Out of all the features of Openedx, the one that I got complained about the most is the timed exam.
Here are the most complained problems:
Users have to click submit/save for every single question, users can not change their answers if the number of attempts is set to 1.
English exams, for example, could go up to 200 questions per exam, an individual user must click save and submit 400 times, that’s a lot of unnecessary extra work.
While in the real world, users just need to pick their answers and go on to the next question and they can change their answers if they want to.
In an exam, there is no need for instance feedback or reflection, so submit buttons and the maximum number of attempts are unnecessary, in fact is better not to have them in this case.
As a developer, I know the current design is easier to develop since it can work for many cases, including quizzes and exams but I think we should bring quality of life to the platform and enhance the user experience.
Solution:
Make timed exam v2 if we want to keep the current timed exam.
When users choose an answer, it’s automatically saved, no submit buttons for questions need to be visible.
Show answer, hints and maximum number of attempts are ignored.
There is only one single submit button for the entire exam in case users want to end the exam early.
When the time is up if the user has not submitted their exam, the exam will be automatically submitted for them.
1, 2 and 3 are relatively easy to achieve.
4 and 5 need extra API and background job I think.
I can help with processes other than implementing this because I’m unfamiliar with Reactjs and Django.
I’ll check out the product proposal process, thank you for the info.
Interestingly, we use timed exams a lot in MOOCs and on campus at MIT. I haven’t heard the complaint of having to submit an answer per question, and we have exams with a lot of questions, too. We do have a problem with a small percentage of students saving instead of submitting, which will not score the answers. We make every question 2 attempts, telling the students it is giving them a chance to change their mind at some point during the allowed time. For our cases as well, we don’t need show answer, but I wouldn’t assume that is always true. Some people may be giving timed exams that they want to provide full explanations for after the exam is over, and I’m sure I could find a case of that at MIT.
We do have this problem too, I think the save feature should be automatic, just like what we’ve done with ORA, other than reducing requests to server, I don’t think of any reasons not to do it.
I think this is the problem of everyday software design, whether we make one thing that works for everybody or we make multiple things that tailor the needs of each group of users.
The timed exam is an important feature and has been around for a long time, I think it deserve more attention.