Moodle

Edwinna - I remember this came up previously but I do not recall the response. My first thought is that it would require a bit of a change to the user interface as the dropdown list would not be practical with decimals. I want to say that there was a patch for this and this may be the best way to handle this. I do like the flexibility of being able to use decimals but would be interested in some of the previous discussions. I am not sure if you have the time to search through the forums and the tracker but it would be interesting to have some of the history here. Peace - Anthony

Why not have a box next to the dropdown list in which the user can enter a number, real or integer? This might be a lot more convenient for entering whole numbers than scrolling down a drop-down list anyway. Real numbers could be specified up to 5 decimal places even!

Mark - If I understand you correctly then there would be two options for the same thing and that from a user interface perspective tends to cause confusion. What happens if a select 90 from the dropdown box and then enter 89.4 in the other box - which has preference? As a result, we need to decide whether the convenience of the dropdown box is worth it or perhaps have an option per assignment as to how it will be graded (dropdown or textbox). Peace - Anthony

Anthony,
I agree about the problems of having two options in the user interface – definitely not desireable. Personally, I find the drop-down box inconvenient for grading out of 100. It takes a lot more time to find the correct number than to type it in. Perhaps a course wide setting (number box or pull-down) that could be overridden by an assignment setting? Maybe this is too complex to start with, but certainly a setting per assignment would be useful. I think that anything that makes Moodle more flexible but without added complexity or user hassle is commendable. I may be nieve here but it strikes me that this amendment should not be too difficult to code, should it?

Mark - Personally my vote would be to just have the textbox. You can sort of use the dropdown and type in the number but it is not as nice as a textbox would be (IMHO). Peace - Anthony

Anthony - In Word, you can type a font size or choose one from a drop-down list. In Visual Basic, this type of form object is referred to as a combo box. It is a single object in the user interface that combines the ability of a drop-down list box and a text box. Is there anything like this in MOODLE?

Edwinna - I am not aware of a combo box that function like that in Moodle; however, it would not surprise if there was not something similar through YUI. I did not see anything like that in Moodle's HTML QuickForm code but I was just taking a quick look. The code for the assignment module builds the HTML on its own for a simple select box with the choose_from_menu function defined in weblib.php. I do know that data validation is always one concern. I took a look at http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/combo.html which talks about combo boxes the implementations I saw there each raised concerns and none of them seemed like they would actually help the situation in Moodle as they either take up more screen real estate or require extra clicks. I suspect one of the full time developers would be able to comment more intelligently on combo boxes but these are my initial impressions. That said, keep the ideas coming as I am sure that working together we can come up with a way to improve things. We just want to be sure that we do so in ways that are sound and standards compliant. For a quick look at the W3C standards - even for HTML5 draft (http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/forms.html#forms) I did not see anything that was combo box like but I may have missed something obvious. Let's keep the discussion going and see what we can find. You may also want to open it up for discussion in the assignment forum on Moodle.org to see what ideas folks have for improving it. Let me know how I can be of help. Peace - Anthony

I agree with Mark and Anthony that a simple decimal entry in a text box would be more user-friendly than the current drop-down, which is just clunky and unnecessarily time consuming. Educators must have the ability to apply decimal marks, especially in Higher Ed, where every jot and tittle counts for something. I see no point in having another field next to the existing drop-down, which would create redundancy and conflict. Please replace the drop-down system with something that can be used to apply a decimal mark.

Please check our proposed patch , patch.txt for the changes . Instead of a drop down menu for grading ,a text area is provided for entering grade. Also we executed an alter table statement , "alter table mdl_assignment_submissions modify grade decimal(5,2);" to allow decimal values.
Please review to see if the patch meets the required needs .