Getting wrong data from the report

[guillalva06]

Hi guys,

When I generate the report several times, in some occasions I get different result from them even if the parameters are equal (course, start date and end date). Also I want to know what is the expected behaviour on the following scenario:

An user answered an activity on September and the teacher reviewed it on October. If I generate the report for the September month, I get an entry with the activity submission and the date is from September when the user uploaded its work. If I generate the report of October, I get an entry with the activity submission but the date is when the teacher grade the activity. Is this the expected result?

[guillalva06]

Hi guys,

I think the report is assuming that all the records on the mdl_grade_grades_history are generated by an user submission, but this is not fully truth. When some student makes a submission for an assignment or quiz, the platform inserts a record related with that activity on the grade_grades_history table but also generate more entries for the other activities on the course with a null grade.
This feature affects the census report accuracy because can provide false positives(a student is listed with an intent on an activity that he never did) or wrong dates of completion(date of completion gets its value from an auto-generated row, not from the real intent). I'm getting this behaviour on my moodle platform. Is any configuration step that I missed on my platform to fix the wrong data?

[mynameisseamus]

I just wanted to follow up on this and let you know that Guillermo and myself are willing to help provide steps to reproduce if necessary. Thank you.

[jedward706]

Carteret Community College would like to use this block but are finding that the report is inaccurate, that Bb Open LMS (our current host) will not support it, and we are therefore at a bit of a loss regarding getting the report fixed -- has any progress been made or will any progress be made toward addressing report accuracy?

[brian-winstead]

The comment here, https://github.com/remotelearner/moodle-block_censusreport/blob/MOODLE_34_STABLE/lib.php#L893, indicates that the intention of the report is to return the student's most recent grade but earliest submission date as the completion date. This makes sense. The shortcoming is in the initial pull of grades history data. The query filters out actions attributed to system, but there are other non-system events which create grades history events which are not the result of the student making a submission or an instructor grading that submission. In particular, Moodle commonly creates empty grades records. The creation of these records are recorded in grades history and are being captured by the Census report and treated as student submissions.

I think the problem could be rectified by excluding grades history records where finalgrade is NULL. This should probably be done at least on the queries in these two locations:
https://github.com/remotelearner/moodle-block_censusreport/blob/MOODLE_34_STABLE/lib.php#L480
https://github.com/remotelearner/moodle-block_censusreport/blob/MOODLE_34_STABLE/lib.php#L861

STEPS TO REPLICATE:

1. Create a new course.
2. Create a quiz in the course and add at least one question.
3. Enroll a few users to the course.
4. Run the Census Report.

OBSERVED BEHAVIOR:
The students are listed for the quiz with no grade and date completed reflecting the date of enrollment.

EXPECTED BEHAVIOR:
The students are not listed as completed since they have not yet submitted to the quiz.

5. The next day, login as a student and submit to quiz, answering the question(s) correctly.
6. Run the Census Report.

OBSERVED BEHAVIOR:
The student is listed in the report for the quiz with a grade from the attempt just submitted but a date completed still matching the date of enrollment.

EXPECTED BEHAVIOR:
The student is listed in the report for the quiz with a grade from the attempt just submitted and a date completed of the current date.

This screenshot highlights a few variations of the issue.

Brant Brown - enrolled on 6/5, has never logged in
The student is shown with a completion date matching date of enrollment despite having no submissions.

Lance Johnson - enrolled on 6/5, submitted quiz on 6/6
The student is shown with the grade from his submission, but the date completed reflects date of enrollment rather than date of quiz submission.

Henry Rodriguez - enrolled on 6/5, submitted quiz on 6/5
Results are correct.

Steve Trachsel - enrolled on 6/6, has never logged in
The student is shown with a completion date matching date of enrollment despite having no submissions.