short answer===
Here are two examples using the simple method showing possible right answers for credit.
Who's buried in Grant's tomb?{=Grant =Ulysses S. Grant =Ulysses Grant}

Two plus two equals {=four =4}

===Matching===
The matching uses the equal sign before the list item with a -> (dash and greater than) before the correct match.

Match the following countries with their corresponding capitals. {
=Canada -> Ottawa
=Italy -> Rome
=Japan -> Tokyo
=India -> New Delhi
}

===Missing word===
This is a simple missing word format
Grant {~is not buried =is buried ~might be buried} in Grant's tomb.

===Numerical questions===
Here is a simple numerical format question. It will accept a range of 5 years.
When was Ulysses S. Grant born?{#1822:5}

Here is a more complex numerical format with a ranged and partial credit given for 1 answer.
//this comment will be ignored in the import process
::Numerical example::
When was Ulysses S. Grant born? {#
=1822:0 #Correct! you will get full credit for this answer
=%50%1822:2 #He was born in 1822.
You get 50% credit for being close.
}

==Hints and Tips==

* Use the ::title:: at the beginning of every question to organize this for you (01 - testquestion), otherwise it would be difficult to find the right question for changes, moodle will take the beginning of every question as internal title.
* You can specify which question category the following questions will be in with
$CATEGORY: myParentCat/myCategory
(that line must be preceded and followed by an empty line. See more about this in the reference pdf below.
* You can specify markup if you need to format the question by setting [html], [moodle], [plain] or [markdown] just before the question text. See more about this in the reference pdf below.
* In the Lesson module, in a question page, correct answers jump by default to Next page and incorrect answers jump to This page (i.e. student has to "try again"). When importing from a GIFT format file, this is exactly the mechanism which is used.
* If you want a student to be taken directly from one question to the next irrespective of their answer being correct or incorrect: in the Lesson Settings, set Maximum number of attempts: to 1.
**Please note, however, that a message "correct / incorrect" will still be displayed to the student upon answering each question. If you do not want this (default) feedback message to be displayed then enter your own feedback message (i.e. "continue", "---", etc.)
**In case you want no visible message displayed then enter a non-breaking space as feedback. Moodle will not put it's automatic response because it sees the blank space. To do this, put a # after the answer and write [[Image:Nbsp.png]] (without spaces between these characters).
* Need to use a special GIFT character in your question or answer? Put a \ in front of the GIFT character.
**For example if you want to use curly braces, { or }, or equal sign, =, or # or ~ in a GIFT file (in a math question including TeX expressions) you must "escape" them by preceding them with a \ directly in front of each { or } or =. It is possible to use a replace program/macro/editor filter to do this conversion before importing to Moodle.
* Want to change T/F type questions to multiple choice? Consider exporting the T/F questions as a GIFT file, then using a text editor to replace the (T) with (=True ~False). Perhaps change the title slightly so you will recognize the new questions.

==Word processors and Spreadsheets tools that create GIFTs==
Several contributors have used macros to generate GIFT files from a more familiar popular programs.
* There are Word macros available for easily creating GIFT files. See [http://www.soberit.hut.fi/sprg/resources/moodle/GiftConverter.html this non-Moodle site] for downloads and instructions for use.
* There are several Excel spreadsheets for generating GIFT files. Several people have built upon other contributors work.
**The latest version was posted on 10 April 2007 and can be found in this thread with this file name: [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=66660 Excel2GIFTv1.1.zip by Timothy Takemoto]. There is also a set of instructions Excel2GIFTv1.1_Instructions.rtf by Jeff Shek on the same day in that thread.
**An earlier version of this Excel spreadsheet for generating multiple choice GIFT files [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=45245 initially created by Olga Forlani and improved by A. T. Wyatt].
*There are Open Office templates for generating GIFT files in Writer. These are located in the Quiz forum in the[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=20705&parent=168385 OOo template to write exams and convert to GIFT format thread].
**The most recent for OO 2.x is "OOo2GIFT_Template_05.zip" postes 17 December 2005 by Enrique Castro.
**An earlier version is "GIFT_template_OOo.zip" posted 22 March 2005 by Enrique Castro.
*There is an easy to use on line multiple question generator at [http://a4esl.org/c/qw.html a4esl.org]. Here you write your question(s) without formating marks, select Moodle and press the generate quiz button. This creates GIFT formatted text that can be pasted into a file for importing into Moodle.
**The initial format requires fewer keystrokes (it uses line position and returns) than the GIFT format, so you should save time and be less likely to create invalid data.

==See also==

* Here is a 2-column [http://buypct.com/gift_reference.pdf GIFT Reference Sheet]
*[[Export questions]]
*[[Import questions]]
*[[Import and export FAQ]]
*[[Aiken Format]]
*[[Moodle XML format]]

[[Category:Questions]]

[[de:GIFT]]
[[fr:Format GIFT]]
[[ja:GIFTフォーマット]]

Broken/Numerical question units and intervals

2009-09-11T07:27:34Z

Jeffjeff: /* Allow fraction type 2 1/2 as 2.5 */ shortened some lines, spelling correction, mouseless browsing

This is my proposal for how the numerical question function and interface should be improved. [_] means checkboxes that teachers could use for specifying different question behaviours.

==Allow evaluation of expressions==

Checking this would accept '''5/2 0.5*5 5^2/10 5^(5-3)/10 25*10^-1 sqrt(25)/2'''

The main value of calculated or numerical question is that the student really does the
calculation and gives a real number (which means in decimal format).
I suggested that you use the short answer (or the multichoice) question type with the different
answer forms that you allow.
[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 04:25, 6 September 2007 (CDT)
To me the real value of the numerical question type is it's ability to really see the
answers as numbers and be able to see what things are equivalent. I have for many years
used a PERL script which could treat 3/2 and 1+1/2 and 1.5 and (1,5 for us Swedes) as
the same thing, and especially to accept well defined intervals.
Often I am more interested in students knowing HOW to create the right expression moreso
than doing the last step, evaluating it. It is also interesting when looking at the
statistics for a question, to see how they "thought" which can aid the teacher when
adding new feedback for other answers.
Real numbers include rational numbers include 1/3 which cannot be correctly represented
as a decimal. (Which doesn't bother me as a physicist, but a pure matematician ought to
value being able to use expressions like 1/3.
(Even if a programmer may say it'll only work from 0.33333333333333333333333333333 to
0.333333333333333333333334 :-))
[[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 06:21, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

If your answers are necessarily expressed as rational numbers then the short answer type
is the way to do it. You could use as many answers as necessary to express the various
formats that you accept as correct.
[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 07:21, 6 September 2007 (CDT)
But that would mean that the teacher looses the possibility to give feedback for numerical
intervals. Having questions that are as open as possible for different kinds of answers
while still being able to give meaningful feedback is one of the strengths of Moodle that
I like and would like to increase![[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 07:01, 4 October 2007 (CDT)

This is not the case if you use as many answers as you want to express the desired feedback.
Just defined the other answers in the range that you think reflect a given problem.
i.e. if a factor of 2 reflect a given error use this value as an answer and write the feedback text.
[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 15:40, 9 October 2008 (CDT)

5/2 0.5*5 5^2/2 5^(5-3)/2 25*10^-1 sqrt(25)/2
These value are not the same 5^2/2 and 5^(5-3)/2 are equal to 12.5!
I think it is very difficult to define which expressions are to be accepted. The numerical answer should somehow be the result. Otherweise the answer to a question like sqrt(50-2*17)=? could be the question itself.
[[User: Stefan Büchler|Stefan Büchler]] 25. Jan. 08

I have for many years used a Perl script that worked very well with numerical questions. It had the ability to evaluate expressions also and compare the value with the intervals that gave various feedback. Usually I felt that it was a good possibility. A lot of times in physics the main problem is figuring out HOW to get the result and the the actual computation can be, easy though time consuming. (Also good if they weren't getting the right answer, I could see HOW they were figuring.) But sometimes I wanted to be able to turn it off, just because of the possibility of "the answer being the question". That's why I suggest that this possibility should not be the default, but something that a teacher can chose If s/he wants it. (thanks for the pointing out the unequal expressions, which I have {hopefully} corrected. [[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 08:26, 22 September 2008 (CDT)

==Allow fraction type 2 1/2 as 2.5==

Translate "½" as "+.5" but give warning "Avoid ½ character in numerical expressions! We have translated ½ as +.5 to evaluate your answer."

In the student question interface the answer box should:
1) have an easy way to access with keyboard
a) good "tab order": when opening a quiz question page the student will
usually want to answer the first question as his/her first option
(tab order =10)
Assuming there are no other taborders set this would be first.
"BASIC" numbering allows later refinements without renumbering.
if available "send in question" (tab order =15)
answer next question (tab order= 20)
if available "send in question" (tab order =25)
(how this looks would depend on how many question blanks are on a page
and would end up at NEXT page link)
b) Acesskeys (This is mined territory since there are no real standards (or
rather several DIFFERENT standards) It would probably be best to let
people chose whether they want this activated and maybe which keys
for which targets. People that are really into this kind of thing can
use "Mouseless Browsing" extension for FireFox)
2) Have a (?) after the answer box linked to a popup explanation, which depends
on which options were checked by question author, saying for example:
This is for a numerical answer. The answer can contain a unit at the right
end after a space. As decimal character you may use . or , . Mixed fractions
can be written as 2 1/2 which is interpreted as 2+1/2 (2½) In this question
you may enter an expression which is evaluated to a number before comparing to
the correction key. [link to examples of allowable expressions]

Answer 1:[ 2.5 ] Accepted error ± [0.5] Grade: [100%]
Feedback:

Answer 2: [ '''100.4..100.5)''' ] Accepted error ± [_empty_] Grade: [90%]
Which would be interpreted '''110.4 <= right < 100.5'''
i.e. the round parentheses would mean that boundary not included
in the intervall or that one could enter evaluation strings like
'''110.4<=ans<100.5||100.5<ans<=100.6'''
''(I know that this particular thing can be addressed by having
100.5 +/-0 first than 100.5 +/-0.1)''
Feedback:

Answer 3: ...
Feedback: (for answer 3)

Show 3 more alternative answer fields

==Units mandatory or not==
===How the question has treated use of units===
The actual philosophy of units in the question at present (-2008) is that the units are used to allow the student to answer the question in another unit than the one prescribed or implied by the question.
However this unit must have been specified when creating the question.

This is why you set a multiplier to convert from your implied or expressed unit with a default 1 multiplier.
For example, if you enter a unit of 'cm' here, and the accepted answer is 15, then the answers '15cm' and '15' are both accepted as correct. You can also specify a multiplier. So, if your main answer was 5500 with unit W, you can also add the unit kW with a multiplier of 0.001. This means that the answers '5500', '5500W' or '5.5kW' would all be marked correct. Note that the accepted error is also multiplied, so an allowed error of 100W would become an error of 0.1kW.
For the response where the multiplier is 1 the unit is not mandatory.i.e.'5500', '5500W'
However when the multiplier is not 1 then the units is mandatory. i.e. '5.5kW'

===How most science/math teachers expect students to answer regarding units===
Usually a numerical answer without a unit is not considered complete. (At least in Sweden and when I grew up in the states 1960s) If one has an automatic correction of numerical values only, one must sacrifice the openness of the question by stipulating units.

What Moodle's questions have often provided is the possibility of allowing quite open responses from the students and still it can give meaningful feedback and points. If we must say "your answer must be expressed in kilonewtons" we won't be able to discover the weaknesses that might have lead to the student thinking Joules. Knowing what unit is involved it an important part of the ability we try to teach the students and we must be able to evaluate it. That is not possible with the question's present way of functioning.

