Moodle

Current thought: Add a "edit random question settings" or "edit settings" link inside the Grade box of the random question.

There has always been an "include subcategories" tick!

And there is an edit random question form. question/type/random/edit_random_form.php. I think we should just use this to edit random questions after they have been added to the quiz.

So, what I suggest is this:

1. For random questions, change where the category name is printed to be followed by an editing icon that opens the question editing page for that random question. (Same sort of URL as for editing any other question type.) I think this makes the interface more consistent between random, and non-random questions. (But is that good or bad?)

2. In the box that shows some sample content from the question bank (or the message "This random question is not in use, ..."). In the bottom right corner, add a link "Show in 'Question bank contents' tool ?". Hmm that is too long. How about making the link say "Show ?" with "Show this category in the 'Question bank contents' tool" as a tool-tip?

I think that the shorter "Show ?" link fits nicely after either the "Total of 3 questions in category" or the "This random question is not in use, ..." messages. (Take the arrow off the end of the error message.)

What do you think?

I bumped to some of the same questions myself. I am not sure yet. Still figuring out all the consequences.

To stay consistent, we should perhaps keep the edit icon out of the random questions altogether: there really is no semantical correspondence between either of the aforementioned operations for a random question, and the principal meaning of actually editing a quiz.

You are not editing the random question of the question when you go to the screen in question. Changing the category and deciding if subcategories are included are more of settings, altering the behavior than actual editing controls: advanced settings that someone may need to use, but still rarely. Editing the random question implies to me editing the actual questions inside the random question, not switching the contents altogether.

But

• since entering the category is not really editing the random question in the sense of editing a single question, either and
• since in moodle 1.9 the edit icon of a random question meant something else,
  it would seem to be clearest to just keep the edit icon out of there altogether.

What do you think?

Well, you could already argue that the edit icon is already being used for two different things:

• Editing the settings of a question in the quiz
• Editing the settings of a label/description

So that it is not totally inconsistent for it to be used for a third thing:

• Editing the settings for how a random question chooses a question from the question bank.

That is, the edit icon edits the settings for the things that go in the pages.

For example, in future, we might change the random question so that instead of picking a question from a category, it picks questions tagged with a certain tag. What would happen to the interface then?

So I am not sure, but I think an putting back an edit icon like the one in 1.9 might be OK. And have a separate control, like my suggested show link, to synchronise the display of the question bank.

But I might be wrong.

Editing a question or a description is still editing the actual contents of the actual entity that you selected, whereas both editing the contents of a category for a random question or switching the category of a random question are both mode complicated operations conceptually.

(BTW good that you brought to my attention that the button still reads description/label - if the name of "Description" won't be changed, at least we need to stay consistent internally).

Even if If contents of random questions were no longer selected exclusively from single categories, both of these two links would still have to be there:

• a link to view that selection of questions which is being used, and to select a single question from that selection for editing its contents
• and a link to change the configuration of the random question itself, determining the criteria for selecting the questions

As a side note: Once the random question is already in the quiz, it seems to me the primary, simple operation to edit the contents of that random question, to go inside that random question. If the user interface offers the flexibility going back in the workflow of changing the criteria of how to select the questions into the random question (undoing a selection made earlier), that is all good and well, but that seems to me not editing the random question but switching its essence, i.e. it is just as natural to just delete the random question and add another one.

In any case, I suspect adding an edit icon to only one of these related operations will potentially mislead users to think it is the other one of these operations, potentially getting them lost/confused. It seems to me that whether users associate the edit icon to editing the contents like I do, or to changing the criteria, like I guess you do, there is in any case a penalty that users get confused/lost repeatedly, since learning out from such an association can be hard.

And in any case, the link for entering the settings screen has to have some kind of a label to make its function clearer. I would suggest "configure this question" or similar.

I agree. Two different, explicit links "change configuration" and "show contents" are what is needed - I'll leave the exact wording up to you.

(I actually thought 'description/label' was quite a good compromise.)

As a result, removed /any/ random question editing, both showing category contents or the configuration panel, from the order/paging panel.