Moodle

There is a new advanced upload type assignment in 1.7 and Journal is obsoleted. Lesson is IMO self assessed type of activity, uploading of files is IMHO not necessary there.

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Are you saying that there are good pedagogical arguments for allowing attachments on forum posts, blog entries, wiki pages, glossaries, and databases, but PREVENTED on online assignments and essay questions? I would like to hear those arguments.

I realize that Journal has been denigrated in favor of online assignment. Online assignments do not permit attachments either.

If online and offline assignments are interchangeable (as you seem to imply), why not merge them into a single assignment type? Clearly there are other reasons for choosing one over the other. If the situation calls for an online assignment, I will not switch to an upload assignment instead just because an attachment is needed.

Math and science teachers are hurt most by the lack of attachment in traditional activities like quiz, lesson, and online assignment. Why is it that the social activities enjoy all the nice features?

Did you try the new advanced assignment type in 1.7? It allows uploading of multiple files and entering of text online

The problem is IMO that uploaded files can not be "graded" automatically, who and how would be correcting it in lessons? It is exactly the same problem as essays in lessons.

Essay questions in Quizzes and Lessons have never been graded automatically. The teacher has always been required to grade them manually (the idea of grading them automatically is, of course, absurd). But no one is asking for that. We are only asking for parity with the social activites-- the ability of the student to attach a file to an essay question, as one would can in a forum post, wiki entry, or other "social" activity.

Yes, I have tried the New Assignment type. Are you proposing that teachers use a New Assignment instead of an Essay Question whenever an attachment is needed? Suppose I'm making a test with 10 MCQ's and 3 Essays. With your solution, I will have one Quiz with 10 MCQ's and one Advanced Assignment. This will be a nightmare to administrate since it must be conducted in "real time" (i.e., under test conditions).

An assignment is an assignment. A quiz is a quiz. A lesson is a lesson. An online assignment (formerly Journal) is an online assignment. They are DIFFERENT things, designed to meet different requirements. If you say "use them interchangeably" then let me remind you of the great philosophical debate over forum vs. blog. Martin certainly did not consider them interchangeable. We have been very careful about mixing up social activities, yet we show no such concern about traditional activities when we say that a quiz can be easily replaced by an upload (or advanced) assignment.

Ok, we do not agree. I was always opposing essays in Lesson because the feedback should be IMO displayed immediately. Please note that I was NOT talking about quizes, it might be useful to have upload files there for some scenarios (though implementation would not be trivial).

The problem is that not many people will read our discussion here, I am partially responsible for assignment mod - that was the reason why I commented here. I would recommend using forums next time for this type of feature requests that affect several mods. Or better file module specific feature requests.

There was a lively discussion of this topic in the Math Tools forum before I brought it to the tracker:

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=62002#284316

I started the discussion as preparation for a talk on "Moodle for math and science" that I'm giving at the Moodle Moot next month. This is one of several issues that primarily affects math and science teachers (other issues include the continued lack of an equation editor). I see an unfortunate "digital divide" in Moodle along science/social lines.

Incidentally, I have a workaround for this problem. The workaround uses the HSU file manager block, which gives students their own space in the file system. A student can upload a file and then paste a link to it into an essay question or other activity that does not support attachments. This is not an ideal solution (not everyone is able to install 3rd party blocks), but it works.

I still hope that you will consider adding attachments.

Gentlemen,

As a recent convert from Blackboard, this is an extremely important issue to me. Moodle quizzes allow immediate feedback on many individual questions; assignments don't. Assignments allow students to upload files, quizzes don't. I teach music theory and composition. My students routinely access MP3s and/or PDFs of notation with each question in a quiz, then access another for feedback to that question - but their role in this otherwise enlightened approach is limited to...words.

I want them, for instance, to realize (perform) a line of notation, overdubbing themselves or me in Audacity, and immediately import my feedback into their own still-open Audacity document - before going on to the next question - for the same reason any teacher uses & loves the question-by-question feedback feature. The only thing that prevents this powerful exchange is something that is available in another Moodle feature. - so close...

I know I haven't paid my dues with years of Moodling, but I can't believe there aren't more folks out there for whom this would complete the grand slam. Thanks for listening,

Dr. Steve Innis
Irving, TX

Please make it so!

Our students submit Online Text assignments and may have to add images of their bands/performances into the text area.

However, at the moment they can only link to online images and not all students have a Flickr account!

Appreciate the developments that have taken place with the 'mass submission' assignment, but it's not quite the same as just sticking a picture into online text.

Cheers!

Dan (and perhaps others),

Why not Advanced uploading of files and use the Notes option (You could change the interface terms if the standard ones cause confusion).

I would hope that we could have a coherent means of uploading and linking to files (especially graphics) that is uniform across all relevant activities (online assignments, blog postings, quiz responses etc). IMHO this should precede and be independent of any repository type operations. It seems to me that the current interface available to faculty when adding a graphic image which allows easy uploading and linking might be a place to start. The issue is possibly where in moodle_data to store the files since the next request is bound to be student access to uploaded files across courses.

Hello.. any news from the development people on this issue?? I agree with the previous comment that allowing students to upload their own files (e.g. to use them as embedded images) should be a core task rather than managed by specific modules.. e.g. each user should have a folder associated with its ID ( "[..]/files/u1/" like in Drupal)..

Of the things asked for, only essay questions are still relevant, as Petr pointed out. So editing.

This should be fixed as part of converting the essay question type to use the new File API.

Hello all,

I'm reading this conversation and watching with interest and have one question - as it is critical to the quiz and relevant to the "linking" questions posed by Dan Jeffries and Mark Pearson (I think it is relevant, at least) - and a comment....

If a quiz has "update quiz" setting for security set to "Yes" - well, by default students cannot copy and paste anything to the quiz (such as to an essay question response).

My question:

How do we accommodate use of existing quiz security function (many professors enjoy this feature) and meet the condition that students need to be able to do the following when responding to a quiz question of type "essay":

a) paste a link to a file
b) insert an image or file
c) attach an image or file

It may be I'm asking the wrong question and this is moot....but I was just curious....

Comment:

I would wholeheartedly support the integration of a document management system that would allow students access to their own "files" storage space that would be accessible to them from within the default HTML/WYSIWYG editor in Moodle - this would connect across the assignment activities (no matter what type) and quiz activities (not to mention the forums, etc.). It'd sure make life easier for most of our courses, but especially our multimedia and visual arts courses (not to mention our physical sciences and mathematics courses, too).

Thanks!

• Mary

Surely no teacher is sadistic enough to set essay questions while turning on the 'secure' mode that disables copy and paste?

And in terms of access to files in different places. Have you seen a demo of the new files handling in Moodle 2.0? (Actually someone should make a screen capture like the one sam did for the new Conditional Activities.)

I won't have time to work on this until Moodle 2.1 at the earliest.

This was done as part of MDL-20636.

Hi
I've just stepped through creating and taking an Essay question in the Lesson module on the Moodle demo site which is apparently now running 2.1, and so far as I can tell, this has not been fixed. There is no functionality for teachers to enable students to attach a file, and the insert image function in the tinyMCE editor still only refers students to add a URL, not upload an image. For my purposes, this issue is not resolved. Should I open a new one, or can this one be reopened?

The lesson does not use the Moodle question bank (which the quiz uses). It does its own thing, so it is not surprising that essays with attachments don't work there in Moodle 2.1.

Hopefully the Lesson module will be updated to use the question bank one day.