Moodle

Need to be able to grade AND reply to forums more easily

Details

  • Type: Improvement Improvement
  • Status: Open Open
  • Priority: Major Major
  • Resolution: Unresolved
  • Affects Version/s: 1.8.1
  • Fix Version/s: STABLE backlog
  • Component/s: Forum
  • Labels:
  • Environment:
    All
  • Affected Branches:
    MOODLE_18_STABLE

Description

With assignments, grading is easy- you give feedback in the window, and have several buttons, with the option of saving and moving on to the next item, or closing the window.

In forums, not so. A typical forum with feedback takes several steps to complete with grade and feedback:

  • click on submission (assuming each person posts one forum, the only way with a very large class)
  • read, and assign grade and submit
  • wait for page to refresh (3-5 seconds) or advance by clicking link and letting page reload
  • clicking reply, waiting for that page to refresh
  • typing in reply and submitting
  • wait for page to refresh (3-5 seconds) or advance by clicking link and letting page reload
  • click on navigation/breadcrumb trail to go back to list of posts

This is OK for a few posts, but when you have classes that rely heavily on forums (public, sharing, constructivism, all that) you end up a LOT of this type of grading and it gets to be a real pain.

Suggstion for resolution:

  • have a 2nd button on the post that says "submit grade and reply" or have that as an option in the forum. So when you click it after putting in a grade, it submits the grade and then jumps forward to the reply page, shortcutting several steps.
  • have a 2nd button on the reply page that says "submit and return to forum" which will take you back to the list of posts, not the thread you just finished with.

This would reduce this whole process described above to:
In forums, not so. A typical forum with feedback takes several steps to complete with grade and feedback:
1- click on submission (assuming each person posts one forum, the only way with a very large class)
2- read, and assign grade and submit and reply (added button)
3- typing in reply and submitting submit and return to forum (added button)

Downsides? Well, it provides more buttons, but this is one place that has hardly any, and in this case oversimplistic means too much work, esp. with a slow connection. Its possible the newbie would be confused by the 2nd button on the reply page- wondering what the difference would be- a few times they'd learn one returned to that thread, and another to the forum with all threads.

Issue Links

This issue has a non-specific relationship to:
MDL-2370 When posting a forum response, the grade be posted at the same time Trivial Open
This issue has been marked as being related by:
MDL-3942 Additive Forum post scoring Major Closed

Activity

Ascending order - Click to sort in descending order
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D.I. von Briesen added a comment -

My apologies - the line above the number 1 in the reduced process should be deleted (cut and paste error). Also in doing my grading the other day I realized that the submitting of a grade is a button, whereas the replying is a link. Not sure that it matters too much, but just wanted to be clear.
d.i.

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D.I. von Briesen added a comment - My apologies - the line above the number 1 in the reduced process should be deleted (cut and paste error). Also in doing my grading the other day I realized that the submitting of a grade is a button, whereas the replying is a link. Not sure that it matters too much, but just wanted to be clear. d.i.
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D.I. von Briesen added a comment -

I'd like to see this noted for 1.9, unless of course it's been addressed in 1.9, and I'll admit I've not used 1.9 yet...

I'd be happy to provide any screenshots, or other supporting documents (or even some cash out of pocket - i'm that desperate!) if it would get a fix for this. Our school is not likely to be willing to deploy anything that's not standard...

d.i.

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D.I. von Briesen added a comment - I'd like to see this noted for 1.9, unless of course it's been addressed in 1.9, and I'll admit I've not used 1.9 yet... I'd be happy to provide any screenshots, or other supporting documents (or even some cash out of pocket - i'm that desperate!) if it would get a fix for this. Our school is not likely to be willing to deploy anything that's not standard... d.i.
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Timothy Takemoto added a comment -

I would prefer it if, instead of allowing us to grade and then respond, if the response/grade page were merged so that we could grade and respond with one click of a button. I submitted this as a feature request three years ago.
http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-2370

I agree that it would be nice to return to the forum rather than the the thread after response submission but then it might be better to have a button to jump to the response screen of the next unmarked post. Automatic quotation of the student post in the response would be nice too. There are quite a few things that it would be nice to have in a "marking mode" of the forum.
Tim

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Timothy Takemoto added a comment - I would prefer it if, instead of allowing us to grade and then respond, if the response/grade page were merged so that we could grade and respond with one click of a button. I submitted this as a feature request three years ago. http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-2370 I agree that it would be nice to return to the forum rather than the the thread after response submission but then it might be better to have a button to jump to the response screen of the next unmarked post. Automatic quotation of the student post in the response would be nice too. There are quite a few things that it would be nice to have in a "marking mode" of the forum. Tim
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Anthony Borrow added a comment - - edited

I like the idea of this request as it would provide a similar approach as the quick grading does to assignments. Allowing the teacher to submit all the grades and comments at once would be very helpful. Peace - Anthony

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Anthony Borrow added a comment - - edited I like the idea of this request as it would provide a similar approach as the quick grading does to assignments. Allowing the teacher to submit all the grades and comments at once would be very helpful. Peace - Anthony
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D.I. von Briesen added a comment -

Timothy-

Forgive me if I wasn't clear- what you are talking about is exactly what I'd like to see! I love grading (comparatively speaking) assignments as I can first sort the main screen (so that all that need grading are in sequence, and those that are empty are at the end - and then just cycle thru them.

