Why This is Hard

I love the flexibility of Moodle. It is powerful and can have complexity. Let me give you an example of why.

Gapfill

I’m a big fan of the excellent Gapfill plugin by Marcus Greene. I’ve found this plugin extremely useful in a variety of use cases.

A quick overview:

Essentially, the plugin allows you to add a question within a quiz that creates, well, a gapfill question. The teacher writes a question and surrounds the correct answers with brackets. Thus, the [correct] answer in this sentence would be “correct”. Then the teacher adds some distractors (notice that the correct answer is NOT included in the distractors).

The student is presented with the question text (with the “correct” answers represented by a box). The student can drag and drop from the possible answers. The correct answer and the distractors are always shuffled.

I then took this concept to a different use case. Since spelling is a place where we could free up teacher time, I created a question where the teacher creates 13 empty boxes. The teacher then types in the correct spelling word by adding the appropriate letter. Thus, the question looks like this:

[s][p][e][l][l][i][n][g][][][][[][]

The teacher records the word (in this case: spelling), uses it in a sentence, and maybe says the word again. (The blanks function to not give the number of letters in the word away.)

Then, the teacher adds every letter to the distractors.

a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,o,n,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z

Here is an example that I’ve completed. Notice the recorded section that tells the students which word to spell. There are more boxes than the student would need. The distractors are all there, but not in any order. This adds complexity that doesn’t help me know what the student knows, just adds frustration.

The teacher could add capitals, but let’s not complicate this any further than I already have. 😉

Since this is to be used with elementary students, I don’t want the distractors shuffled. I want them in, well, alphabetical order.

I would want the “correct” answers (in this case, letters) to be selected from the “distractors”. I’m creating spots for answers that are intentionally left blank.

Note that I can also see some other use cases where I would want the distractors in a set order. When working with elementary students (and a wide variety of other students), it can be useful to provide a set structure.

Hard

This is why Moodle can be complex. A slightly different point of view (hey, I can create a great spelling experience that would free up teachers and let students be in control of their learning) can lead to a wide variety of complexity.

In my example, the answer is included (provided that I don’t add a space when typing), but how does the gapfill plugin know that? What happens if I don’t type exactly the same thing as the answer in the question and in the distractor? What happens if I forget to include the answer in the distractors?

Remember, the plugin was designed to add the distractors to the correct answer and shuffle those options. My use case if fundamentally different. I don’t want to provide just distractors, but all of the possible answers. While this is easy to understand as a teacher, it is more difficult to “explain” to a computer.

Marcus Greene

I huge shout out to Marcus Greene for even considering my request. I keep finding this willingness to collaborate and do what is best for students throughout the Moodle community. Mr. Greene is a terrific example of this community. I’ve never met Mr. Greene in the real world, but he is a hero of mine. His work has helped lots of kids learn.

You should also check out his WordSelect plugin. (And, yes, I use that one in a way that he didn’t intend too. See the part about identifying topic sentences, which is NOT a word.)