Attempt Design

Torus attempts track student interaction and results for pages, activities and parts of activities.

Attempt Hierarchy

Torus models attempts in a hierarchy that mirrors the hierarchical structure of course content. So for every page that a student visits in Torus a page attempt record is created. For every activity that exists on a visited page, an activity attempt record is created (which points back to the parent page record). Finally, for every part that an activity defines, a part attempt record is created.

The entire attempt hierarchy is rooted in a resource access record that tracks, amongst other things, the rolled up student result (aka grade) across all attempts.

Attempt History

The Torus attempt hierarchy supports preservation of historical attempts. Consider an example where a student takes a graded page that contains two activities (each with one part) twice. The full attempt hierarchy, with history, would look like the following:

Resource Access
--Page Attempt 1
----Activity A, Attempt 1
------Part 1, Attempt 1
----Activity B, Attempt 1
------Part 1, Attempt 1
--Page Attempt 2
----Activity A, Attempt 1
------Part 1, Attempt 1
----Activity B, Attempt 1
------Part 1, Attempt 1

As another example, consider an ungraded page that contains one activity that a student attempts several times:

Resource Access
--Page Attempt 1
----Activity A, Attempt 1
------Part 1, Attempt 1
----Activity A, Attempt 2
------Part 1, Attempt 1
----Activity A, Attempt 3
------Part 1, Attempt 1
----Activity A, Attempt 4
------Part 1, Attempt 1

Attempt States

Attempts can exist in multiple states. These states are:

• Finalized: The student response has been evaluated and has been recorded into the attempt recorded. The attempt is now read-only.
• Open and active: The student response has not yet been evaluated, thus the attempt is "open", and the student is currently interacting with this page or activity therefore the attempt is "active".
• Open and inactive: The student visited the page or activity, did not submit a response for evaluation, thus the attempt is "open". But then they navigated away from this page and moved onto something else, thus the attempt is "inactive".
• Non-existent: The student has yet to access the page, thus no attempt exists.