A student can answer "5.2" and gets full points without writing any unit whereas a student answering "52 millimeters" would get zero if no multiplier was stipulated OR the unit only expressed as "mm" or "millimeter". The student with the 5.2 answer might have even been thinking "m" rather than the the teacher's expected "cm". This would not be the case if it were a "paper" test/assignment.

==Unit feedback options===
differentiated unit feedback, which is all of:
If there is no SPACE between the number and unit "There should always be a
space between the number and the unit, except for degree sign ° and
other planal angle units."
translate dimensionless "units": % = *0.01; ppm=*1E-6 ppb. promille
feedback for lacking unit [_]Feedback for accepted UNIT but wrong number
feedback for "possibly right number" if unit is adjusted
feedback for "Unit not recognized, either misspelled, wrong type,
or just not expected"
(o) missed unit gives standard retry reduction of points (_)no reduction
for missed unit (_)this reduction [___]
[[http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html|SI Unit rules and style conventions]] (#17 I don't
understand. Otherwise a good collection of rules, at least about SI units.
#16 is a rule that could be good to be able to choose to enforce.)

===Unit: [ ] (optional)===
Should accept arrays like '''kg, kilogram, kilograms , kilogramme, {"kilo gram", keelograhm} '''
where the ones enclosed in {} would be given feedback like
''We have interpretted '''keelograhm''' as a misspelling av '''kg''' Be aware that small spelling
mistakes like '''M''' in stead of '''m''' can lead to huge errors M=Mega=million
m=milli= one thousandth''"
Alternative Units:
Multiplier:[ ] Unit: [_______]
There should be the same possibility of unit arrays here.

Allow prefix units ($,£ maybe there are others )

==The Multiplier should have an explanation (?)==
''If the student answers with this unit, the student answer will be multiplied with this number
before being compared with the expected answer. Example:
Answer [_10__] Unit [cm]
alternative unit
multiplier [_2.54_] unit [", in, in., inch]
(That " could be a tricky unit to handle!)

==Then there are some things that I would be interested in having as options for all [maybe?] questiontypes (including numerical):==

1) "Challenge" That a student is given (perhaps with a linked "!" or "Hmm.." or button) a chance to give his/her preferred answer and his/her motivation (or why they didn't understand, like, agree with the grade or feedback they got for their answer or how the question was phrased.) This might be implemented witn similar code to number 4 below.

2) Hints option: option to include a clickable link that could display a/some hint(s), if the student didn't know how to attack a question. (It is possible, though hardly for html-illiterate, to use the OverLib.js which is included in Moodle to do this even now.

3) Certainty (in the past sometimes called "confidence") declaration option
[__answer___] certainty: Hi(o)|Med( )|Low( )
if possible with CBM/CBG grading scale including negative

4) All Internet pages (that the maintainer cares about) should have a [[Feedback link for all elements|feedback link]] something like this:

[[http://tupo.biz/kurser/gemensam/kommunikation/PageFeedbackFormExpand.htm Completely satisfied with this page?]]

Broken/Numerical question units and intervals

2009-09-09T16:00:05Z

Jeffjeff: /* Unit feedback options= */ small spelling misstakes-checked the link

This is my proposal for how the numerical question function and interface should be improved. [_] means checkboxes that teachers could use for specifying different question behaviours.

==Allow evaluation of expressions==

Checking this would accept '''5/2 0.5*5 5^2/10 5^(5-3)/10 25*10^-1 sqrt(25)/2'''

The main value of calculated or numerical question is that the student really does the
calculation and gives a real number (which means in decimal format).
I suggested that you use the short answer (or the multichoice) question type with the different
answer forms that you allow.
[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 04:25, 6 September 2007 (CDT)
To me the real value of the numerical question type is it's ability to really see the
answers as numbers and be able to see what things are equivalent. I have for many years
used a PERL script which could treat 3/2 and 1+1/2 and 1.5 and (1,5 for us Swedes) as
the same thing, and especially to accept well defined intervals.
Often I am more interested in students knowing HOW to create the right expression moreso
than doing the last step, evaluating it. It is also interesting when looking at the
statistics for a question, to see how they "thought" which can aid the teacher when
adding new feedback for other answers.
Real numbers include rational numbers include 1/3 which cannot be correctly represented
as a decimal. (Which doesn't bother me as a physicist, but a pure matematician ought to
value being able to use expressions like 1/3.
(Even if a programmer may say it'll only work from 0.33333333333333333333333333333 to
0.333333333333333333333334 :-))
[[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 06:21, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

If your answers are necessarily expressed as rational numbers then the short answer type
is the way to do it. You could use as many answers as necessary to express the various
formats that you accept as correct.
[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 07:21, 6 September 2007 (CDT)
But that would mean that the teacher looses the possibility to give feedback for numerical
intervals. Having questions that are as open as possible for different kinds of answers
while still being able to give meaningful feedback is one of the strengths of Moodle that
I like and would like to increase![[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 07:01, 4 October 2007 (CDT)

This is not the case if you use as many answers as you want to express the desired feedback.
Just defined the other answers in the range that you think reflect a given problem.
i.e. if a factor of 2 reflect a given error use this value as an answer and write the feedback text.
[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 15:40, 9 October 2008 (CDT)

5/2 0.5*5 5^2/2 5^(5-3)/2 25*10^-1 sqrt(25)/2
These value are not the same 5^2/2 and 5^(5-3)/2 are equal to 12.5!
I think it is very difficult to define which expressions are to be accepted. The numerical answer should somehow be the result. Otherweise the answer to a question like sqrt(50-2*17)=? could be the question itself.
[[User: Stefan Büchler|Stefan Büchler]] 25. Jan. 08

I have for many years used a Perl script that worked very well with numerical questions. It had the ability to evaluate expressions also and compare the value with the intervals that gave various feedback. Usually I felt that it was a good possibility. A lot of times in physics the main problem is figuring out HOW to get the result and the the actual computation can be, easy though time consuming. (Also good if they weren't getting the right answer, I could see HOW they were figuring.) But sometimes I wanted to be able to turn it off, just because of the possibility of "the answer being the question". That's why I suggest that this possibility should not be the default, but something that a teacher can chose If s/he wants it. (thanks for the pointing out the unequal expressions, which I have {hopefully} corrected. [[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 08:26, 22 September 2008 (CDT)

==Allow fraction type 2 1/2 as 2.5==

Translate "½" as "+.5" but give warning "Avoid ½ character in numerical expressions! We have translated ½ as +.5 to evaluate your answer."

In the student question interface the answer box should:
1) have an easy way to access with keyboard
a) good "tab order": when opening a quiz question page the student will usually want to
answer the first question as his/her first option (tab order =10)
Assuming there are no other taborders set this would be first.
"BASIC" numbering allows later refinements without renumbering.
if available "send in question" (tab order =15)
answer next question (tab order= 20)
if available "send in question" (tab order =25)
(how this looks would depend on how many question blanks are on a page
and would end up att NEXT page link)
b) Acesskeys (This is mined territory since there are no real standards (or
rather several DIFFERENT standards) It would probably be best to let
people chose whether they want this activated and maybe which keys for which targets)
2) Have a (?) after the answer box linked to a popup explanation, which depends
on which options were checked by question author, saying for example:
This is for a numerical answer. The answer can contain a unit at the right
end after a space. As decimal character you may use . or , . Mixed fractions
can be written as 2 1/2 which is interpretted as 2+1/2 (2½) In this question
you may enter an expression which is evaluated to a number before comparing to
the correction key. [link to examples of allowable expressions]

Answer 1:[ 2.5 ] Accepted error ± [0.5] Grade: [100%]
Feedback:

Answer 2: [ '''100.4..100.5)''' ] Accepted error ± [_empty_] Grade: [90%]
Which would be interpreted '''110.4 <= right < 100.5'''
i.e. the round parentheses would mean that boundary not included in intervall
or that one could enter evaluation strings like
'''110.4<=ans<100.5||100.5<ans<=100.6'''
''(I know that this particular thing can be addressed by having
100.5 +/-0 first than 100.5 +/-0.1)''
Feedback:

Answer 3: ...
Feedback: (for answer 3)

Show 3 more alternative answer fields

==Units mandatory or not==
===How the question has treated use of units===
The actual philosophy of units in the question at present (-2008) is that the units are used to allow the student to answer the question in another unit than the one prescribed or implied by the question.
However this unit must have been specified when creating the question.

This is why you set a multiplier to convert from your implied or expressed unit with a default 1 multiplier.
For example, if you enter a unit of 'cm' here, and the accepted answer is 15, then the answers '15cm' and '15' are both accepted as correct. You can also specify a multiplier. So, if your main answer was 5500 with unit W, you can also add the unit kW with a multiplier of 0.001. This means that the answers '5500', '5500W' or '5.5kW' would all be marked correct. Note that the accepted error is also multiplied, so an allowed error of 100W would become an error of 0.1kW.
For the response where the multiplier is 1 the unit is not mandatory.i.e.'5500', '5500W'
However when the multiplier is not 1 then the units is mandatory. i.e. '5.5kW'

===How most science/math teachers expect students to answer regarding units===
Usually a numerical answer without a unit is not considered complete. (At least in Sweden and when I grew up in the states 1960s) If one has an automatic correction of numerical values only, one must sacrifice the openness of the question by stipulating units.

What Moodle's questions have often provided is the possibility of allowing quite open responses from the students and still it can give meaningful feedback and points. If we must say "your answer must be expressed in kilonewtons" we won't be able to discover the weaknesses that might have lead to the student thinking Joules. Knowing what unit is involved it an important part of the ability we try to teach the students and we must be able to evaluate it. That is not possible with the question's present way of functioning.

A student can answer "5.2" and gets full points without writing any unit whereas a student answering "52 millimeters" would get zero if no multiplier was stipulated OR the unit only expressed as "mm" or "millimeter". The student with the 5.2 answer might have even been thinking "m" rather than the the teacher's expected "cm". This would not be the case if it were a "paper" test/assignment.

==Unit feedback options===
differentiated unit feedback, which is all of:
If there is no SPACE between the number and unit "There should always be a
space between the number and the unit, except for degree sign ° and
other planal angle units."
translate dimensionless "units": % = *0.01; ppm=*1E-6 ppb. promille
feedback for lacking unit [_]Feedback for accepted UNIT but wrong number
feedback for "possibly right number" if unit is adjusted
feedback for "Unit not recognized, either misspelled, wrong type,
or just not expected"
(o) missed unit gives standard retry reduction of points (_)no reduction
for missed unit (_)this reduction [___]
[[http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html|SI Unit rules and style conventions]] (#17 I don't
understand. Otherwise a good collection of rules, at least about SI units.
#16 is a rule that could be good to be able to choose to enforce.)

===Unit: [ ] (optional)===
Should accept arrays like '''kg, kilogram, kilograms , kilogramme, {"kilo gram", keelograhm} '''
where the ones enclosed in {} would be given feedback like
''We have interpretted '''keelograhm''' as a misspelling av '''kg''' Be aware that small spelling
mistakes like '''M''' in stead of '''m''' can lead to huge errors M=Mega=million
m=milli= one thousandth''"
Alternative Units:
Multiplier:[ ] Unit: [_______]
There should be the same possibility of unit arrays here.

Allow prefix units ($,£ maybe there are others )

==The Multiplier should have an explanation (?)==
''If the student answers with this unit, the student answer will be multiplied with this number
before being compared with the expected answer. Example:
Answer [_10__] Unit [cm]
alternative unit
multiplier [_2.54_] unit [", in, in., inch]
(That " could be a tricky unit to handle!)

