Forum Getting Started: What does this mean?

The page you get to when you click on the relevant button for your MCQs under the "Contribute" tab in Monitor (ie, the fourth tab along the top) is the same page you get to when you go to the the Sequence tab (2nd along the top), double click on your MCQ activity, then click on the "Contribute" button in the pop-up screen.

In other words, you can access the same page either via a button in the Contribute tab, or via the Sequence tab by double-clicking on the relevant activity, then clicking the "Contribute" button.

The *reason* for having two ways to do this is that just before the release of V1.0.1, we had tried to have all the functions from the fourth tab included into the other tabs - mainly through the "Contribute" button mentioned above. This would then have allowed us to get rid of the fourth tab altogether, making things hopefully simpler.

However, when it came to the launch, we weren't certain that everything had been replicated elsewhere - and hence if we removed the Contribute tab altogether, people might lose some functionality. We were also conscious that some people have got used to using this tab without knowing there were other ways to find the same information. So in the end, we decided to keep it in with the warning you've noted, and left it alone since. It will continue to be this way for any subsequent V1.0.X releases.

In V1.1 and onwards, we're planning to redo parts of Monitor. We will probably move any "Contribute like" functions into the pop-up window for each tool accessed via the Sequence tab as noted above. We're thinking of replacing the "Contribute" tab with a new "To Do" list or similar - the idea for the new "To Do" list will be to have a list of all the things a teacher may need to do along the way in a sequence - a kind of checklist for teachers (to complement the progress bar for learners). This is still in the planning stages, so any feedback is most welcome!

Ernie may want to comment on this as he is closer to the current features in Monitor for V1.1.

Posted by James Dalziel

As far as using the MCQs to get a summary of completion, I was feeling quite positive about that until a student emailed me yesterday (yes, students and staff now work Sundays it would seem!) to say that he hadn't been offered the quiz, had been assigned a mark of zero and couldn't retake the quiz. The Monitor shows he completed the sequence but he has no mark assigned in Contribute, not even a zero. Now I'm only using the quiz in a formative sense so I'm not overly bothered. However, I would be interested to know whether others have seen similar things happen and any ideas as to what the problem might be (click-happy student?). Also, is this the appropriate place to raise issues like this or should I use the Tech Forum (this seems to be mainly install issues at present)? And what about requests for new features -- where should they go?

Posted by Peter Miller

Posted by Peter Miller