However, the specifics that I've suggested in terms of buttons/links would be only minor mods to the existing setup - i'd rather have small improvements now than a major overhaul in years. Here and now i'm grading a LOT of forums (3 per chapter, 25 chapters, 100 students) and its' kicking my butt. Anything to reduce the number of clicks to give feedback and assign the grade and move on to the next ungraded forum.

In fact, much of my feedback is just saying, "Thanks so-and-so!, and my sig" - and I only do that so that I know it's been taken care of, since the grades don't show unless you're looking at the post.

So I suppose a related request would be to show the grades on the main thread view- that would sure help too- but if the design looked like quickgrading, it would be obvious that way too...

d.i.

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D.I. von Briesen added a comment - Timothy- Forgive me if I wasn't clear- what you are talking about is exactly what I'd like to see! I love grading (comparatively speaking) assignments as I can first sort the main screen (so that all that need grading are in sequence, and those that are empty are at the end - and then just cycle thru them. However, the specifics that I've suggested in terms of buttons/links would be only minor mods to the existing setup - i'd rather have small improvements now than a major overhaul in years. Here and now i'm grading a LOT of forums (3 per chapter, 25 chapters, 100 students) and its' kicking my butt. Anything to reduce the number of clicks to give feedback and assign the grade and move on to the next ungraded forum. In fact, much of my feedback is just saying, "Thanks so-and-so!, and my sig" - and I only do that so that I know it's been taken care of, since the grades don't show unless you're looking at the post. So I suppose a related request would be to show the grades on the main thread view- that would sure help too- but if the design looked like quickgrading, it would be obvious that way too... d.i.
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Matt Gibson added a comment -

This seems to be a place where a bit of DOM/ajax would work well. Having the grades saved automatically when you choose them would be a great first step, and pretty easy to code. Then for replying, a button on each post to add an input box underneath it, which can be saved and added to the page as anew post seamlessly.

Slashdot have recently manged this elegantly: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/01/2234225&from=rss

Click on 'Reply to this' under any of the posts to see what I mean.

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Matt Gibson added a comment - This seems to be a place where a bit of DOM/ajax would work well. Having the grades saved automatically when you choose them would be a great first step, and pretty easy to code. Then for replying, a button on each post to add an input box underneath it, which can be saved and added to the page as anew post seamlessly. Slashdot have recently manged this elegantly: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/01/2234225&from=rss Click on 'Reply to this' under any of the posts to see what I mean.
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April Cookson added a comment -

As noted, it is very difficult to grade forum postings when requiring students to respond to other students as a grade requirement.

The easiest way we have found is to go to the gradebook or participants block, click on a student's name, and then click on postings. This will show all postings made by that student. However, they don't seem to be in any kind of order. If they were in order by forum topic, that would be a big help. Now, a student's initial posting to a forum may be on screen one and their reply to another student may be on screen three. Then, you can't rate the posting directly from this location. So, you have to click to see the parent posting to grade it. It is just too many steps!

If each person's postings on a particular discussion topic were grouped together when you click on the student's overall postings, that would even be a big help.

This has not been corrected in ver 9, and I hope it will be addressed soon.

Show
April Cookson added a comment - As noted, it is very difficult to grade forum postings when requiring students to respond to other students as a grade requirement. The easiest way we have found is to go to the gradebook or participants block, click on a student's name, and then click on postings. This will show all postings made by that student. However, they don't seem to be in any kind of order. If they were in order by forum topic, that would be a big help. Now, a student's initial posting to a forum may be on screen one and their reply to another student may be on screen three. Then, you can't rate the posting directly from this location. So, you have to click to see the parent posting to grade it. It is just too many steps! If each person's postings on a particular discussion topic were grouped together when you click on the student's overall postings, that would even be a big help. This has not been corrected in ver 9, and I hope it will be addressed soon.
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Eloy Lafuente (stronk7) added a comment -

NOTE: This issue was assigned to the STABLE backlog without complete triaging process. Marking it as triaged, but with this note for future reference.

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Eloy Lafuente (stronk7) added a comment - NOTE: This issue was assigned to the STABLE backlog without complete triaging process. Marking it as triaged, but with this note for future reference.

Dates

  • Created:
    Updated:
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