Sensei: Autosave answers to quizzes on a question by question basis

[jeffryevans]

How difficult is it to add the ability to autosave answers to questions as the user is answering a quiz?

So the logic might be something like, for multiple choice questions, the answer is saved when a choice is selected. For text entry answers like single line and multiline, an onblur event might be used to autosave the answer.

This feature can serve to really help students as they are taking a quiz to not lose their answers if they hit a wrong key or link (like using the backspace key when they are not within a text box/area, thus the browser goes back to the previous page, and they lose all of their work).

Thank you for considering!

[BurlesonBrad]

@jeffryevans Here's an example using jsfiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/MadLittleMods/2LG8f/

[jeffryevans]

Thank you for taking the time to post this. I was actually hoping that automattic would program this as a feature upgrade and incorporate it in a near future release. I suspect there will be a little more to programming this within Sensei than what you showed in your jsfiddle, especially as it pertains to saving the data and preparing it for a later final submission of the entire quiz. Are you a part of automattic? Is this something they would consider building into the plugin? Thank you again.

[BurlesonBrad]

Honestly @jeffryevans , I've been watching Sensei for quite some time now _(at least a year)_. I see a TON of merges that are perfectly fine _(not even Features ~or~ Enhancements)_, heck there's even some merges where @danjjohnson or @dwainm has specifically told someone exactly what they'd like to see. Yet for some reason _(I don't assume anything, I'm just speaking factually)_ I can consistently see forks that aren't getting merged like #1455 , @jeffryevans your #1490 from May 6th is still sitting there, yet the day before @kraftbj merged his #1443 patch.

I ain't gonna keep going, but... well.... I'm just a simple country fellah, but I will say this: When you wipe off the lens of the camera, it makes the image become a lot clearer. The more I look at everything going on with Sensei, look around the innerwebs for platforms to deliver courses, look here on Github, ....I'm gettin' a little less comfortable recommending Sensei.

Nothing personal, sweet people behind it, awesome rocket ninja/ code slingin'/ command line whackin'/ forkin' folks, been following https://senseilms.wordpress.com/ for who-knows-how-long, beta tested the poo outta Sensei. But.... something _(again, not sure what's going on)_ ain't sittin' right with me on Sensei anymore.

[FirstClassCode]

@BurlesonBrad I honestly hate to agree with you. I don't see why important fixes are not being merged for months on end. I am having to manually apply them. Which isn't a big issue, but is very concerning. Especially when we are paying yearly for the development of this plugin.

[jeherve]

@BurlesonBrad @jeffryevans @FirstClassCode We're still around! A new team is taking over and getting familiar with the plugin. It obviously takes time though, and we do indeed have some work with existing Pull Requests. But we'll get to them!

If any of you stumble across critical issues with the plugin, or would like us to take a look at a Pull Request as quickly as possible, do not hesitate to cc me on the issues, I'll be happy to let our team know about it.

[FirstClassCode]

@jeherve Glad to know a team is being assembled for Sensei development. I would like to see this place being proactive when it comes to issue reports and pull requests. Like @BurlesonBrad mentioned some of these have been sitting in "Needs Dev Review" for months with absolutely no action. But, if this new team just starts working through them it would be a nice thing to see!

[jeffryevans]

@jeherve sounds good! Is the original feature request here something that automattic will consider? Thank you. @BurlesonBrad @FirstClassCode - thank you for your feedback!

[jeherve]

Is the original feature request here something that automattic will consider?

That seems reasonable, but it's probably not something I'd consider high priority.

If you'd like to submit a Pull Request, we'll review it 👍

[georgestephanis]

If this is merged in to core, I'd sooner see it implemented using the SessionStorage object (possibly LocalStorage) -- as it would hit potential scaling problems if it's stored server side in the database, and local storage is likely sufficient for this.

Fortunately, there are some excellent libraries out there that can already do this -- https://sisyphus-js.herokuapp.com/ for one. However, I'm unsure if we'd prefer a full external library, or just some simple js to serialize the form data and store it locally.

tl;dr: Sounds neat, probably worth rolling in, if I see a solid pull request for it, I'd be delighted to merge it. However, I'd need to balance internal priorities on lots of other issues, so I'm not sure when it would come up on the queue if it's just an issue for us to get to.

[BurlesonBrad]

.......and the latest Chrome has now removed the backspace button from _[drumroll]_ ACTUALLY GOING BACK _[/drumroll]_ :angry:
While everyone on Google forums is apparently pretty irritated at the behavior....
@jeffryevans I can't help but wonder if other browsers will follow suit. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[donnapep]

An alternative option to auto-saving answers would be to show each question on its own page. Users would need to click a button to submit their answer and move to the next question. This would help prevent data loss.

[donnapep]

We are planning to pursue showing quiz questions on separate pages, instead of showing all questions on a single (potentially really long) page. This will eliminate the need for auto-saving quizzes. Given this, I'm going to close this issue. Thx!