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Ongoing widespread confusion over word "test" in "Student Progress" section

Ongoing widespread confusion over word "test" in "Student Progress" section

by Christian Seberino -
Number of replies: 2
If I call an exam by the name exam_3, then student results show up like so
(assuming they attempted it twice):

exam_3 (test 1) ....

exam_3 (test 2) ....

Over the years I've had countless students and parents get confused by this notation.  Folks will see the above and think it is the score for the 1st exam or the 2nd exam.  They'll then send a panicky email asking where the score is for the third exam!

Is it a good idea to change the word "test" as used above to "attempt"?

If this isn't universally agreed upon as a good idea, is it easy to make it a config option or at worst hand hack the source myself to make the change?

Sincerely,

Chris




In reply to Christian Seberino

Re: Ongoing widespread confusion over word "test" in "Student Progress" section

by Alan Ableson -
Hi Chris,

I've had the same thought before, and in various installations have changed the name manually by modifying the source code. The files you would edit (in 2.9) are in
/opt/webwork/webwork2/lib/WeBWorK/ContentGenerator

The 'test' expression shows up in different source code files for different representations. The locations I found (with grep, not exhaustive reading) are:

./ProblemSets.pm: $r->maketext("[_1] (test [_2])", $display_name, $vnum));
./GatewayQuiz.pm: "submission (test " : "test (";
./Hardcopy.pm: $selected_set_id =~ s/,v(\d+)$/ (test $1)/;

./Grades.pm: push( @rows, CGI::Tr({}, CGI::td(WeBWorK::ContentGenerator::underscore2sp("${setID}_(test_" . $set->version_id . ")")),

./Grades.pm: $setName =~ s/(.+),v(\d+)$/${1}_(test_$2)/;

I think there is also a way to use the Localize functionality to have this handled more gracefully. In the WeBWork/Localize directory are lines like:

fr.po:msgid "%1 (test %2)"
fr.po:msgstr "tr: %1 (test %2)"

which point to an easy one-stop edit to change that 'test' name. I don't know enough about the localization switches to know whether making a custom English localization would be easier or more robust than editing the source code though.

Cheers,

Alan
In reply to Alan Ableson

Re: Ongoing widespread confusion over word "test" in "Student Progress" section

by Gavin LaRose -
Hi all,

This is probably as elegant a solution as one can come up with. When I made the testing module, I chose the word "test" because I wasn't sure if "attempt" or "version" would be clear. It may be that it would make better sense to just change this to "attempt" in the distributed source code.

Gavin