Topic: Courseware Quiz Assignment – Text or Paragraph fields do not allow free text entries

Courseware Quiz Assignment – Text or Paragraph fields do not allow free text entries

Arial Burnz
Participant

@arialburnz

9 months, 3 weeks ago

The thread started one month ago on this was closed, but no resolution was found. I think it might have been a miscommunication or something lost in translation. See thread here: http://buddypress.org/community/groups/buddypress-courseware/forum/topic/coureware-quiz-assignment-text-or-paragraph-allow-for-multiple-answers/

Is there a way where the “answer” entered into either a text field or paragraph field can be open or free text where it doesn’t matter what the answer is? Where any answer entered would be correct? I’ve been trying to find the answer to this question, but have had no luck. Perhaps there is something I’m not understanding about the purpose of an open text field and paragraph field on the quiz for an assignment. OR I may be using it incorrectly. OR perhaps there is an alternative I’m missing.

Stas seems to state in the aforementioned thread that he doesn’t see the purpose of such a type of response. The purpose of using an open-ended answer, which could be marked “correct” regardless of what is entered, is a question like this: “Please write in 200 words or less the blurb for the back of your novel.” Then, as an instructor, I take that information and help them tweak it to create a winning blurb for the back of their novel. I’m teaching creative writing and there is no right or wrong answers to free-form text. It’s not about right or wrong, but interactivity that allows me to teach people to hone their craft in writing (as an example).

If the ScholarPress is looking for the same exact text to be entered in the text or paragraph field, then wouldn’t one character entered incorrectly mark the entire answer incorrect? If I transposed a word to say “liek” instead of “like”, it would be marked as “wrong” wouldn’t it?

What is the purpose, then, of the free-form text fields? Why are they included in the quiz if it leaves so much room for error UNLESS we can create a setting that will accept any text entered and mark it as correct? Maybe I’m using it wrong. As I understand it, I’m supposed to put a question mark (?) after the label of the paragraph/text field, then anything after that is the “answer”. So if it is blank, then blank should be the answer…and so it is indeed marked with the way it’s programmed now.

Not sure if this has been resolved or if there is a setting I’m not understanding. I have been able to find neither. Thank you for any guidance anyone can provide on this.

Also I have not been able to find a working link for the handbook to the ScholarPress Courseware. Does anyone have a working link?

Thank you!
Arial
http://www.mysticalpress.com

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

olihaslam
Member

@olihaslam

9 months, 3 weeks ago

“Also I have not been able to find a working link for the handbook to the ScholarPress Courseware. Does anyone have a working link?”

I’ve not been able to find the handbook either. I’m hoping the reason for this (and for this forum being rather quiet) is that an update to the plugin is just around the corner.

Have a look at http://coursewa.re/

It’s hard to find any other info about courseware so I sincerely hope that when the coursewa.re project does launch it goes with a bang! This plugin looks fantastic to me and I can’t wait to start using it with the students and lecturers I work with. I know they’ll love it too as at the moment they have to cope with the nightmare Blackboard LMS/VLE…

byrontik
Member

@byrontik

7 months, 4 weeks ago

Hi Ariel, good to see someone else with the same understanding of the issue, it seems like such standard functionality to me as well.
Unless we are completely misunderstanding the functionality, I find his attitude towards this issue surprising.

As far as I can see the assignments and the bibliography are the only parts not performing well at the moment.

TEMP SOLUTION– Successfully implemented Visual Form Builder to overcome the issue, I placed the forms on the assignment’s page, without creating a quiz – so the assignments are easy to adjust when free-entry becomes an option within courseware
The form sends a email to the teacher and a copy to the student, by the teacher

One other thing I find a bit strange is that the student is not allowed to change an answer after it is given which should be considered an option for paragraph entries, before finalizing or committing the result

Kind regards
Byron

Arial Burnz
Participant

@arialburnz

7 months, 2 weeks ago

Hello, Byron!!

Sorry it took me so long to respond. Been quite busy with the site.

I will definitely look into the temporary solutions you’ve posted here. I have a form builder through Jetpack (I think), but not happy with it at all. The order of the information we receive in the e-mail is out of order from what we’ve dictated in the actual form. I’ve redone the forms and still get the same results. Bizarre. Additionally, the form builder won’t work inside the assignments. Not sure if that’s a ScholarPress issue or a theme issue. I’ll try out your temporary solution and see if that works.

Inserting images doesn’t work with the courseware interface, either. Are you having the same problem? We have the WordPress “kitchen sink” toolbars available when creating courseware, but some of the features (like inserting media) don’t work. If it works okay for you, it might be my theme. I’m using Custom Community.

Haven’t upgraded to the latest version of WP or my theme yet. Kinda scared to do that and haven’t had the time to do it at night when no one is on the site. That might fix some of the issues, too.

Oh well…thanks for your validation and I’m glad the link above to the project goes to an updated site now. Haven’t had the chance to read through all the upcoming changes.

Cheers!
Arial

P.S. For the record…I LOVE ScholarPress in spite of some of my frustrations. I know how the negative can overshadow the good stuff, so I just want everyone to know that I am very grateful for this plugin. It’s made teaching self-paced, online creative writing classes possible for me and my authors.

Stas Su?cov
Participant

@sushkov

7 months, 2 weeks ago

For “open questions” dont add quizzes to the assignments, this way users can submite their free-way answers.

Regarding other issues, I could not reproduce any of the upload media problems or any other.

cleaus
Participant

@cleaus

6 months, 2 weeks ago

Hi there Stas. With regards to the “open questions” I was wondering if there was anyway of putting the question (which I have written in the assignment info area) onto the next page as well so that when they are replying to the assignment they can still see the questions they need to answer?

Thanks for the great plugin

Cleaus N.Browne

Stas Su?cov
Participant

@sushkov

6 months, 2 weeks ago

@cleaus unfortunately not yet. But feel free to open an issue:
https://github.com/Courseware/buddypress-courseware/issues

Arial Burnz
Participant

@arialburnz

6 months ago

@byrontik – I finally had the chance to implement the Visual Form Builder your recommended and…OMG I LOVE IT!!! It allows me to do exactly what I want – have free-form text boxes for students to answer and I can put it right inside the assignment, so they don’t have to leave the class pages to take the “test”. Wonderful! Thanks for the recommendation!!