==Then there are some things that I would be interested in having as options for all [maybe?] questiontypes (including numerical):==

1) "Challenge" That a student is given (perhaps with a linked "!" or "Hmm.." or button) a chance to give his/her preferred answer and his/her motivation (or why they didn't understand, like, agree with the grade or feedback they got for their answer or how the question was phrased.) This might be implemented witn similar code to number 4 below.

2) Hints option: option to include a clickable link that could display a/some hint(s), if the student didn't know how to attack a question. (It is possible, though hardly for html-illiterate, to use the OverLib.js which is included in Moodle to do this even now.

3) Certainty (in the past sometimes called "confidence") declaration option
[__answer___] certainty: Hi(o)|Med( )|Low( )
if possible with CBM/CBG grading scale including negative

4) All Internet pages (that the maintainer cares about) should have a [[Feedback link for all elements|feedback link]] something like this:

[[http://tupo.biz/kurser/gemensam/kommunikation/PageFeedbackFormExpand.htm Completely satisfied with this page?]]

Multi-language content filter

2009-08-24T08:10:08Z

Jeffjeff: /* Tips and tricks */ (all too brief) about the lang dropdown in HTML editor

The Multi-language content filter enables resources to be created in multiple languages. When turned on, it looks for <nowiki></nowiki> tags which indicate that a text contains multiple languages. Then it selects and outputs the best language for the current user. The language of the resource will change when the user changes their selected Moodle language.

The multilang syntax was changed in 1.8. <nowiki><lang></nowiki> is not supported any more. It is required to add ''class="multilang"'' into each <nowiki></nowiki> tag in multilang block. The new syntax is backwards compatible with old plugins, which means it can be used in older Moodle version.

== How to use in a course ==

To use this feature first create your contents in multiple languages (in the same resource). Then enclose each language block (aka multilang block) in the following tags:

<nowiki>your_content_here
your_content_in_other_language_here</nowiki>

It is essential to be in '''the code editing mode''' (press <nowiki>[<>]</nowiki> in the HTML editor), when you enter these tags for them to work. Only spaces, tabs and enters can be used between the individual languages in the multilang block. Please note that ''class="multilang"'' is not required prior to 1.8. There is a lang drop-down markup tool in the HTML editor in later versions of Moodle. The first versions, at least to 1.8.2, do not make "multilang" language tags. If you are working in a sufficiently new version of the HTML editor you can add these tags without going to the code editing mode. If something doesn't work properly you should check how the markup looks in code mode.

Following code
<nowiki><lang="XX">your_content_here</lang>
<lang="YY">your_content_in_other_language_here</lang></nowiki>
does NOT work.

The obsoleted HTML tagging
<nowiki><lang lang="XX">your_content_here</lang>
<lang lang="YY">your_content_in_other_language_here</lang>

your_content_here
your_content_in_other_language_here</nowiki>
will not work in 1.8 and later. In 1.8 the lang attribute without ''class="multilang"'' can be used to mark the language of the text - see http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/dirlang.html

== How it works internally ==

# Filter first looks for ''multilang blocks'' in the text
# For each multilang block:
#* If there are texts in the currently active language, print them
#* Else, if there exists texts in the current parent language, print them
#* Else, print the first language found in the text
# Text outside of multilang blocks will be shown always

==Course summary and title tags==

To be able to change text such as resource titles and summaries, an administrator must choose ''Filter all strings'' in the site administration.

<nowiki> Matematically Matematiskt (svenska)</nowiki>
functions as English or Swedish title.

It doesn't work for course titles and site names (neither long nor short version) in some versions of Moodle. At least from 1.8.2 long course titles and site name, both full and breadcrumb were multilang filtered.

In the course summary:

<nowiki>Growth is often a major concern in planning society.
How can one avoid superficial conclusions? 
(Exists in Swedish too. Finns på svenska också)
Tillväxt är ofta använt i samhällsdebatten.
Hur kan man undvika ytliga slutsatser?
(Finns på engelska också. Exists in English too.)
 </nowiki>

Can show in the chosen language (and point out that the other language is there). Please note that ''class="multilang"'' is not required prior to Moodle 1.8.

== Translations with tags ==
If you wish to translate a word or phrase in an English text to another language:

<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation 
(sv: förklaring) in a running text
can I do it?</nowiki>
or
<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation
in a running text can I do it? 
If I want to include an explanation (sv:
förklaring) in a running text can I do it?</nowiki>

would both work, but not:

<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation 
(sv: förklaring) in a running text
can I do it?</nowiki>
or
<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation 
(sv: förklaring) in a running text can I do it?</nowiki>
which would show the Swedish even if English was the chosen language. NOTE that before 1.8 the "span lang=en" must contain something, at least a space.

== New multilang syntax ==
{{Moodle 1.8}}
* <nowiki> and <lang></nowiki> should not be used anymore
* Existing content can be upgraded using the admin/multilangupgrade.php script, there is a link in the admin notification page if a multilang upgrade is required.
* The multilang filter can be configured to use old syntax only - see ''Multi-Language Content Settings''; this setting may be removed in 1.9
* New syntax is forced during a new 1.8 installation, for upgraded sites the new syntax is enabled after the multilang upgrade

== Common problems ==

* The multilang filter is not enabled. The administrator for the Moodle site you are using must go to Site administration> modules> Multilanguage Content and enable it (by clicking on the "eye")
* ''Filter all strings'' not enabled on sites that need multilang in titles, navigation, headings, etc. The administrator for the Moodle site you are using must go to Site administration> appearance> Filter settings and set a check in "filter alll strings". This will increase server load slightly, so don't do it unless you really need it.
* Extra characters between language span tags - editor might add <nowiki> </nowiki> or other tags, please review the html in source view
* If the course setting is "force" some language, you won't be able to change the displayed language.
* Extra spaces in language span tag
* Can not easily access language choice dropdown! Unfortunately you must go to the site homepage or your own profile to change the displayed language. Want a change? see [http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-11531 MDL-11531]. It is possible to manually quickly change displayed lang by editing the URL in the browsers address bar. See Tips and tricks below!

==Tips and tricks==
===Lang dropdown in HTML editor===
In later versions of Moodle there is a lang dropdown in the HTML editor that can be used to do multilang markup. You may have to go to the "edit source" mode (with the ['''<>'''] button) to check, and maybe correct, how things turned out.
===Changing language displayed without going to front page===
It is possible to change the displayed language by manually changing the link.
*Here is the default language page at id=2306. This link is in English, the default language:
:http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2306
*The link to change the page display to Spanish is
:http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2306&lang=es ,
*When the default language is an other language, to change the page to an English version, the link would be:
:http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2306&lang=en

Thusly, with a bit of editing, you can manually change the displayed language by adding "&lang=xx" to the URL in the location bar of the browser. Where xx is the abbreviation for the language you want.

===Bandwidth-adaptivity===
One inventive fellow has made a hack to use the multilang filter to be able to adapt the sent content to a users chosen bandwidth. Especiallly international courses can have users with extremely varied Internet connection speeds and this can allow them to chose what level of content (Low = text and small pictures, medium = some mp3, high = some video and other heavy stuff) suits them.
[http://paaralan.blogspot.com/2009/08/hack-bandwidth-adaptivity-for-moodle.html the blog with description and downloads]

== See also ==

*[[Filters|Filters administration]]
Using Moodle forum discussions:

*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=51603 Multilanguage filter - does not work ...]
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=74340 Problems with multilang filter and SPAN tags]
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=94006 Multilingual Content]
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=95134 Multilingual VS HTML editor]

[[Category:Teacher]]
[[Category:Filter]]

[[es:Filtros (Administrador)]]
[[fr:Contenu multilingue]]
[[ja:多言語シンタックス]]

Multi-language content filter

2009-08-24T07:40:49Z

Jeffjeff: /* Tips and tricks */ hack for bandwidth link

The Multi-language content filter enables resources to be created in multiple languages. When turned on, it looks for <nowiki></nowiki> tags which indicate that a text contains multiple languages. Then it selects and outputs the best language for the current user. The language of the resource will change when the user changes their selected Moodle language.

The multilang syntax was changed in 1.8. <nowiki><lang></nowiki> is not supported any more. It is required to add ''class="multilang"'' into each <nowiki></nowiki> tag in multilang block. The new syntax is backwards compatible with old plugins, which means it can be used in older Moodle version.

== How to use in a course ==

To use this feature first create your contents in multiple languages (in the same resource). Then enclose each language block (aka multilang block) in the following tags:

<nowiki>your_content_here
your_content_in_other_language_here</nowiki>

It is essential to be in '''the code editing mode''' (press <nowiki>[<>]</nowiki> in the HTML editor), when you enter these tags for them to work. Only spaces, tabs and enters can be used between the individual languages in the multilang block. Please note that ''class="multilang"'' is not required prior to 1.8. There is a lang drop-down markup tool in the HTML editor in later versions of Moodle. The first versions, at least to 1.8.2, do not make "multilang" language tags. If you are working in a sufficiently new version of the HTML editor you can add these tags without going to the code editing mode. If something doesn't work properly you should check how the markup looks in code mode.

Following code
<nowiki><lang="XX">your_content_here</lang>
<lang="YY">your_content_in_other_language_here</lang></nowiki>
does NOT work.

The obsoleted HTML tagging
<nowiki><lang lang="XX">your_content_here</lang>
<lang lang="YY">your_content_in_other_language_here</lang>

your_content_here
your_content_in_other_language_here</nowiki>
will not work in 1.8 and later. In 1.8 the lang attribute without ''class="multilang"'' can be used to mark the language of the text - see http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/dirlang.html

== How it works internally ==

# Filter first looks for ''multilang blocks'' in the text
# For each multilang block:
#* If there are texts in the currently active language, print them
#* Else, if there exists texts in the current parent language, print them
#* Else, print the first language found in the text
# Text outside of multilang blocks will be shown always

==Course summary and title tags==

To be able to change text such as resource titles and summaries, an administrator must choose ''Filter all strings'' in the site administration.

<nowiki> Matematically Matematiskt (svenska)</nowiki>
functions as English or Swedish title.

It doesn't work for course titles and site names (neither long nor short version) in some versions of Moodle. At least from 1.8.2 long course titles and site name, both full and breadcrumb were multilang filtered.

In the course summary:

<nowiki>Growth is often a major concern in planning society.
How can one avoid superficial conclusions? 
(Exists in Swedish too. Finns på svenska också)
Tillväxt är ofta använt i samhällsdebatten.
Hur kan man undvika ytliga slutsatser?
(Finns på engelska också. Exists in English too.)
 </nowiki>

Can show in the chosen language (and point out that the other language is there). Please note that ''class="multilang"'' is not required prior to Moodle 1.8.

== Translations with tags ==
If you wish to translate a word or phrase in an English text to another language:

<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation 
(sv: förklaring) in a running text
can I do it?</nowiki>
or
<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation
in a running text can I do it? 
If I want to include an explanation (sv:
förklaring) in a running text can I do it?</nowiki>

would both work, but not:

<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation 
(sv: förklaring) in a running text
can I do it?</nowiki>
or
<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation 
(sv: förklaring) in a running text can I do it?</nowiki>
which would show the Swedish even if English was the chosen language. NOTE that before 1.8 the "span lang=en" must contain something, at least a space.

