States of a quiz attempt
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This page relates to the problem of the following scenario:
- Student starts an attempt at a timed quiz.
- Student logs out and goes away.
- Quiz time limit expires.
- Student (or teacher) comes back. They now cannot continue (or review, or complete) the quiz attempt. They are stuck.
- That's not what actually happens. Actually on 4 student see a button to continue his attempt. He press it and goes to the attempt, which is instantly submitted, and he get returned to quiz intro. He could then start a new attempt ... if there is no time delay between attempts. If there is he is stuck.--Oleg Sychev 19:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Different people have different desires for how this is handled. The aim of this page is to collect together all the things that different people might want, so we can try to design a solution that makes everyone happy.
Currently this page is just a random dump of things Tim remembered, please feel free to add to, or edit it.
What currently happens
The states a quiz attempt can be in
- {before the attempt is started}. Not sure if this really exists. Before the attempt has been started, it does not exist!
- During the quiz attempt (Quiz attempt open). This is distinguished by $attempt->timefinish being 0.
- After the attempt is finished. This is distinguished by $attempt->timefinish being non-zero.
Behaviour
- A user can have at most one quiz attempt open at any time.
- If the user is attempting the quiz when the time expires, and if they have JavaScript on, then the quiz is automatically submitted for them.
- If the student is not attempting the quiz when the time expires, then their attempt is not submitted, and neither the student nor the teacher can submit it.
Actually the attempt will be graded 0, but individual questions may be regraded if page was saved. Teachers could use it to calculate attempt grade manually, but they really don't like it.--Oleg Sychev 19:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
- Time can expire either because of $quiz->timelimit, or $quiz->timeclose.
- There is a capability mod/quiz:ingoretimelimit for accessibility reasons. This causes $quiz->timelimit, but not $quiz->timeclose, to be ignored.
- After the attempt is submitted, studnets may, or may not be able to review, depending on the quiz review settings and whether $quiz->timeclose has passed.
- In addition to the only one open attempt rule, there may also be a delay between the end of one quiz attempt and the start of the next ($quiz->delay1/2).
What we would like to happen
The states we need to distinguish
- {before the attempt is started}
- Quiz attempt open, time has not expired.
- Quiz attempt open, time has expired.
- Quiz attempt submitted, some questions need manual grading.
- Quiz attempt submitted, all questions graded.
Actually these states makes quiz time delay more complicated. The question is what state it should use as an end of previous attempt? It should be submission for quizzes without time limit. But for quizzes with time limit it should be min(time expiration, submission) otherwise we still may get problem with time delay mentioned above.--Oleg Sychev 19:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Might we also want/need to distinguish the states 'results not visible yet', and 'results released to student', for a submitted quiz. These two are orthogonal to whether any questions need manual grading, so that actually leads to four sub-states under submitted.
Behaviour
- Teacher should have the option to submit an attempt when the student forgot.
- Student should have the option to submit an attempt late (but not answer any more questions) when they forgot.
- But other people like the current behaviour: the student must submit on time, and if they don't they don't get a grade, and it is tough luck.
- Alternatively, the quiz may have an option set to automatically submit any quiz attempt the moment time has expired.
- May want an option where, if the student is allowed to submit late, we do process any updated answers, but a penalty is applied to their score.
- May want an option for a teacher to un-submit a quiz attempt, for those situations where a student (claims to) have clicked Submit all and Finish too early, by mistake.
- Teachers can delete any quiz attempt (open or submitted) at any time.
- Giving teacher the ability to decide, that particular student in particular attempt could bypass time delay (without deleting previous attempt) will resolve a great deal of the problems.
- Some people may want to count unsubmitted attempts if quiz has a limit on a number of attempts, other may want to exclude them
- May want an option for a teacher to extend time limit for particular attempt (if, for example, computer hangs during the attempt, or the student press submit near the finish and wait more than 60 seconds)
- (I don't know whether it really possible, but it's a very good option to have) Save current attempt state with responses in a browser window if submitting request on server failed. Sometimes server go down during important attempts (exams and so no), that's quite bad for timed quizzes. At least we could send AJAX request to the server before submitting to verify it still working (should work in couple with teacher-defined time limit extension mentioned above to prevent abuse).
- ... please add more ideas here ...
Changes to the code
- New capability mod/quiz:submitlateattempt - can apply to students, and/or teachers, but with slightly different meaning. (Teacher here is probably defined by mod/quiz:grade, or mod/quiz:viewreports. Or perhaps it is clearly to have separate capabilities mod/quiz:submitmylateattempt and mod/quiz:submitanylateattempt.)
- New database column quiz_attempt.state, to make the current state clear.
- Code on cron, or when the attempt is accessed, to update the attempt state if, for example, time has expired since it was last changed.
- Possibly new column quiz_attempt.finishedby, to record the userid of the user who submitted the attempt, so we know if the teacher has submitted a later attempt for the student. Could be NULL, if late attempts are submitted automatically.
- New quiz settings to configure these behaviours.
See also
Discussion
- Please discuss this in this Quiz forum thread.
Relevant tracker issues
- MDL-3030 Late quiz attempts should be closed automatically
- MDL-3452 Use saved answers when marking late submissions
- MDL-4309 Ability for late quizzes (with penalty)
- MDL-20956 Student can't start new attempt if a quiz has timle limit between attempts and time limit for a quiz, and he doesn't submit previous attempt closing browser window instead
- ... please add other relevant tracker issues here.
