Please address problems with pagination in quizzes

Mike.B.559
Mike.B.559 Posts: 143
edited March 19 in Action - Add or create student activities

I cannot understate how frustrating it is to not be able to use "Sections" to break up my quiz content where I want. Not everyone wants to use 5 or 10 questions per page. Not everyone wants a break after every question. Not everyone wants one long page of questions. The rigidity of the current system is having a significant and consequential impact on how instructors can meaningfully and pedagogically structure their quiz content.

I have tried to "work around" these limitations using "Legacy paging" but it's so ad hoc, inconsistent, and unforgiving. It just feels like guesswork. Not to mention the fact that, if you switch out of "Use legacy paging," and try to go back, you'll find that the option has disappeared from your "Paging" menu.

I need to see a fix for this somewhere on the Roadmap or at least get a sense that someone somewhere is working on it.

One possible stop-gap solution would be to change the menu option to "Add page break BEFORE each section" rather than after (suggested by Chelsey Yeslech 7 months ago). Sections are often used for instructions or to add readings or audio, so this would be a better option than adding the break after a section.

I want to be able to do this:

[NEW PAGE]

PART 1 - Reading Comprehension

Please read this text and answer the questions below.

[INSERT READING HERE]

  • Q1
  • Q2
  • Q3

[NEW PAGE]

PART 2 - Listening Comprehension

Please listen to this audio and answer the questions below.

[INSERT AUDIO HERE]

  • Q1
  • Q2
  • Q3
  • Q4

Others are also frustrated by the loss of this heavily-used component:

Reinstate manual paging for quizzes (D10647)

New Quiz Experience: Questions per page and manual page break placement need to return (D9915)

Manually add page breaks in the New Quiz design (D9327)

Pagination not working with Sections in quiz

BUG REPORT: fix pagination problem when inserting question into quiz (D8209) 
* I raised this issue in 2021 and it persists today, causing havoc under the surface of "Use legacy paging".

Tags: UX, User Experience

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Answers

  • Shonelle.W.988
    Shonelle.W.988 Posts: 39

    Hi Mike,

    I have developed an exam like you describe and this is how I achieved it. Before I explain, have you already experimented with these settings available in the quiz management page? I assume you have but wanted to ask just in case you hadn't.

    image.png

    Okay, for your quiz structure, I did a similar exam where I have 27 different scenarios and each scenario asks 2-6 questions. This took a little bit of setup, but works well.

    In the Question library, I made a new section for each of the 27 scenarios. For you this would be your Parts 1 and 2. Each 'section' behaves like a folder. On the exam, the learner will see each scenario and it's associated questions on a page. Each new scenario is a new exam page.

    image.png
    image.png

    You can also add layers to sections. My exam has an exam bank of 300 questions and randomly draws 81 for the exam. BUT, I have rules that I want 1 question from pool A, 1 question from pool B, and so on. So, you can add additional sections and house that under the Part 1 Part 2 sections (they are like folders within folders on a desktop).

    Here is an example:

    image.png

    Each of those folders contains several exam questions and I've set the exam rules to randomly draw a certain number of questions from each of the pools for this scenario.

    The exam management page looks like this:

    image.png

    Hope this helps.

    Shonelle

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  • Mike.B.559
    Mike.B.559 Posts: 143

    Thanks for the quick reply Shonelle. I'll experiment with it later today.

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  • Monica.G.541
    Monica.G.541 Posts: 38

    Thanks @Mike.B.559 for your questions and all your feedback within our Product Idea Exchange - we really appreciate you taking the time to do this!
    And thanks @Shonelle.W.988 for your detailed suggestions - we are going to review our documentation on this subject and perhaps include some of your suggestions/examples.

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  • Mike.B.559
    Mike.B.559 Posts: 143

    Hi Shonelle, I like the idea of having different scenarios to draw on…but as far as I can tell, your quiz layouts are still limited to:

    ⦿ all questions displayed together
    ⦿ 1 question per page
    ⦿ 5 questions per page
    ⦿ 10 questions per page
    ⦿ Add page break after each section

    That last option has promise if you it was "Add page break before each section". But really, I want to decide which questions appear on which page.

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  • Mike.B.559
    Mike.B.559 Posts: 143

    I have had some success reorganizing my content. I think the problem related to a misinterpretation of the documentation.

    What "Add page break after each section" actually means is, add a page break after the last item in that section rather than after each "Section" object. For example, consider the following:

    e.g.

    Section: Reading Comprehension

    Question 7

    Question 8

    Question 9

    Section: Writing

    Question 10

    Question 11

    Question 12

    What I thought it meant was add a page break after the "Section: Reading Comprehension" object alone, meaning that the break would occur between the section and question 7 rather than after Question 9. In other words, not after the section but after the last question in that section.

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  • Kyle.K.6309
    Kyle.K.6309 Posts: 7 🌱
    edited November 21

    So I cannot add Section breaks without a question in the Section? 😢😢😢😢😢😢

    I'm porting over from Moodle, I just want to have the kids read a bit of text then move to the questions in the next section — but there is no option for "Description" as in Moodle — so I have put my reading in a Section thinking I could then add question in a new Section and the two would be split up.

    Spent an hour trying combination after combination, but the reading section and the question section remain as one unit — and I did select "Add page break after each section"…😢

    I really need the option for a "Description" QType, or the ability to make Sections break at Section regardless if they have questions in them. Even better, if I could do something like Moodle, where you just click on the Question and select break.

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