[Konkurens] TMS for quizzes - feedback

[Kitlei Róbert]

Hi Andor+everybody!


Let's use the Javagyak list for all things Konkurens/Concurrent related, 
unless it's absolutely specific to those courses -- technical details 
about TMS will concern everyone, so I reply to your message below here 
in javagyak.


I've already reported some of these problems in the issue tracker of TMS 
-- and a fix for the most important one which was a blocker (question 
banks -- or in their terminology, question sets -- could not be created 
by lab teachers) has already been fixed. It sure is useful to have an 
"in house" development team! ... vs Canvas, Teams, Neptun whose devs are 
hard-to-impossible to reach.


That's indeed why I asked you to have a trial run of quizzes this week: 
to find any bugs or issues so that they may be addressed before going 
live. I, unfortunately, am not a good enough "measuring stick": I have 
more permissions concerning the courses than you, so what is possible 
for me might be invisible/impossible for you. Say, the aforementioned 
bug did not affect me, but now several of you have reported it and it 
has been squashed. Right now I see that at least two quizzes are already 
successfully made (independent of me), so we seem to be on track. If 
your class is on Wed/Thu/Fri, please create a trial quiz for it. Let's 
talk about our experience in this week's meeting.


If you (meaning not just Andor but everybody) have suggestions about the 
system, let's hear them: send them preferably to javagyak or directly to 
me. Technically, it is possible to immediately submit issue requests to 
the tracker of TMS (https://gitlab.com/tms-elte/frontend-react/-/issues) 
but to avoid duplicates and to make sure that they are as general and as 
comfy as possible, let's discuss it with me (and all of you) first.


Shortly about some of these points: as I told you on the last meeting, 
the question options are a bit limited, so don't expect a great variety 
of question types. Single choice and multiple choice are available, some 
others like true/false can be emulated that way. Essay questions are 
currently not available. Many of these (colour scheme, instructor cannot 
take test) are already reported, so you can find the related issue in 
their system, and if you have more details about it, add a comment there 
-- the devs will see it and act on it. Some can be mitigated: give all 
students a long enough time but tell them verbally to finish up a bit 
before then except for the one with the extra time; as for names, I 
specifically requested that you all *strictly follow a naming schema in 
HOWTO-TMS-quizzes* (and with the fix, the name is indeed editable now).


It is not an extremely comfortable system yet, I know, but missing 
administrative features can arrive by the exam period when we'll 
actually need them if we identify which ones are absolutely a must and 
provide the exact specifications on what they have to be capable of. 
Also, if we don't start using the system in earnest, then how will it 
evolve so that it become actually comfortable? Luckily, the lab quizzes 
are not meant to be tricky: as they are meant to nudge the students to 
attend/rewatch theory class, please don't make them "scary difficult" or 
as complex as Rubik's cube -- and in my opinion, TMS as it is now can 
support that with a modicum of compromise.


So unless you find total deal breakers in the following days, let's do 
the first round of quizzes next week in TMS, and we can finalise the 
decision of sticking with it for the whole semester or abandon it in 
next week's meeting.


Rob


On 09/09/2025 15:06, Menczer Andor wrote:
> Dear Everyone,
>
> Just a quick feedback on some of the problems I have encountered while 
> I tried to use TMS for the weekly quizzes (concurrent programming 
> courses). I don't expect a fix or a reply, just spreading awareness:
>
>   * For me, TMS defaults to Hungarian with dark mode turned on. The
>     former is fine, the latter is buggy as in some cases, e.g. when
>     writing a new question, the text remains a dark shade of grey
>     despite being rendered atop of an almost black background, thus
>     making the text illegible.
>   * I cannot create a new question bank.
>   * I can copy an already existing question bank, but I cannot edit
>     its title, so it has some nonsensical name with "copy" at the end.
>     It already looks like a mess, I cannot fathom how unmanageable it
>     will eventually become by the end of the semester
>   * When creating a test I cannot set individual points for each question.
>   * When creating a test I cannot set answer type (multiple choice,
>     single choice, true-false etc)
>   * When creating a test I cannot set special conditions for special
>     students (e.g. students with disabilities may need extra time)
>   * After creating a test I cannot take the test myself, as if I was a
>     student (canvas has such a feature, it's great for making sure the
>     test was created properly)
>   * I do not have a summary page for students like I have in canvas.
>     It seems I'm supposed to click on every single test and check
>     individual scores of students. This is complete nonsense as I will
>     have hundreds of individual scores by the end of the semester
>   * There is no xml or other spreadsheet-like export option
>   * There is no course wide export-import feature so next year I will
>     have to start from scratch
>   * TMS does not support adding notes to wrong answers so students
>     will not know why their answer was not correct.
>
> I believe TMS will eventually supersede Canvas and become a better and 
> more robust platform, however at the time of writing I find the 
> platform completely unsatisfactory or even unusable for lectures. For 
> the above mentioned reasons I recommend we stick to Canvas and try TMS 
> again next semester.
>
> Best regards,
> Andor
>
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