== New multilang syntax ==
{{Moodle 1.8}}
* <nowiki> and <lang></nowiki> should not be used anymore
* Existing content can be upgraded using the admin/multilangupgrade.php script, there is a link in the admin notification page if a multilang upgrade is required.
* The multilang filter can be configured to use old syntax only - see ''Multi-Language Content Settings''; this setting may be removed in 1.9
* New syntax is forced during a new 1.8 installation, for upgraded sites the new syntax is enabled after the multilang upgrade

== Common problems ==

* The multilang filter is not enabled. The administrator for the Moodle site you are using must go to Site administration> modules> Multilanguage Content and enable it (by clicking on the "eye")
* ''Filter all strings'' not enabled on sites that need multilang in titles, navigation, headings, etc. The administrator for the Moodle site you are using must go to Site administration> appearance> Filter settings and set a check in "filter alll strings". This will increase server load slightly, so don't do it unless you really need it.
* Extra characters between language span tags - editor might add <nowiki> </nowiki> or other tags, please review the html in source view
* If the course setting is "force" some language, you won't be able to change the displayed language.
* Extra spaces in language span tag
* Can not easily access language choice dropdown! Unfortunately you must go to the site homepage or your own profile to change the displayed language. Want a change? see [http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-11531 MDL-11531]. It is possible to manually quickly change displayed lang by editing the URL in the browsers address bar. See Tips and tricks below!

==Tips and tricks==
===Changing language displayed without going to front page===
It is possible to change the displayed language by manually changing the link.
*Here is the default language page at id=2306. This link is in English, the default language:
:http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2306
*The link to change the page display to Spanish is
:http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2306&lang=es ,
*When the default language is an other language, to change the page to an English version, the link would be:
:http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2306&lang=en

Thusly, with a bit of editing, you can manually change the displayed language by adding "&lang=xx" to the URL in the location bar of the browser. Where xx is the abbreviation for the language you want.

===Bandwidth-adaptivity===
One inventive fellow has made a hack to use the multilang filter to be able to adapt the sent content to a users chosen bandwidth. Especiallly international courses can have users with extremely varied Internet connection speeds and this can allow them to chose what level of content (Low = text and small pictures, medium = some mp3, high = some video and other heavy stuff) suits them.
[http://paaralan.blogspot.com/2009/08/hack-bandwidth-adaptivity-for-moodle.html the blog with description and downloads]

== See also ==

*[[Filters|Filters administration]]
Using Moodle forum discussions:

*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=51603 Multilanguage filter - does not work ...]
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=74340 Problems with multilang filter and SPAN tags]
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=94006 Multilingual Content]
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=95134 Multilingual VS HTML editor]

[[Category:Teacher]]
[[Category:Filter]]

[[es:Filtros (Administrador)]]
[[fr:Contenu multilingue]]
[[ja:多言語シンタックス]]

Broken/Numerical question units and intervals

2009-08-24T06:21:58Z

Jeffjeff: /* Then there are some things that I would be interested in having as options for all [maybe?] questiontypes (including numerical): */ changed the link to an example feedback form (the old one no lon

This is my proposal for how the numerical question function and interface should be improved. [_] means checkboxes that teachers could use for specifying different question behaviours.

==Allow evaluation of expressions==

Checking this would accept '''5/2 0.5*5 5^2/10 5^(5-3)/10 25*10^-1 sqrt(25)/2'''

The main value of calculated or numerical question is that the student really does the
calculation and gives a real number (which means in decimal format).
I suggested that you use the short answer (or the multichoice) question type with the different
answer forms that you allow.
[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 04:25, 6 September 2007 (CDT)
To me the real value of the numerical question type is it's ability to really see the
answers as numbers and be able to see what things are equivalent. I have for many years
used a PERL script which could treat 3/2 and 1+1/2 and 1.5 and (1,5 for us Swedes) as
the same thing, and especially to accept well defined intervals.
Often I am more interested in students knowing HOW to create the right expression moreso
than doing the last step, evaluating it. It is also interesting when looking at the
statistics for a question, to see how they "thought" which can aid the teacher when
adding new feedback for other answers.
Real numbers include rational numbers include 1/3 which cannot be correctly represented
as a decimal. (Which doesn't bother me as a physicist, but a pure matematician ought to
value being able to use expressions like 1/3.
(Even if a programmer may say it'll only work from 0.33333333333333333333333333333 to
0.333333333333333333333334 :-))
[[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 06:21, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

If your answers are necessarily expressed as rational numbers then the short answer type
is the way to do it. You could use as many answers as necessary to express the various
formats that you accept as correct.
[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 07:21, 6 September 2007 (CDT)
But that would mean that the teacher looses the possibility to give feedback for numerical
intervals. Having questions that are as open as possible for different kinds of answers
while still being able to give meaningful feedback is one of the strengths of Moodle that
I like and would like to increase![[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 07:01, 4 October 2007 (CDT)

This is not the case if you use as many answers as you want to express the desired feedback.
Just defined the other answers in the range that you think reflect a given problem.
i.e. if a factor of 2 reflect a given error use this value as an answer and write the feedback text.
[[User:Pierre Pichet|Pierre Pichet]] 15:40, 9 October 2008 (CDT)

5/2 0.5*5 5^2/2 5^(5-3)/2 25*10^-1 sqrt(25)/2
These value are not the same 5^2/2 and 5^(5-3)/2 are equal to 12.5!
I think it is very difficult to define which expressions are to be accepted. The numerical answer should somehow be the result. Otherweise the answer to a question like sqrt(50-2*17)=? could be the question itself.
[[User: Stefan Büchler|Stefan Büchler]] 25. Jan. 08

I have for many years used a Perl script that worked very well with numerical questions. It had the ability to evaluate expressions also and compare the value with the intervals that gave various feedback. Usually I felt that it was a good possibility. A lot of times in physics the main problem is figuring out HOW to get the result and the the actual computation can be, easy though time consuming. (Also good if they weren't getting the right answer, I could see HOW they were figuring.) But sometimes I wanted to be able to turn it off, just because of the possibility of "the answer being the question". That's why I suggest that this possibility should not be the default, but something that a teacher can chose If s/he wants it. (thanks for the pointing out the unequal expressions, which I have {hopefully} corrected. [[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 08:26, 22 September 2008 (CDT)

==Allow fraction type 2 1/2 as 2.5==

Translate "½" as "+.5" but give warning "Avoid ½ character in numerical expressions! We have translated ½ as +.5 to evaluate your answer."

In the student question interface the answer box should:
1) have an easy way to access with keyboard
a) good "tab order": when opening a quiz question page the student will usually want to
answer the first question as his/her first option (tab order =10)
Assuming there are no other taborders set this would be first.
"BASIC" numbering allows later refinements without renumbering.
if available "send in question" (tab order =15)
answer next question (tab order= 20)
if available "send in question" (tab order =25)
(how this looks would depend on how many question blanks are on a page
and would end up att NEXT page link)
b) Acesskeys (This is mined territory since there are no real standards (or
rather several DIFFERENT standards) It would probably be best to let
people chose whether they want this activated and maybe which keys for which targets)
2) Have a (?) after the answer box linked to a popup explanation, which depends
on which options were checked by question author, saying for example:
This is for a numerical answer. The answer can contain a unit at the right
end after a space. As decimal character you may use . or , . Mixed fractions
can be written as 2 1/2 which is interpretted as 2+1/2 (2½) In this question
you may enter an expression which is evaluated to a number before comparing to
the correction key. [link to examples of allowable expressions]

Answer 1:[ 2.5 ] Accepted error ± [0.5] Grade: [100%]
Feedback:

Answer 2: [ '''100.4..100.5)''' ] Accepted error ± [_empty_] Grade: [90%]
Which would be interpreted '''110.4 <= right < 100.5'''
i.e. the round parentheses would mean that boundary not included in intervall
or that one could enter evaluation strings like
'''110.4<=ans<100.5||100.5<ans<=100.6'''
''(I know that this particular thing can be addressed by having
100.5 +/-0 first than 100.5 +/-0.1)''
Feedback:

Answer 3: ...
Feedback: (for answer 3)

Show 3 more alternative answer fields

==Units mandatory or not==
===How the question has treated use of units===
The actual philosophy of units in the question at present (-2008) is that the units are used to allow the student to answer the question in another unit than the one prescribed or implied by the question.
However this unit must have been specified when creating the question.

This is why you set a multiplier to convert from your implied or expressed unit with a default 1 multiplier.
For example, if you enter a unit of 'cm' here, and the accepted answer is 15, then the answers '15cm' and '15' are both accepted as correct. You can also specify a multiplier. So, if your main answer was 5500 with unit W, you can also add the unit kW with a multiplier of 0.001. This means that the answers '5500', '5500W' or '5.5kW' would all be marked correct. Note that the accepted error is also multiplied, so an allowed error of 100W would become an error of 0.1kW.
For the response where the multiplier is 1 the unit is not mandatory.i.e.'5500', '5500W'
However when the multiplier is not 1 then the units is mandatory. i.e. '5.5kW'

===How most science/math teachers expect students to answer regarding units===
Usually a numerical answer without a unit is not considered complete. (At least in Sweden and when I grew up in the states 1960s) If one has an automatic correction of numerical values only, one must sacrifice the openness of the question by stipulating units.

What Moodle's questions have often provided is the possibility of allowing quite open responses from the students and still it can give meaningful feedback and points. If we must say "your answer must be expressed in kilonewtons" we won't be able to discover the weaknesses that might have lead to the student thinking Joules. Knowing what unit is involved it an important part of the ability we try to teach the students and we must be able to evaluate it. That is not possible with the question's present way of functioning.

A student can answer "5.2" and gets full points without writing any unit whereas a student answering "52 millimeters" would get zero if no multiplier was stipulated OR the unit only expressed as "mm" or "millimeter". The student with the 5.2 answer might have even been thinking "m" rather than the the teacher's expected "cm". This would not be the case if it were a "paper" test/assignment.

==Unit feedback options===
differentiated unit feedback, which is all of:
If there is no SPACE between the number and unit "There should always be a
space between the number and the unit, except for degree sign ° and
other planal angle units."
translate dimensionless "units": % = *0.01; ppm=*1E-6 ppb. promille
feedback for lacking unit [_]Feedback for accepted UNIT but wrong number
feedback for "possibly right number" if unit is adjusted
feedback for "Unit not recognized, either misspelled, wrong type,
or just not expected"
(o) missed unit gives standard retry reduction of points (_)no reduction
for missed unit (_)this reduction [___]
[[http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html|SI Unit rules and style conventions]] (#17 I don't
understand. Otherwise a good colection of rules, at least about SI units.
#16 is a rule that could be good to be abe to choose to enforce.)

===Unit: [ ] (optional)===
Should accept arrays like '''kg, kilogram, kilograms , kilogramme, {"kilo gram", keelograhm} '''
where the ones enclosed in {} would be given feedback like
''We have interpretted '''keelograhm''' as a misspelling av '''kg''' Be aware that small spelling
mistakes like '''M''' in stead of '''m''' can lead to huge errors M=Mega=million
m=milli= one thousandth''"
Alternative Units:
Multiplier:[ ] Unit: [_______]
There should be the same possibility of unit arrays here.

Allow prefix units ($,£ maybe there are others )

==The Multiplier should have an explanation (?)==
''If the student answers with this unit, the student answer will be multiplied with this number
before being compared with the expected answer. Example:
Answer [_10__] Unit [cm]
alternative unit
multiplier [_2.54_] unit [", in, in., inch]
(That " could be a tricky unit to handle!)

==Then there are some things that I would be interested in having as options for all [maybe?] questiontypes (including numerical):==

1) "Challenge" That a student is given (perhaps with a linked "!" or "Hmm.." or button) a chance to give his/her preferred answer and his/her motivation (or why they didn't understand, like, agree with the grade or feedback they got for their answer or how the question was phrased.) This might be implemented witn similar code to number 4 below.

