Structured feedback

Thanks Moshe, I'm glad you like it.
Yes, in fact it was designed as an alternative to rubrics, to enable the teacher to provide feedback comments without having to award individual grades per criterion. So really it should only be used with the 'Simple direct grading' method.

Hello Tony
We like this plugin very much, but do have a couple of questions. Is it possible to use this plugin when selecting 'Simple Direct Grading' method? We do not need to grade for each one of the Criterion. We just give an overall mark for the submission, and allow the students to read the Feedback. Thank you. Moshe

Hi Xuan, I don't think there is, unfortunately. I'm not sure it's possible to make HTML editor fields mandatory at all, as they often seem to be created with default HTML formatting elements, which I guess would be regarded as content.

Hi Tony, is there a way to force markers have to leave feedback for all criteria before saving mark?

Thanks Gary, I'm glad you like it. How is the feedback displayed to the second grader? Is it just in a plain text area (but still editable) or can it not be edited at all? And on which page is this: the grading table or individual grading pages?

Hi Tony - Thanks for this very helpful plugin. Can you help me understand why one assignment grader (via system - manager role) sees the structured feedback text as an htmlarea while another with the same role and viewing the same assignment sees feedback not in an htmlarea ?
I can provide screenshots if helpful. Thank you.
Gary

Hi Pieter, thanks for your comments and I'm glad you find the plugin useful. We developed this plugin because our academic staff needed to be able to give their students feedback in a scaffolded fashion, but without necessarily having to award a grade at the same time (which happens in a separate system here). This is something neither the rubric nor the other built-in advanced grading method (marking guide) were able to support at the time (and they still don't, as far as I'm aware). Another important requirement was that it could be configured very simply within the main assignment instance config form, rather than in a separate interface as is the case with the advanced grading methods. Although I can see how making it more rubric-like in the way you suggest could be very useful in many ways, I do also feel that it could make the configuration too complicated for our needs. If I have time in the future I'll certainly look into the possibility of including the additional functionality in a way that would be acceptable, but in the meantime please feel free to fork the repository and tailor the plugin to your own needs. I'm also happy to accept contributions of course, but in this case I think the new functionality would have to be implemented in a way that could at least be disabled at the site level, to maintain the existing simplicity.

Dear Tony! Thank you so much for this plugin... it was almost exactly what we were thinking of during a recent brainstorming time to improve and simplify our feedback during grading. What we had in mind, however, was exactly this idea but to make it a bit more efficient, for it to be similar to the rubric grading where instead of a text box there is a rubric-like option to select for each criteria (or maybe even just a tickbox). Is this something you would consider expanding the features on for this plugin?

Hi Richard,
The main difference is that those are advanced grading plugins -- so there's some kind of grade calculation involved -- whereas this is just a feedback plugin which can be used with simple grading. Our academic staff wanted the functionality to provide individual feedback comments on bespoke criteria, while also retaining the flexibility of being able to award a single overall grade. A lot of them were also put off by the (perceived) complexity of configuring an advanced grading plugin, using its own separate interface, so it was important that the feedback criteria for this plugin could be defined using a simple interface that actually sits within the assignment config form.
So really this is all about keeping things straightforward and familiar.
Tony

What is the difference between this plugin and the Rubric/Marking guide option?

No problem Chris, glad you got it sorted.
Tony

Hi Tony,
THAT's actually the easiest way... Thanks for the heads up. Although it was a bunch of work to go through 30 assignments, duplicate them, modify the categories and re-grade all students manually, this came out as the best solution to my problem. Many thanks!! Sometimes it needs pragmatic solutions
Chris

Hi Christoph,
Yes, it is a limitation of Moodle core that you can only select one feedback plugin to push data to the gradebook, and this can only be set on a site-wide basis via the feedback_plugin_for_gradebook setting, as far as I'm aware. However, a possible workaround for your case would be to simply create an additional criterion in the structured feedback plugin called 'General comments' and disable the default 'Feedback comments' plugin. That wouldn't help with your existing assignments though.
I haven't done any work on the core gradebook code so can't offer any help there I'm afraid.
Tony

Hi Tony again,
your plugin still really helps a lot to keep track of our students. With my previous issue, I am not quite sure if it was really an issue of your plugin or moodle itself. If I (now) understand correctly, by the time a feedback is given, moodle pushes this feedback to the gradebook. With the feedback_plugin_for_gradebook switch set to "structured feedback" all the following gradebook entries will be made with the structured feedback, however, older feedbacks remain with "classic" contents.
My intention is to have both feedbacks (text feedback and structured) displayed in one gradebook. However, I doubt moodle is able to provide this, correct? I already started to get into the gradebook code to collect both data sources, maybe you have a clue where to start or how to modify the grade_report_user class... If not, I will get into this and provide any successful result here if wanted

Thanks Tony, and thanks also for the really quick response to the question.
Ken