Full text of Online Text improvements

A popup would be nice but there are YUI issues in popups if the content adds js dependencies (e.g. a file submission plugin displaying a list of files may add dependancies). Since the assignment can't determine if the plugins are going to add dependencies, this is tricky.

Whether it is a pop-up or simply allowing for the whole text to show, this additional click doesn't fit with using the online text submission. If an instructor wanted to download files or open up another screen they would have the students turn in a file. One of the benefits of having the students use the Online text submission is to eliminate the extra clicks and downloads.

Or even an option for the instructors to be able to see the Online Text submissions as is currently showing or show the entire text. Perhaps an icon on the grading page or something to select in the settings.

Each semester before, I didn't have to click "back"

I don't want to have to read the submission, take notes in a notebook (on paper) and then click "back" to enter my notes and the grade.

I want the assignment, in full, listed on the top of the page, and the ability to comment in a box and mark the grade, all on the same Webpage, just like I had each semester before.

The current method makes using Moodle no better than using a paper/pencil gradebook system; in fact, the paper/pencil system would be BETTER than the way it is set up now.

What is required now, is no better than having students email me documents, open each document one-by-one, and then entering grades and comments into a database or spreadsheet; in fact, that would be PREFERRED to what is required in Moodle right now.

Hopefully the designers will pay attention to this issue, which is "make or break" as far as continuing to use Moodle for me.

Perhaps instead of a pop-up, the content could be loaded into a scrolling div.

Current instructors participating in this conversation: Please note the conversation in MDL-35323 [9/14: Edit of typo in issue number; no wonder the next comment said my comment was irrelevant; it referenced an issue I didn't intend to reference. Sorry!] regarding a possible strategy that could work for now IF rubrics are not employed and quick grade is still an available option for you. It is how I would try to cope, myself, anyway, if I were actually teaching in 2.3 at the moment. I have not yet looked at what happens in my test environment with a rubric in this type of assignment.

For everyone involved:
However this gets solved, I think the common theme is this: It is pretty vital that the teacher can see the work being graded at the same time as viewing the feedback/comments/grade area. This is especially crucial for writing instructors and anyone else grading complex multi-layer written assessments because once one is dealing with a high volume of submissions on a complex assignment, that only increases the chances of user errors (or in instructor terms, forgetting the important thing one needed to say to the student for the assessment in the first place).

Thanks for the comment Lesli, but that is not relevant to this issue. We need to see the work while we grade. Quick grade is no longer an option.

Someone DID update something. We can now see the first LINE of text as we grade, that is better. However we still MUST click the
"magnification" icon to see the entire writing assignment. That goes to another screen, where we are not able to read the assignment and make comments. Once we have made any comments, those comments are LOST when one clicks the magnification screen.

One has to click "back" to make comments. The comments are NOT saved so again, I have to make comments in a notebook, on paper, or in another application such as a text editor. It has to be a text editor, not a wordprocessor, otherwise one cannot copy/paste into the editor on Moodle (without formatting markup language being pasted).

This, as many students would say, SUX.

Obviously the developers are not aware of how instructors/faculty members have actually found Moodle to be a quite usable application up until now.

Agreed. If I could just click on the Grade icon and see the entire submission, the field to enter points and feedback (which would also paste the student submission into the Feedback field for me) my life (and other teachers I work with) would be greatly improved.

The set up now simply takes too long and is too complicated. There is no reason to jump back and forth and copy/paste.

^^Jon is on target. As a teacher, we need to see the submitted work and have the fields to grade and provide feedback all on the same screen for the online submission - otherwise the online submission is now more cumbersome and doesn't serve its purpose well. The current version results in very frustrated teachers.

Many of the points I make here in the attached doc have been made by others elsewhere, but I'm hoping pictures and additional reasons will help spur the conversation in a direction that leads to a resolution. Thanks!

Just wanted to add a comment that this is a MAJOR workflow issue for my teachers. We need some way to see the entire text of an online assignment while on the grading screen.

As everyone has said this is a huge issue. I have in the mean time come up with an ugly and crude work-around.

1) Download the submitted responses
2) Unzip and open the folder.
3) Edit settings on Folder window to include a preview of the file.
4) Let the folder window only take up half of your screen.
5) Keep the Moodle window on the other half of the screen so you can do 'Quick grading' at the same time.
6) Now you can click on the submission you want to grade, read it, and grade it
7) You can then move on to the next submission by clicking on the submission in the downloaded folder.

Hope this helps.

The other thing I notice is that when you click the spyglass to see the student's submission, you can see the entire post, but it doesn't have the student name anywhere, unless the student included their name in the submission.

Just had to comment that this had reared its head at my institution as well, and I have to admit that not being able to see the entire online text assignment (even as an option) when doing grading is quite a surprising change with 2.3.

This issue has a lot of votes!

Is a version number bump required when stylesheets/javascript files change ?

The main moodle.git repository has just been updated with latest weekly modifications. You may wish to rebase your PULL branches to simplify history and avoid any possible merge conflicts. This would also make integrator's life easier next week.

TIA and ciao

Thanks guys, this has been integrated now

RE your question Damyon, a version bump will cause the caches to be clearer and fix any issues caused by stale JS + CSS. In this case its not a major change and when we release the weeklies we bump the version so that will do. It just means integration testers will need to be aware and clear their caches if nothing major lands between now and testing.

Sorry, this may be a silly question, but which version do we need to pull to have this fix on our system? The latest stable weekly?

Thanks much,

Hi A.J

This fix was only only added to the master branch.
The first release it will be included in will be Moodle 2.4.
In order to get a copy of that you would need to download the Moodle 2.4dev package from moodle.org or checkout a copy from one of our git repositories.

Many thanks
Sam

Works as expected.
Thanks

Could someone provide a summary of what the workflow might in this new version as compared to the current process that includes:
Click View Submissions
click on the submission
Go back to the submissions page
Click on grade
Enter feedback and grade
Save.

Will the new version allow teachers to include the student submission in their feedback as it did in 1.9?

Congratulations, you've done it!

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Even though it's fixed, it will be in 2.4 out in dec?

I'm sorry for re-asking this, but is there a way to integrate this into our current moodle 2.3? It is such a big issue for some teachers that they are holding off on grading assignments at the moment.

Hi A.J.

It's unlikely at this point that this improvement would be backported.
We only backport improvements if there is a good reason to, or if we are sure it is safe to do so.
I've produced a branch that you can test if you like, all I have done is backport the solution to 23 and fixed the conflicts I got doing so. I havn't tested it myself. But if you would like to give it a shot you are more than welcome.

git repo: git://github.com/samhemelryk/moodle.git
branch: backport-MDL-33431-m23
diff: https://github.com/samhemelryk/moodle/compare/MOODLE_23_STABLE...backport-MDL-33431-m23

If you do decide to give it a go could you please let us know how you get along.
If everything works perfectly as expected and Damyon is happy to then we can consider this for backporting.

Many thanks
Sam

You can get a 2.3 version of this change here:
Repository: git://github.com/netspotau/moodle-mod_assign.git
Branch: MDL-33431-m23

I'm not clear on the feature vs bug requirements for backports to stable branches so I'm not going to push for this to go into a 2.3 release.

Didn't see Sams comment this morning

• Now you have 2 backports to choose from !