2) Hints option: option to include a clickable link that could display a/some hint(s), if the student didn't know how to attack a question. (It is possible, though hardly for html-illiterate, to use the OverLib.js which is included in Moodle to do this even now.

3) Certainty (in the past sometimes called "confidence") declaration option
[__answer___] certainty: Hi(o)|Med( )|Low( )
if possible with CBM/CBG grading scale including negative

4) All Internet pages (that the maintainer cares about) should have a [[Feedback link for all elements|feedback link]] something like this:

[[http://tupo.biz/kurser/gemensam/kommunikation/PageFeedbackFormExpand.htm Completely satisfied with this page?]]

Broken/id:9517

2009-08-04T09:24:29Z

Jeffjeff: Checkbox label AFTER

== Checkbox label ==

why AFTER (which is bolded in the text):
"Create a checkbox with an id attribute. Add a <label for="id_of_checkbox"> element '''after''' the checkbox. As the text content of the label element, write the result of checking the box: "

I seem to recall having placed a label so it includes both the checkbox and the text belonging to it. I have sometimes used that to put in a tooltip with a title="when you put a check here, life will be wonderful ;-)" in the label tag and it would be good if that came up while hoovering over the checkbox itself. Isn't it also possible to make the checkbox "mouseclickable" even on the text which belongs to the checkbox? [[User:Jeff Forssell|Jeff Forssell]] 09:24, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Mathematics

2009-07-31T11:03:05Z

Jeffjeff: /* Applet Tools */ # GraphApplet 1.05 and Physlets

==Equation Construction and Display==
===Tools===
There are a variety of tools that are available for the purpose of constructing equations, providing text expressions that can be converted to equations, and displaying equations.

The most common text expression syntax is LaTeX or a derivative with probably the most common form of display being a conversion of the equation to an image file. However, is demonstrated with ASCIIMathML simple text expressions can now be be converted to MathML on the fly.

Some tools for creating and displaying equations on-line that may be of interest to those teaching mathematics are:
* [[ASCIIMathML]], which both converts equations into MathML on the fly and provides a text expression syntax more easily mastered than Tex, though the filter will convert TeX expressions as well. [http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=106148 The ASCIIMathML 2.0.2 zip] provides all the files necessary for setting ASCIIMathML up as a Moodle filter as well creating run-time graphs with ASCIIsvg. An on-line calculator is also included. Just recently an ASCIIMathML export format for DragMath was added to version 0.7.2, [https://docs.moodle.org/en/DragMath_equation_editor available here], so that you have access to both a GUI and text expression syntax for creating and displaying equations. Quick and GIFless. [http://math.chapman.edu/~jipsen/asciencepad/asciencepad.html ASciencePad is also available] and consists of htmlarea enhanced with the ASCIIMathML functionality.
* [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=916 Tim Hunt's Moodle MathTran Module] converts Tex into images on the fly. You can also use [http://www.mathtran.org/wiki/index.php/TeX_image mathtran_img.js] on a page by page basis.
* The [[TeX filter]], which allows [http://www.tug.org/begin.html TeX markup] to be inserted anywhere (e.g. quiz questions, discussion messages, text resources)
* The [[jsMath]] filter, which does a similar job but using [[Javascript]] on the user's computer
* [[Calculated question type]]
* [[DragMath equation editor]], a WYSIWYG equation editor that integrates easily with the Moodle HTML editor.
* [[WIRIS]], is a plugin that easily integrates with the HTML editor several math tools
** WYSIWYG equation editor. Based on MathML
** Advanced calculator. Integrals, derivatives, limits, ploting in 2D and 3D,...
* MathType, a commercial product created by DSI (the folk who also offer MathPlayer, a plugin many IE users employ). Bob Mathews recently posted [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=93728&parent=549428] that info on MathType can be found at http://www.dessci.com/en/support/mathtype/workswith/moodle.htm
Mathematics teachers may also be interested to follow the work of [http://maths.york.ac.uk York University Maths department], who are working on [http://maths.york.ac.uk/serving_maths/ some projects] to augment Moodle, particularly its [[Quiz module]] for online assessment, for example by integrating a system which is able to mark algebraic and trigonometric answers to open-ended questions.

===Accessibility Display Matrix===

{{Expand-section|date=August 2008}}

■ Feature Key appears below the matrix.

{| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"
!Notation
!Tex/LaTex
!ASCIIMath
!MathML
|-
|Ease of Use
|Plain text system. Knowledge of LaTeX notation required. Being a plain text system, LaTeX notation is straightforward to create and edit.
|Plain text system. Easy to learn. Notation simple. Being a plain text system, ASCIIMath is very easy to create and edit.
|XML-based. Not easy to create and edit: an editor is required.
|-
|Conversion to Braille
|Output directly to Braille display via screen reader (fn 2)
|ASCIIMath notation is converted to MathML or LaTeX. Please refer to those formats for details.
|Converted to suitable textual format and Brailled using screen reader (fn 3)
|-
|Transmission via TTS
|Notation spoken "as-is" via screen reader (fn 2)
|ASCIIMath notation is converted to MathML or LaTeX. Please refer to those formats for details.
|Converted to suitable textual format and spoken using screen reader. Note that MathPlayer add-on for IE has TTS functionality built-in (fn 3).
|-
|}

'''fn1.'''
MathPlayer claims to do math-to-speech by parsing the MathML, not by parsing TeX. See http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/tech/accessibility.htm where it is stated:

All of these examples were written in Microsoft Word and MathType and exported to MathML using MathType’s “MathPage” technology. MathPage technology was added to MathType in version 5.0. No special work is needed to author the expressions to make them accessible. Any product that exports MathML will produce pages that MathPlayer can speak.

For a larger real life example, see this page. Also, MSN Encarta uses MathML on many of their web pages that contain math, so much of their Math should be accessible using MathPlayer.

'''fn2. '''
The alt attribute of the rendered graphic is spoken and/or Braillled. As LaTeX is a plain text notation, the notation can be spoken and Brailled by the screen reader directly. This does, of course, assume an understanding of LaTeX notation on the part of the screen reader user.

'''fn3. '''
In the case of Internet Explorer, screen readers require the MathPlayer plugin to be installed before MathML is rendered (IE does not include native MathML support). By using MSAA, the screen reader can obtain a textual version of the math notation from MathPlayer, which it can then TTS and Braille. Note that MathPlayer also contains built-in TTS functionality (employing MS SAPI) which can be used to speak the math notation without having to employ a screen reader. See [http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/tech/accessibility.htm] for further details. At time of writing, screen reader support for Firefox is via MSAA and a special custom, Firefox-specific IAccessible2 interface (to reveal text attributes and character positions). Math notation is spoken via a screen reader which interrogates these interfaces.

==Using Java for Curriculum==
===Java Tools for Building Applets for Interactive Demonstration===
These tools can be integrated in or used with Moodle Resources
* Java Sketchpad, http://www.dynamicgeometry.com/JavaSketchpad/About_JavaSketchpad.html, is an applet developed by Key Curriculum Press. The applet has been the focus of quite a bit of discussion and demonstrations and discussions are widely available. An introductory article from the Journal of Online Mathematics can be found here: http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/4/?nodeId=508&pa=content&sa=viewDocument. Usage focuses largely on Geometry
* CabriJava, http://www-cabri.imag.fr/cabrijava/, an applet offered by the University of Cabri, also focuses on interactive geometry. Quite a number of examples employing CabriJava can be found here: http://www.mathsnet.net/cabri/index.html.
* Descartes, http://descartes.cnice.mec.es/, is an applet developed under the auspices of the Spanish Ministerio de Educacion Politica Social y Diporte. An English introduction can be found here at http://descartes.cnice.mec.es/ingles/index.html. The Ministery has produced an extensive Mathematics curriculum using Descartes, which is available in English and can be freely downloaded and used. Much of what is available is still only in Spanish so anyone interested in doing translation work please post to the Moodle Math Tools forum.

===Additional Curricular Use of Applets===
*Euclid's Elements - http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html
*Tutorials employing applets (applets can be downloaded and used in Moodle) http://www.analyzemath.com/

===Applet Tools===
*Graphing - http://www.langara.bc.ca/mathstats/resource/GraphExplorer/
*Geometry Construction - http://www.cs.rice.edu/~jwarren/grace/
*GeoGebra - http://www.geogebra.org/
*Physics Applets for Drawing (PAD) - http://www.wku.edu/pads/ These can make interactive activities that can both check for correctness and give guiding feedback. Includes modules for graphs (2D functions), vectors (even in/out and other lines and arrows and bar-graphs), motion analysis, equation recognition and more. Uses don't have to be just for Physics. Math, of course. VectorPAD can be used for placing markers (as points, lines, small pictures, [http://www.wku.edu/pads/exercise.php?id=mgaazqzoakmqgfrkkmqgaaayo arrows) on a picture], that could be used in almost any subject. They can be incorporating in SCORM packages which can interact with Moodle. There is no Moodle module now (july 2009) for using them directly, but that would add a lot more power (compared to SCORM), like being able to save states, turn on/off feedback, etc.
*GraphApplet 1.05: both calculator and graphapplet - http://www.lundin.info/graphapplet.aspx
*Physlets: large suite of applets about physics but includes [http://webphysics.davidson.edu/physletprob/ch16_datagraph/default.html advanced graphing] too. [http://www.tupo.biz/kurser/javaapplets/Fysik/java/Physlets/CFL/3dimDiag.htm A time dependent 3D example (Swedish!)]

===Java Applet Collections===
* http://cs.jsu.edu/mcis/faculty/leathrum/Mathlets/
* http://www.walter-fendt.de/m14e/

* Probability and Statistics
**http://www.mste.uiuc.edu/pavel/java/dilemma/
**http://lstat.kuleuven.be/java/
**http://www.math.csusb.edu/faculty/stanton/m262/

*http://www.mste.uiuc.edu/murphy/JavaOverview/default.html
*Math and Physics - http://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html
*Curves - http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Java/index.html
*Chaos and Fractals - http://math.bu.edu/DYSYS/applets/index.html
*For sale, but extensive - http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/index.shtml

==Mathematics Assessment==

Assessment is a key driver for mathematics. There are a number of ways of getting students to answer mathematical questions through Moodle.
* WebWork, see http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Main_Page http://webwork.math.rochester.edu/docs/docs/, and http://webwork.maa.org/moodle/ is an independent web application for assessing student Math progress, and there is a Moodle Module for interfacing WebWork to Moodle that can be found here: http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=332, though the resources on the WeBWork wiki are probably more current as the code in the Moodle CVS has not been updated for some time.
* STACK provides very mathematical questions for the Moodle quiz module. These are supported by the CAS Maxima. The home page for STACK can be found on http://stack.bham.ac.uk/

==See also==
* [[Mathematics tools FAQ]]
Using Moodle forum discussions:
* [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=46009 Best practices for teaching Math(s) in Moodle]
* [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=61993 How do you deal with the challenge of writing equations?]
* [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=62002 How do you deal with the challenge of drawing graphs and diagrams?]
* [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=62014 How do you deal with the challenge of interactive exercises and simulations?]
* [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=95950 How can I have a student enter a fraction as an answer?]
* [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=127867 What are the components of an exemplary high school Moodle course?]

[[Category:Mathematics]]

Mathematics

2009-07-31T10:18:54Z

Jeffjeff: /* Applet Tools */ *Physics Applets for Drawing (PAD)

==Equation Construction and Display==
===Tools===
There are a variety of tools that are available for the purpose of constructing equations, providing text expressions that can be converted to equations, and displaying equations.

