Interesting things in moodle genius and the databases...

Yesterday was interesting day.  Interesting as goes things like seeing he latest Star Wars movie, the force awakens....but, I digress before even starting.

In one of our courses, where we pay such close attention to the gradebook, should I be surprised anymore?  The first email

"Hi James,

Could you please take a look at the above course.

There is a discrepancy between Moodle & Genius gradebook"

She is comparing the two DBs gradebooks.  A quick recap here reveals that Genius, the front end application, is a slave to moodle.  It gathers gradebook data from moodle.   The issue, as it presents, is data in Genius as the culprit, since the data shows up there, not in moodle.

I logged into the Genius DB and found those records for the section, furthering my believe that the data was there, not in moodle.  I tried to delete the records, by did not have permission.  That is logical.  I sent a script to Marcelo who ran it and the records were gone.

Upon further review, the data was in moodle, just not displaying in the User report in moodle or the Grader report for that matter.  The *extra credit items, which were likely entered by a teacher as some point, lived in the moodle grade_items table.  Marcelo, at Genius pointed that out.  

My takeaway is to remember that Moodle is the provider here.  Moodle is the provider, Genius is the consumer.

Another customer emails me about grading in her course

Hi Mike,

Sarah K came to see me regarding her work in the Early Childhood class. Sarah can see that she has completed the assignments on her end but they don't show up on her teachers end. 

2 examples, among many are:

Quiz 3 Sarah did and she can see that she did it but Cathy can't see it.

Also Unit 5 the discussion questions she did but not showing up

Not sure how to resolve this issue.

Thanks,

Vicky

So Sara K is a student, Vicky is an assistance of some sort,  Cathy L is the teacher in the course and Mike is the service administrator.  I'm not sure why or how a student knows what is is/not showing in the teacher gradebook.  This is the fun stuff, figuring out what is really going on and understanding what is being reported.  This is a very common refrain for me.

Turns out the issue in this course continues to be confusion/complexity in the moodle Grader report.  There are a lot of gradable items in this course and 5 students.  That is a lot of grading and monitoring.   To compound the situation is when a student missing an assignment, the teacher has been entering 0's into the gradebook.  Later, when a student submits something and the teacher grades it, in another interface - the Assignment, it does not show up in the User report.  Did you follow all that?  Three separate views in the gradebook

Three specific moodle grading views

1. The grader report for course wide grading
2. The Assignment interface, with a quick grading option
3. User report where we typically view grades from

 These things do team up and cause confusion, anxiety for this teacher, but also for Mike M, the administrator.  It has been a semester long struggle.

I was able to diagnose the issues and help the teacher, class monitor and student to understand what was happening with the grade and the course.

My customer Mike then sends me a more specific response to this earlier email, which is our protocal "please include links to specific activities"...otherwise, we get to play investigator and try to deduce things.

I’m going to send this to our technicians.

Course:  http://studentmoodle.accelerateu.org/student/...

Unit 3 Quiz:  http://studentmoodle.accelerateu.org/student/mod/quiz/...

Unit 5 Discussion 1:  http://studentmoodle.accelerateu.org/student/mod/forum/...

Unit 5 Discussion 2:  http://studentmoodle.accelerateu.org/student/mod/forum/...

 Mike is sending me links to specific quizzes and forums in the course, the ones the lab monitor Vickie alluded to.

My response below.  There were also some pics included in my response.

Victoria.  The unit 3 quiz was not showing because someone had entered a zero for the grade in the grader report – which overrides the actual grade moodle gives.  I corrected that by removing the 0/override and can now see the students grade for the quiz.

Regarding the discussion forum posts, I can see them both, but looks like the teacher has not graded them yet.

Let me know if you need any other assistance.

James

  and finally a response from the teacher.

Hello James,

I was locked out for grading an assignment in unit #2 for Sarah K, as was the unit #3 quiz. All is working now. Discussion questions for unit #5 were my fault. They were turned in late and I didn't see them.

Thank you for your help.

Cathy L

My takeaway?

Be a problem solver, not a problem creator.