Moodle

From Gustav Delius (gwd2 at york.ac.uk) Thursday, 27 April 2006, 03:52 PM:

Allowing questions to carry negative marks is a frequently requested feature.

From Anthony Borrow (aborrow at jesuitcp.org) Wednesday, 7 June 2006, 08:26 AM:

One possible work around is to have the multiple choice questions be worth 2 points. A correct answer gets 2 points, no answer gets one point (no deduction) and an incorrect answer gets 0.75 points (a -.25 deduction). The catch is that at the end of the quiz there needs to be a question worth how ever many multiple choice questions there were - for the sake of example lets say there were 10 multiple choice questions, then it would be worth 10 points and no matter what they received zero points. That would then subtract the added ones and get around negative points. It is not an elegant work around but it may provide folks working with standardized testing formats to get the marks that they are looking for. One thing preventing this is the fact that there is no 3/8 point option (37.5%). I do think that the 1/8th options (3/8, 5/8, 7/8) should be in the default list of scales. That would be more easily accomplished then allowing negative point questions. Perhaps this should also be kicked around in a forum.

From John Isner (john.isner at gmail.com) Tuesday, 11 July 2006, 08:08 PM:

This is a high-priority issue for me. All of my quizzes require negative marks for questions.

I strongly support that this bizarre behavior will be changed. It is a high priortiy issue, not at all 'trivial'
There is no rationale to limit scoring to 0-1 range. Negative scoring IS USED a lot by any university.
Every time we have upgraded Moodle version at ULPGC I had had to chase after this.

For 1.6 what I have done is to limit to de range -1.0 - 0 - 1.0 :
in function grade_responses

if($this->compare_responses($question, $state, $teststate)) { $state->raw_grade = min(max((float) $answer->fraction, >>>>> -1.0), 1.0) * $question->maxgrade; <<<<<<<<< // ecastro ULPGC allow negative scoring break; }

This function exists in files questiontype.php located at dirs
question/type
question/type/match
question/type/multianswer
question/type/multichoice
question/type/numerial
question/type/shortanswer

In lib/questionlib.php
by line 1063
// Ensure that the grade does not go down
//$state->grade = max($state->grade, $state->last_graded->grade); <<<<<< commented out

I wonder why code should take measures to ensure that grades do not go down.
If students are doing worse on test , it is actually of the most importance to make it CLEAR.
We, as teachers cannot leave the studente with the impression that they are doing well, they are studiying and progressing when they are doing worse, actually . This is antipedagogical. Not a 'technical" issue.

Yes, I know this is an important feature for a lot of people. However the quick and dirty hack is not sufficient for two reasons:

1. Multiple-response multiple-choice questions.
2. When the quiz allows multiple attempts at each qustion using the penalty-factor system.

If someone can come up with a patch that covers all cases reliably, then I would be delighted to check it in.

This is the exact same issue as MDL-1647.

I don't understand. How come it says "Status: resolved" if in fact it appears that negative marking is still not possible? Am I wrong?

Under "Status: resolved", it says "Resolution: Duplicate", and then in the middle it says Issue "Links: This issue duplicates: MDL-1647". That means that this issues is exactly the same as MDL-1647.

Since the aim is to have one issue open in the tracker for each thing that needs to be worked on duplicate bugs are resolved in this. I hope that makes sense.