The most common text expression syntax is LaTeX or a derivative with probably the most common form of display being a conversion of the equation to an image file. However, is demonstrated with ASCIIMathML simple text expressions can now be be converted to MathML on the fly.

Some tools for creating and displaying equations on-line that may be of interest to those teaching mathematics are:
* [[ASCIIMathML]], which both converts equations into MathML on the fly and provides a text expression syntax more easily mastered than Tex, though the filter will convert TeX expressions as well. [http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=106148 The ASCIIMathML 2.0.2 zip] provides all the files necessary for setting ASCIIMathML up as a Moodle filter as well creating run-time graphs with ASCIIsvg. An on-line calculator is also included. Just recently an ASCIIMathML export format for DragMath was added to version 0.7.2, [https://docs.moodle.org/en/DragMath_equation_editor available here], so that you have access to both a GUI and text expression syntax for creating and displaying equations. Quick and GIFless. [http://math.chapman.edu/~jipsen/asciencepad/asciencepad.html ASciencePad is also available] and consists of htmlarea enhanced with the ASCIIMathML functionality.
* [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=916 Tim Hunt's Moodle MathTran Module] converts Tex into images on the fly. You can also use [http://www.mathtran.org/wiki/index.php/TeX_image mathtran_img.js] on a page by page basis.
* The [[TeX filter]], which allows [http://www.tug.org/begin.html TeX markup] to be inserted anywhere (e.g. quiz questions, discussion messages, text resources)
* The [[jsMath]] filter, which does a similar job but using [[Javascript]] on the user's computer
* [[Calculated question type]]
* [[DragMath equation editor]], a WYSIWYG equation editor that integrates easily with the Moodle HTML editor.
* [[WIRIS]], is a plugin that easily integrates with the HTML editor several math tools
** WYSIWYG equation editor. Based on MathML
** Advanced calculator. Integrals, derivatives, limits, ploting in 2D and 3D,...
* MathType, a commercial product created by DSI (the folk who also offer MathPlayer, a plugin many IE users employ). Bob Mathews recently posted [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=93728&parent=549428] that info on MathType can be found at http://www.dessci.com/en/support/mathtype/workswith/moodle.htm
Mathematics teachers may also be interested to follow the work of [http://maths.york.ac.uk York University Maths department], who are working on [http://maths.york.ac.uk/serving_maths/ some projects] to augment Moodle, particularly its [[Quiz module]] for online assessment, for example by integrating a system which is able to mark algebraic and trigonometric answers to open-ended questions.

===Accessibility Display Matrix===

{{Expand-section|date=August 2008}}

■ Feature Key appears below the matrix.

{| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"
!Notation
!Tex/LaTex
!ASCIIMath
!MathML
|-
|Ease of Use
|Plain text system. Knowledge of LaTeX notation required. Being a plain text system, LaTeX notation is straightforward to create and edit.
|Plain text system. Easy to learn. Notation simple. Being a plain text system, ASCIIMath is very easy to create and edit.
|XML-based. Not easy to create and edit: an editor is required.
|-
|Conversion to Braille
|Output directly to Braille display via screen reader (fn 2)
|ASCIIMath notation is converted to MathML or LaTeX. Please refer to those formats for details.
|Converted to suitable textual format and Brailled using screen reader (fn 3)
|-
|Transmission via TTS
|Notation spoken "as-is" via screen reader (fn 2)
|ASCIIMath notation is converted to MathML or LaTeX. Please refer to those formats for details.
|Converted to suitable textual format and spoken using screen reader. Note that MathPlayer add-on for IE has TTS functionality built-in (fn 3).
|-
|}

'''fn1.'''
MathPlayer claims to do math-to-speech by parsing the MathML, not by parsing TeX. See http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/tech/accessibility.htm where it is stated:

All of these examples were written in Microsoft Word and MathType and exported to MathML using MathType’s “MathPage” technology. MathPage technology was added to MathType in version 5.0. No special work is needed to author the expressions to make them accessible. Any product that exports MathML will produce pages that MathPlayer can speak.

For a larger real life example, see this page. Also, MSN Encarta uses MathML on many of their web pages that contain math, so much of their Math should be accessible using MathPlayer.

'''fn2. '''
The alt attribute of the rendered graphic is spoken and/or Braillled. As LaTeX is a plain text notation, the notation can be spoken and Brailled by the screen reader directly. This does, of course, assume an understanding of LaTeX notation on the part of the screen reader user.

'''fn3. '''
In the case of Internet Explorer, screen readers require the MathPlayer plugin to be installed before MathML is rendered (IE does not include native MathML support). By using MSAA, the screen reader can obtain a textual version of the math notation from MathPlayer, which it can then TTS and Braille. Note that MathPlayer also contains built-in TTS functionality (employing MS SAPI) which can be used to speak the math notation without having to employ a screen reader. See [http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/tech/accessibility.htm] for further details. At time of writing, screen reader support for Firefox is via MSAA and a special custom, Firefox-specific IAccessible2 interface (to reveal text attributes and character positions). Math notation is spoken via a screen reader which interrogates these interfaces.

==Using Java for Curriculum==
===Java Tools for Building Applets for Interactive Demonstration===
These tools can be integrated in or used with Moodle Resources
* Java Sketchpad, http://www.dynamicgeometry.com/JavaSketchpad/About_JavaSketchpad.html, is an applet developed by Key Curriculum Press. The applet has been the focus of quite a bit of discussion and demonstrations and discussions are widely available. An introductory article from the Journal of Online Mathematics can be found here: http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/4/?nodeId=508&pa=content&sa=viewDocument. Usage focuses largely on Geometry
* CabriJava, http://www-cabri.imag.fr/cabrijava/, an applet offered by the University of Cabri, also focuses on interactive geometry. Quite a number of examples employing CabriJava can be found here: http://www.mathsnet.net/cabri/index.html.
* Descartes, http://descartes.cnice.mec.es/, is an applet developed under the auspices of the Spanish Ministerio de Educacion Politica Social y Diporte. An English introduction can be found here at http://descartes.cnice.mec.es/ingles/index.html. The Ministery has produced an extensive Mathematics curriculum using Descartes, which is available in English and can be freely downloaded and used. Much of what is available is still only in Spanish so anyone interested in doing translation work please post to the Moodle Math Tools forum.

===Additional Curricular Use of Applets===
*Euclid's Elements - http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html
*Tutorials employing applets (applets can be downloaded and used in Moodle) http://www.analyzemath.com/

===Applet Tools===
*Graphing - http://www.langara.bc.ca/mathstats/resource/GraphExplorer/
*Geometry Construction - http://www.cs.rice.edu/~jwarren/grace/
*GeoGebra - http://www.geogebra.org/
*Physics Applets for Drawing (PAD) - http://www.wku.edu/pads/ These can make interactive activities that can both check for correctness and give guiding feedback. Includes modules for graphs (2D functions), vectors (even in/out and other lines and arrows and bar-graphs), motion analysis, equation recognition and more. Uses don't have to be just for Physics. Math, of course. VectorPAD can be used for placing markers (as points, lines, arrows samll pictures) on a picture, that could be used in almost any subject. They can be incorporating in SCORM packages which can interact with Moodle. There is no Moodle module now (july 2009) for using them directly, but that would add a lot more power (compared to SCORM), like being able to save states, turn on/off feedback, etc.

===Java Applet Collections===
* http://cs.jsu.edu/mcis/faculty/leathrum/Mathlets/
* http://www.walter-fendt.de/m14e/

* Probability and Statistics
**http://www.mste.uiuc.edu/pavel/java/dilemma/
**http://lstat.kuleuven.be/java/
**http://www.math.csusb.edu/faculty/stanton/m262/

*http://www.mste.uiuc.edu/murphy/JavaOverview/default.html
*Math and Physics - http://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html
*Curves - http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Java/index.html
*Chaos and Fractals - http://math.bu.edu/DYSYS/applets/index.html
*For sale, but extensive - http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/index.shtml

==Mathematics Assessment==

Assessment is a key driver for mathematics. There are a number of ways of getting students to answer mathematical questions through Moodle.
* WebWork, see http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Main_Page http://webwork.math.rochester.edu/docs/docs/, and http://webwork.maa.org/moodle/ is an independent web application for assessing student Math progress, and there is a Moodle Module for interfacing WebWork to Moodle that can be found here: http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=332, though the resources on the WeBWork wiki are probably more current as the code in the Moodle CVS has not been updated for some time.
* STACK provides very mathematical questions for the Moodle quiz module. These are supported by the CAS Maxima. The home page for STACK can be found on http://stack.bham.ac.uk/

==See also==
* [[Mathematics tools FAQ]]
Using Moodle forum discussions:
* [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=46009 Best practices for teaching Math(s) in Moodle]
* [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=61993 How do you deal with the challenge of writing equations?]
* [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=62002 How do you deal with the challenge of drawing graphs and diagrams?]
* [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=62014 How do you deal with the challenge of interactive exercises and simulations?]
* [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=95950 How can I have a student enter a fraction as an answer?]
* [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=127867 What are the components of an exemplary high school Moodle course?]

[[Category:Mathematics]]

Multi-language content filter

2009-07-28T04:31:54Z

Jeffjeff: /* Common problems */

The Multi-language content filter enables resources to be created in multiple languages. When turned on, it looks for <nowiki></nowiki> tags which indicate that a text contains multiple languages. Then it selects and outputs the best language for the current user. The language of the resource will change when the user changes their selected Moodle language.

The multilang syntax was changed in 1.8. <nowiki><lang></nowiki> is not supported any more. It is required to add ''class="multilang"'' into each <nowiki></nowiki> tag in multilang block. The new syntax is backwards compatible with old plugins, which means it can be used in older Moodle version.

== How to use in a course ==

To use this feature first create your contents in multiple languages (in the same resource). Then enclose each language block (aka multilang block) in the following tags:

<nowiki>your_content_here
your_content_in_other_language_here</nowiki>

It is essential to be in '''the code editing mode''' (press <nowiki>[<>]</nowiki> in the HTML editor), when you enter these tags for them to work. Only spaces, tabs and enters can be used between the individual languages in the multilang block. Please note that ''class="multilang"'' is not required prior to 1.8. There is a lang drop-down markup tool in the HTML editor in later versions of Moodle. The first versions, at least to 1.8.2, do not make "multilang" language tags. If you are working in a sufficiently new version of the HTML editor you can add these tags without going to the code editing mode. If something doesn't work properly you should check how the markup looks in code mode.

Following code
<nowiki><lang="XX">your_content_here</lang>
<lang="YY">your_content_in_other_language_here</lang></nowiki>
does NOT work.

The obsoleted HTML tagging
<nowiki><lang lang="XX">your_content_here</lang>
<lang lang="YY">your_content_in_other_language_here</lang>

your_content_here
your_content_in_other_language_here</nowiki>
will not work in 1.8 and later. In 1.8 the lang attribute without ''class="multilang"'' can be used to mark the language of the text - see http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/dirlang.html

== How it works internally ==

# Filter first looks for ''multilang blocks'' in the text
# For each multilang block:
#* If there are texts in the currently active language, print them
#* Else, if there exists texts in the current parent language, print them
#* Else, print the first language found in the text
# Text outside of multilang blocks will be shown always

==Course summary and title tags==

To be able to change text such as resource titles and summaries, an administrator must choose ''Filter all strings'' in the site administration.

<nowiki> Matematically Matematiskt (svenska)</nowiki>
functions as English or Swedish title.

It doesn't work for course titles and site names (neither long nor short version) in some versions of Moodle. At least from 1.8.2 long course titles and site name, both full and breadcrumb were multilang filtered.

