Preserving Activity Identifiers when Updating Content
When activity content is updated a new identifier is generated, as the identifier is the MD5 hash of the activity content. The rationale for this is so that the specific version of an activity can be identified, and analysis can show if learners have been using older versions of the content.
The downside to this approach is that any change (even a single character) then generates a new identifier, making it hard to analyse users activity in content where they may only be very minor changes, for example fixing typos or phrasing that doesn’t really affect the learning content being presented.
As of block version 1.3.5 you have the option to keep the previous activity identifier. This needs to be flagged manually since it’s not possible for Oppia to know how significant a change is and so whether or not this should be classed as a new version of an activity, or just a minor update to and existing one.
Where an activity has been updated, as part of the export process you’ll be given the option to retain the previous identifier. Although in some cases changes will not allow you to retain the previous identifier. The basis for whether or not you have the retain identifier option is specific to the activity type:
Page activities
Option given to retain identifier when:
Any change in the activity title, description or content
Quiz activities
Option given to retain identifier when:
Changing the quiz settings (eg pass threshold, no attempts, password)
Changing question text, scoring, responses
New identifier will be created and no option to retain the identfier will be given when:
Changing the number of questions
Feedback activities
Option given to retain identifier when:
Changing the feedback settings (eg no attempts, password)
Changing question text, responses
Changing the skip logic
New identifier will be created and no option to retain the identfier will be given when:
Changing the number of questions
File/Resource activities
Option given to retain identifier when:
Changing the file, either renaming the file, or changing the file content
Identifier is retained even if the title/description is changed
URL activities
Option given to retain identifier when:
Changing the URL
Identifier is retained even if the title/description is changed
General Notes
The previous activity identifier is the one that has been pushed to the Oppia server, so it is specific to the combination of the Oppia server it has been published with and the status it was published with.
Notes for Quiz and Feedback activities
There are several cases where you will be given the option to retain, but in most cases you should not retain the previous identifier:
changes in the learning content, where users do need to be aware that the information in the content is different to the previous version
replacing a question in a quiz or feedback activity, but retaining the same number of questions overall
changing the settings for a quiz, for example pass threshold, number of attempts allowed, password protection
changing the skip logic in a feedback activity
changing the scoring for a question
The comparison of previous vs updated activity content identifiers doesn’t take into account what these changes specifically are, only that there has been a change. In these cases retaining the previous identifier could result in:
Odd results when reviewing quiz responses, for example responses from an old question matching to the new question, both in the app (for users) and when exporting/downloading quiz responses from the dashboard (for analytics)
Different users being scored on different criteria/basis. For example, if user A passes a quiz based on a single attempt allowed and a threshold of 80%, then user B passes the quiz when the no attempts allowed are changed and the threshold reduced to 50%, but the quiz activity identifier has been retained, then users are not being compared like-for-like. This will affect the badge and certificate awarding as well as M&E analysis.