In the course summary:

<nowiki>Growth is often a major concern in planning society.
How can one avoid superficial conclusions? 
(Exists in Swedish too. Finns på svenska också)
Tillväxt är ofta använt i samhällsdebatten.
Hur kan man undvika ytliga slutsatser?
(Finns på engelska också. Exists in English too.)
 </nowiki>

Can show in the chosen language (and point out that the other language is there). Please note that ''class="multilang"'' is not required prior to Moodle 1.8.

== Translations with tags ==
If you wish to translate a word or phrase in an English text to another language:

<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation 
(sv: förklaring) in a running text
can I do it?</nowiki>
or
<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation
in a running text can I do it? 
If I want to include an explanation (sv:
förklaring) in a running text can I do it?</nowiki>

would both work, but not:

<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation 
(sv: förklaring) in a running text
can I do it?</nowiki>
or
<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation 
(sv: förklaring) in a running text can I do it?</nowiki>
which would show the Swedish even if English was the chosen language. NOTE that before 1.8 the "span lang=en" must contain something, at least a space.

== New multilang syntax ==
{{Moodle 1.8}}
* <nowiki> and <lang></nowiki> should not be used anymore
* Existing content can be upgraded using the admin/multilangupgrade.php script, there is a link in the admin notification page if a multilang upgrade is required.
* The multilang filter can be configured to use old syntax only - see ''Multi-Language Content Settings''; this setting may be removed in 1.9
* New syntax is forced during a new 1.8 installation, for upgraded sites the new syntax is enabled after the multilang upgrade

== Common problems ==

* The multilang filter is not enabled. The administrator for the Moodle site you are using must go to Site administration> modules> Multilanguage Content and enable it (by clicking on the "eye")
* ''Filter all strings'' not enabled on sites that need multilang in titles, navigation, headings, etc. The administrator for the Moodle site you are using must go to Site administration> appearance> Filter settings and set a check in "filter alll strings". This will increase server load slightly, so don't do it unless you really need it.
* Extra characters between language span tags - editor might add <nowiki> </nowiki> or other tags, please review the html in source view
* If the course setting is "force" some language, you won't be able to change the displayed language.
* Extra spaces in language span tag
* Can not easily access language choice dropdown! Unfortunately you must go to the site homepage or your own profile to change the displayed language. Want a change? see [http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-11531 MDL-11531]. It is possible to manually quickly change displayed lang by editing the URL in the browsers address bar. See Tips and tricks below!

==Tips and tricks==
It is possible to change the displayed language by manually changing the link.
*Here is the default language page at id=2306. This link is in English, the default language:
:http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2306
*The link to change the page display to Spanish is
:http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2306&lang=es ,
*When the default language is an other language, to change the page to an English version, the link would be:
:http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2306&lang=en

Thusly, with a bit of editing, you can manually change the displayed language by adding "&lang=xx" to the URL in the location bar of the browser. Where xx is the abbreviation for the language you want.

== See also ==

*[[Filters|Filters administration]]
Using Moodle forum discussions:

*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=51603 Multilanguage filter - does not work ...]
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=74340 Problems with multilang filter and SPAN tags]
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=94006 Multilingual Content]
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=95134 Multilingual VS HTML editor]

[[Category:Teacher]]
[[Category:Filter]]

[[es:Filtros (Administrador)]]
[[fr:Contenu multilingue]]
[[ja:多言語シンタックス]]

Multi-language content filter

2009-07-28T04:30:44Z

Jeffjeff: /* Common problems */ details about where to activate the filter

The Multi-language content filter enables resources to be created in multiple languages. When turned on, it looks for <nowiki></nowiki> tags which indicate that a text contains multiple languages. Then it selects and outputs the best language for the current user. The language of the resource will change when the user changes their selected Moodle language.

The multilang syntax was changed in 1.8. <nowiki><lang></nowiki> is not supported any more. It is required to add ''class="multilang"'' into each <nowiki></nowiki> tag in multilang block. The new syntax is backwards compatible with old plugins, which means it can be used in older Moodle version.

== How to use in a course ==

To use this feature first create your contents in multiple languages (in the same resource). Then enclose each language block (aka multilang block) in the following tags:

<nowiki>your_content_here
your_content_in_other_language_here</nowiki>

It is essential to be in '''the code editing mode''' (press <nowiki>[<>]</nowiki> in the HTML editor), when you enter these tags for them to work. Only spaces, tabs and enters can be used between the individual languages in the multilang block. Please note that ''class="multilang"'' is not required prior to 1.8. There is a lang drop-down markup tool in the HTML editor in later versions of Moodle. The first versions, at least to 1.8.2, do not make "multilang" language tags. If you are working in a sufficiently new version of the HTML editor you can add these tags without going to the code editing mode. If something doesn't work properly you should check how the markup looks in code mode.

Following code
<nowiki><lang="XX">your_content_here</lang>
<lang="YY">your_content_in_other_language_here</lang></nowiki>
does NOT work.

The obsoleted HTML tagging
<nowiki><lang lang="XX">your_content_here</lang>
<lang lang="YY">your_content_in_other_language_here</lang>

your_content_here
your_content_in_other_language_here</nowiki>
will not work in 1.8 and later. In 1.8 the lang attribute without ''class="multilang"'' can be used to mark the language of the text - see http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/dirlang.html

== How it works internally ==

# Filter first looks for ''multilang blocks'' in the text
# For each multilang block:
#* If there are texts in the currently active language, print them
#* Else, if there exists texts in the current parent language, print them
#* Else, print the first language found in the text
# Text outside of multilang blocks will be shown always

==Course summary and title tags==

To be able to change text such as resource titles and summaries, an administrator must choose ''Filter all strings'' in the site administration.

<nowiki> Matematically Matematiskt (svenska)</nowiki>
functions as English or Swedish title.

It doesn't work for course titles and site names (neither long nor short version) in some versions of Moodle. At least from 1.8.2 long course titles and site name, both full and breadcrumb were multilang filtered.

In the course summary:

<nowiki>Growth is often a major concern in planning society.
How can one avoid superficial conclusions? 
(Exists in Swedish too. Finns på svenska också)
Tillväxt är ofta använt i samhällsdebatten.
Hur kan man undvika ytliga slutsatser?
(Finns på engelska också. Exists in English too.)
 </nowiki>

Can show in the chosen language (and point out that the other language is there). Please note that ''class="multilang"'' is not required prior to Moodle 1.8.

== Translations with tags ==
If you wish to translate a word or phrase in an English text to another language:

<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation 
(sv: förklaring) in a running text
can I do it?</nowiki>
or
<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation
in a running text can I do it? 
If I want to include an explanation (sv:
förklaring) in a running text can I do it?</nowiki>

would both work, but not:

<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation 
(sv: förklaring) in a running text
can I do it?</nowiki>
or
<nowiki>If I want to include an explanation 
(sv: förklaring) in a running text can I do it?</nowiki>
which would show the Swedish even if English was the chosen language. NOTE that before 1.8 the "span lang=en" must contain something, at least a space.

== New multilang syntax ==
{{Moodle 1.8}}
* <nowiki> and <lang></nowiki> should not be used anymore
* Existing content can be upgraded using the admin/multilangupgrade.php script, there is a link in the admin notification page if a multilang upgrade is required.
* The multilang filter can be configured to use old syntax only - see ''Multi-Language Content Settings''; this setting may be removed in 1.9
* New syntax is forced during a new 1.8 installation, for upgraded sites the new syntax is enabled after the multilang upgrade

== Common problems ==

* The multilang filter is not enabled. The administrator for the Moodle site you are using must go to Site administration> modules> Multilanguage Content and enable it (by clicking on the "eye")
* ''Filter all strings'' not enabled on sites that need multilang in titles, navigation, headings, etc. The administrator for the Moodle site you are using must go to Site administration> appearance> Filter settings and set a check in "filter alll strings". This will increase server load slightly, so don't do it unless you really need it.
* Extra characters between language span tags - editor might add <nowiki> </nowiki> or other tags, please review the html in source view
* If the course setting is "force" some language, you won't be able to change the displayed language.
* Extra spaces in language span tag
* Can not easily access language choice dropdown! Unfortunately you must go to the site homepage or your own profile to change the displayed language. Want a change? see [http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-11531 MDL-11531]. It is possible to manually quickly change displayed lang by editing the URL in the browsers address bar.

==Tips and tricks==
It is possible to change the displayed language by manually changing the link.
*Here is the default language page at id=2306. This link is in English, the default language:
:http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2306
*The link to change the page display to Spanish is
:http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2306&lang=es ,
*When the default language is an other language, to change the page to an English version, the link would be:
:http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2306&lang=en

Thusly, with a bit of editing, you can manually change the displayed language by adding "&lang=xx" to the URL in the location bar of the browser. Where xx is the abbreviation for the language you want.

== See also ==

*[[Filters|Filters administration]]
Using Moodle forum discussions:

*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=51603 Multilanguage filter - does not work ...]
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=74340 Problems with multilang filter and SPAN tags]
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=94006 Multilingual Content]
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=95134 Multilingual VS HTML editor]

[[Category:Teacher]]
[[Category:Filter]]

[[es:Filtros (Administrador)]]
[[fr:Contenu multilingue]]
[[ja:多言語シンタックス]]

Authentication FAQ

2009-07-20T17:59:04Z

Jeffjeff: /* How can I change the "Is this your first time here?" instructions? */

==What is an authentication plugin?==

An authentication plugin is a method of handling user authentication i.e. enabling certain people to login to your Moodle site.

==How do I enable the "Create new account" button on the login page?==

To display the "Is this your first time here?" instructions and the "Create new account" button:

# Make sure that the [[Email-based self-registration|email-based self-registration plugin]] (or any other plugin that can support self-registration, such as LDAP) is enabled in ''Administration > Users > Authentication > [[Manage authentication]]''.
# Select the self-registration plugin in the common module settings.

Warning: Enabling self registration results in the possibility of spammers creating accounts in order to use forum posts, blog entries etc. for spam. See [[Reducing spam in Moodle]] for ways of minimizing the risk.

==How can I change the "Is this your first time here?" instructions?==
#Access ''Site administration block> Users > Authentication > [[Manage authentication]]''.
#Write the instructions in the ''auth_instructions'' text field.
#Click the "Save changes" button at the bottom of the page.

If your site caters to more than one language it would be better to use the admin blocks: language> language editing> choose the languages (one at a time) and click "edit words or phrases". Choose "file to edit" : moodle.php
Go to the string called "loginsteps" and put in the instruction text you want (for that language). Then repeat for the other languages you want offered.

These changes are kept in the local language packs which are not overwritten during Moodle upgrade.

==How do I set up LDAP authentication?==

See [[LDAP authentication]] for full instructions.

==How is the "No login" authentication plugin used?==

The [[No login]] authentication plugin can be used to suspend particular user accounts. To do so:

# Access the user's profile page.
# Click the edit profile tab.
# Select "No login" as the authentication method. (If the setting isn't shown, click the "Show advanced" button to reveal it.)
# Click the "Update profile" button at the bottom of the page.

==Since upgrading, users are reporting that they can no longer login. What should be done?==

If users are unable to login following an upgrade to 1.8 or 1.9, then most likely their account authentication method, such as [[Email-based self-registration]], requires enabling in ''Administration > Users > Authentication''.

Note: The [[No authentication|No authentication (none)]] type should not be enabled on any production server. You can use phpmyadmin to convert all existing accounts created with 'none' to 'manual' or an admin can change the authentication type in [[Edit profile]].

==What is the difference between enabling the email-based self-registration auth plugin and selecting it as the self registration method?==

The [[Email-based self-registration| email-based self-registration authentication plugin]] must be enabled to allow users who previously self-registered to login.

Selecting email-based self-registration as the self registration method allows potential users to self register.

Warning: Enabling self registration results in the possibility of spammers creating accounts in order to use forum posts, blog entries etc. for spam. This risk can be minimized by limiting self registration to particular email domains with the allowed email domains setting in ''Administration > Users > Authentication > [[Authentication|Manage authentication]]'' (or in ''Administration > Server > [[Email settings|Email]]'' prior to Moodle 1.9). Alternatively, self registration may be enabled for a short period of time to allow users to create accounts, and then later disabled.

==How can I create an authentication plugin?==

See [[Development:Authentication plugins]].

==How can students without email addresses have Moodle accounts?==

See [[No Email]].

==See also==

* Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=42 User authentication forum]

[[Category:Authentication]]
[[Category:FAQ]]

Authentication FAQ

2009-07-20T17:50:43Z

Jeffjeff: /* How can I change the "Is this your first time here?" instructions? */

==What is an authentication plugin?==

An authentication plugin is a method of handling user authentication i.e. enabling certain people to login to your Moodle site.

==How do I enable the "Create new account" button on the login page?==

To display the "Is this your first time here?" instructions and the "Create new account" button:

# Make sure that the [[Email-based self-registration|email-based self-registration plugin]] (or any other plugin that can support self-registration, such as LDAP) is enabled in ''Administration > Users > Authentication > [[Manage authentication]]''.
# Select the self-registration plugin in the common module settings.

Warning: Enabling self registration results in the possibility of spammers creating accounts in order to use forum posts, blog entries etc. for spam. See [[Reducing spam in Moodle]] for ways of minimizing the risk.

==How can I change the "Is this your first time here?" instructions?==
#Access ''Site administration block> Users > Authentication > [[Manage authentication]]''.
#Write the instructions in the ''auth_instructions'' text field.
#Click the "Save changes" button at the bottom of the page.

If your site caters to more than one language it would be better to use the admin blocks: language> language editing> choose the languages (one at a time) and click "edit words or phrases". Choose "file to edit" : moodle.php
Go to the sting called "loginsteps" and put in the instruction text you want (for that language). Then repeat for the other languages you want offered.

These changes are kept in the local language packs which are not overwritten during Moodle upgrade.

==How do I set up LDAP authentication?==

See [[LDAP authentication]] for full instructions.

==How is the "No login" authentication plugin used?==

The [[No login]] authentication plugin can be used to suspend particular user accounts. To do so:

# Access the user's profile page.
# Click the edit profile tab.
# Select "No login" as the authentication method. (If the setting isn't shown, click the "Show advanced" button to reveal it.)
# Click the "Update profile" button at the bottom of the page.

==Since upgrading, users are reporting that they can no longer login. What should be done?==

If users are unable to login following an upgrade to 1.8 or 1.9, then most likely their account authentication method, such as [[Email-based self-registration]], requires enabling in ''Administration > Users > Authentication''.

Note: The [[No authentication|No authentication (none)]] type should not be enabled on any production server. You can use phpmyadmin to convert all existing accounts created with 'none' to 'manual' or an admin can change the authentication type in [[Edit profile]].

==What is the difference between enabling the email-based self-registration auth plugin and selecting it as the self registration method?==

The [[Email-based self-registration| email-based self-registration authentication plugin]] must be enabled to allow users who previously self-registered to login.

Selecting email-based self-registration as the self registration method allows potential users to self register.

Warning: Enabling self registration results in the possibility of spammers creating accounts in order to use forum posts, blog entries etc. for spam. This risk can be minimized by limiting self registration to particular email domains with the allowed email domains setting in ''Administration > Users > Authentication > [[Authentication|Manage authentication]]'' (or in ''Administration > Server > [[Email settings|Email]]'' prior to Moodle 1.9). Alternatively, self registration may be enabled for a short period of time to allow users to create accounts, and then later disabled.

==How can I create an authentication plugin?==

See [[Development:Authentication plugins]].

==How can students without email addresses have Moodle accounts?==

See [[No Email]].

==See also==

* Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=42 User authentication forum]

[[Category:Authentication]]
[[Category:FAQ]]

Authentication FAQ

2009-07-20T16:38:24Z

Jeffjeff: /* How can I change the "Is this your first time here?" instructions? */ Use language editing instead-saving tho not finished cause my browser keeps crashing!

==What is an authentication plugin?==

An authentication plugin is a method of handling user authentication i.e. enabling certain people to login to your Moodle site.

==How do I enable the "Create new account" button on the login page?==

To display the "Is this your first time here?" instructions and the "Create new account" button:

# Make sure that the [[Email-based self-registration|email-based self-registration plugin]] (or any other plugin that can support self-registration, such as LDAP) is enabled in ''Administration > Users > Authentication > [[Manage authentication]]''.
# Select the self-registration plugin in the common module settings.

Warning: Enabling self registration results in the possibility of spammers creating accounts in order to use forum posts, blog entries etc. for spam. See [[Reducing spam in Moodle]] for ways of minimizing the risk.

==How can I change the "Is this your first time here?" instructions?==
#Access ''Site administration block> Users > Authentication > [[Manage authentication]]''.
#Write the instructions in the ''auth_instructions'' text field.
#Click the "Save changes" button at the bottom of the page.

If your site caters to more than one language it would be better to use the admin blocks: language> language editing> choose the languages (one at a time) and click "edit words or phrases". Choose "file to edit" : moodle.php

==How do I set up LDAP authentication?==

See [[LDAP authentication]] for full instructions.

==How is the "No login" authentication plugin used?==

The [[No login]] authentication plugin can be used to suspend particular user accounts. To do so:

# Access the user's profile page.
# Click the edit profile tab.
# Select "No login" as the authentication method. (If the setting isn't shown, click the "Show advanced" button to reveal it.)
# Click the "Update profile" button at the bottom of the page.

==Since upgrading, users are reporting that they can no longer login. What should be done?==

If users are unable to login following an upgrade to 1.8 or 1.9, then most likely their account authentication method, such as [[Email-based self-registration]], requires enabling in ''Administration > Users > Authentication''.

Note: The [[No authentication|No authentication (none)]] type should not be enabled on any production server. You can use phpmyadmin to convert all existing accounts created with 'none' to 'manual' or an admin can change the authentication type in [[Edit profile]].

==What is the difference between enabling the email-based self-registration auth plugin and selecting it as the self registration method?==

The [[Email-based self-registration| email-based self-registration authentication plugin]] must be enabled to allow users who previously self-registered to login.

Selecting email-based self-registration as the self registration method allows potential users to self register.

Warning: Enabling self registration results in the possibility of spammers creating accounts in order to use forum posts, blog entries etc. for spam. This risk can be minimized by limiting self registration to particular email domains with the allowed email domains setting in ''Administration > Users > Authentication > [[Authentication|Manage authentication]]'' (or in ''Administration > Server > [[Email settings|Email]]'' prior to Moodle 1.9). Alternatively, self registration may be enabled for a short period of time to allow users to create accounts, and then later disabled.

==How can I create an authentication plugin?==

See [[Development:Authentication plugins]].

==How can students without email addresses have Moodle accounts?==

See [[No Email]].

==See also==

* Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=42 User authentication forum]

[[Category:Authentication]]
[[Category:FAQ]]

Broken/Setting up Netbeans

2009-07-10T09:58:39Z

Jeffjeff:

Broken/Setting up Netbeans

2009-07-10T08:55:52Z

Jeffjeff:

Setting up Netbeans

2009-07-10T07:48:02Z

Jeffjeff: /* CVS with NetBeans */

[http://www.netbeans.org/features/php/index.html NetBeans] has got a good PHP support. You find a host of information on the website (tutorials, developer blog, screen casts, etc.).

== Features ==
* CVS integration: see all changes, lines deletion, diff in real time, show annotations, diff history...
* Ctrl+Click: Go to declaration
* Export/Import Diff Patch
* Easy navigation
* List of functions
* Code completion
* Instant rename
* HTML, CSS, JavaScript support
* MySQL manager
* Quick Search
* Very few bugs

== Installation ==

* I recommend to download the latest [http://www.netbeans.org/downloads/index.html 6.5 version with PHP support ]. It's only a 26 MB download.
* Install and run it.

== Set up for Moodle development ==

* Checkout your Moodle project with a '''CVS client''' - see [[CVS for Administrators]] or [[Development:CVS for developers|CVS for Developers]]. I personally prefer to use an external client in order to realise the CVS Delete operation on my own.

* Open File > New Project > PHP > PHP Application > Next
: You're going to set the project now. ''Name'', ''Location'' and ''Folder'' are used by NetBeans and are not related to the source code. So you can choose whatever you like, except your source folder. ''Sources'' has to be your checked out Moodle branch/head folder. The rest is clear enough. Don't forget to choose UTF-8 for ''Default Encoding''.

: Example:

Project Name: Moodle 1.9 Stable
Project Location: C:\Users\jerome\Documents\NetBeansProjects
Project Folder: C:\Users\jerome\Documents\NetBeansProjects\Moodle 1.9 Stable
Project Sources: C:\Users\jerome\Projects\branch19_STABLE\moodle
Project URL: http://localhost/moodle19/
Index File: index.php
Create: unchecked
Default Encoding: UTF-8
Set as Main Project: unchecked

* Click on Finish.

* Start coding!

== CVS with NetBeans ==

NetBeans comes with '''integrated CVS support''' which might be the easiest way to check out Moodle.

* In NetBeans, select Window->Versioning->CVS->Checkout
* Select Team->CVS->Checkout
* Enter into CVS Root: '':pserver:anonymous@us.cvs.moodle.org:/cvsroot/moodle''
: (Non-US-residents might use one of the other [https://docs.moodle.org/en/CVS_for_Administrators#CVS_Servers Moodle CVS servers] nearer to them.)
* Click ''Next''
* Browse or enter into ''Module:'' moodle
* Browse or enter into ''Branch:'' MOODLE_19_STABLE
* Browse or enter into ''Local Folder:'' C:\xampp\htdocs
* Click ''Finish'' (and wait a few minutes for Moodle to be checked out)
* When you get the dialog box "Do you want to create an IDE project from the checked-out sources?", Click "Create Project..."
* Select PHP Application with Existing Sources, and click Next
* Browse or enter into ''Sources Folder'' C:\xampp\htdocs\moodle
* Enter into ''Project Name:'' moodle
* Keep the other defaults and click next
* ''Run As:'' should have selected ''Local Web Site (running on local web server)''
* Enter into Project URL http://localhost/moodle/
* Browse or enter into ''Index File:'' index.php
* Click ''Finish''

== Optimization ==

1. You could want to run Netbeans with the Sun JDK. Netbeans seems to work a bit better with the Sun JDK. Download it from there: [http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp]. You'll have to edit Netbeans config file. Open netbeans/etc/netbeans.conf. Then uncomment and edit:

netbeans_jdkhome="your_JDK_path"

2. To change the Netbeans look and feel run netbeans in command line with this parameter:
"netbeans" --laf javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel

3. If Netbeans starts to slow down, give it more memory
"netbeans" -J-Xmx600m

== See also: ==
* Moodle forum: [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=112972 NetBeans 6.5 for moodle/PHP/debugging is a better experience v.s Eclipse]
* [http://www.netbeans.org/kb/trails/php.html NetBeans PHP Learning Trail]
* [http://wiki.netbeans.org/PHP NetBeans PHP Wiki]
* [http://blogs.sun.com/netbeansphp/ NetBeans for PHP Blog]

[[Category:Developer|NetBeans]]
[[Category:Developer tools|NetBeans]]