mycourselink Quizzes and Surveys

The synchronous-timed quiz option enables instructors to set up a quiz where all learners begin and end the quiz at the same time. This new feature is available under the Timing & Display section in the quiz editing tool.

Create or editing an existing quiz:

1. Expand the Availability Dates & Conditions box on the right
2. Set start date and time. This determines when the students should all start writing their attempts.
3. Do Not set an end date or time - leave these boxes unset
4. Expand the Timing & Display area.
5. Check the Set time limit box
6. Enter a value for the Time Limit
7. Click Timer Settings.
8. In the Timing dialog, under Quiz Start, select Synchronous: Timer starts on the start date.
9. Leave the When The Time Limit Expires setting on Automatically submit the quiz attempt
10. Click OK.

Figure: Set up a synchronous quiz.

Note: If no start date and time is set for the synchronous quiz, the No Start date set alert appears under the selected option, and you cannot save the quiz. The Due Date option is disabled for synchronous quizzes. The End Date option should be left blank.

A synchronous quiz starts at the Start Date and ends when the time limit has lapsed, regardless of any action taken by the learner. For example, if a learner clicks Start Quiz! 15 minutes after the start date on a 1-hour quiz, they will only have 45 minutes to complete it. To indicate when a quiz becomes available, learners have a countdown timer on the Quiz Information and Start Quiz pages. The Start Quiz! button becomes available when the start date and time is reached.

Figure: A countdown timer on the Start Quiz page.

An asynchronous quiz can be used when instructors want the availability period of a quiz to be a day, a week, or even longer allowing students to choose when within the availability window they can start their attempt. Time limits are usually still enforced during these larger availability windows (e.g., 60 minutes) meaning that once an attempt has begun, the student must complete the quiz within that attempt.

Create or editing an existing quiz:

1. Expand the Availability Dates and Conditions box on the right
2. Set the Start Date and time to be when the availability window to write opens
3. Set the End date and time to be when the availability window to write closes
4. Expand the Timing and Display box on the right
5. Check the Set time limit box
6. Enter a value for the Time Limit
7. Click Timer Settings and double check that the Quiz Start setting is on the default value of Asynchronous: Timer starts when the learner launches the quiz and click OK

How late can students start writing an attempt on an asynchronous quiz?

We would recommend that students look at the end time and their time limit and make sure that they plan to start their attempt so that their time limit will run out before the end time. For example if a quiz ends at 11:59PM and a student has a 1 hour time limit, they should start their attempt no later than 10:59PM in order to ensure they get that full hour. For the same quiz if a student was allowed an accommodation giving them 2 hours, they should start no later than 9:59PM.

Extra time accommodations for students can be set on the classlist, which will automatically adjust quiz time limits for all quizzes in a course site.

To set extra time for quizzes through the classlist:

1. Click Classlist on the bar at the top of your course site
2. Click the arrow beside the student’s name then click Edit Accommodations
3. Check the Modify Time Limit box
4. Select the first radio option for Multiplier of original quiz time
5. Enter their multiplier beside times. Some common multipliers are:
   • 1.5 times for students who recieve an extra 30 minutes per hour.
   • 1.34 times for students who recieve an extra 20 minutes per hour.
   • 1.25 times for students who recieve an extra 15 minutes per hour.
6. Click Save

Notes:

• An accommodation icon will appear next to the student’s name.
• Repeat these steps for each student with an accommodation.
• These settings can be adjusted anytime throughout the term by repeating the steps above. The changes would be applied to all future quizzes.
• Extra time set up on the classlist applies to asynchronous and synchronous quizzes.
• Extra time accommodations can still be set up through the Manage Special Access option on each quiz if the classlist isn’t used.

Instructors would use this option to allow students to write at a different time or on a different day.

This option may also be used to set up extra time for a specific student(s) on a specific quiz(zes). To allow extra time for a student on all quizzes within a course at once, use the Set Extra Time Accommodations on all Quizzes in a Course method noted in the section above.

1. Click Quizzes on the bar at the top of your course site
2. Click the arrow beside the quiz name then Edit Quiz
3. Expand Availability Dates & Restrictions on the right
4. Click Manage Special Access
5. Click Add Users to Special Access
6. Find the student on the list and check the box beside their name
7. Scroll back up to the top and change their Start Date and End Date to when you would like to allow the selected student to write
   • if this is a synchronous quiz, you should leave the End Date unset
   • if this is an asynchronous quiz, ensure that the window between the start and end times is at least as long as the time that they are allowed to write through their Time Limit setting
8. Click Save
9. Click Save and Close

To reopen a submitted quiz attempt for a student and allow them to continue from where they left off in the attempt:

• Click to Quizzes
• Click the arrow beside the quiz name then Grade
• Check the box beside Attempt 1 that appears below the student's name
• Click Reopen
• If it is past the quiz End Date then it will ask you to set a new End Date for the student. (You can make this popup window larger by clicking and dragging the bottom-right corner of it. This will make it easier to set the date/time.)
• If any time remained on the student's attempt then it will automatically give them that but you can add more through the Extra Time box, if needed.
• Click Reopen Attempt

The student will then be able to continue their attempt through the regular quiz start page. In their view, they would:

• Click to Quizzes
• Click on the quiz name
• Click Continue Quiz at the bottom of the page

If you would like to review a student's attempt before deciding to reopen it:

• Click to Quizzes
• Click the arrow beside the quiz name then Grade
• Click the Attempt 1 link that appears below the student's name
• Click Event Log to view a list of timestamps for each action the student made during their attempt or scroll down to see their answered questions.

Some other settings on the quiz may impact how reopened quizzes work:

• End Date: The end date set for the student must allow for enough time to finish their reopened attempt before it passes. You will usually be prompted to change this when reopening the quiz but if not or you need to adjust this it can be done through special access as explained in the Adjusting Special Access On a Single Quiz for Specific Student(s) section above.
• Synchronous or Asynchronous Timing: For both of these options a reopened attempt will behave as an asynchronous quiz does. In that their time will start counting down from when they go in and choose to continue their attempt.
• Question Pools and Question Randomization: A reopened attempt will be unchanged from when the student first wrote it. Question pools will not generate different questions and shuffled questions will still be in the same order.
• Prevent going back to previous pages: If this is enabled then the student will continue from the page that they ended the attempt on. For example if they only accessed 2 of 5 pages in a quiz before it was submitted, they will be on page 2 when the quiz is reopened. From there they will only be able to go to pages 3, 4, then 5.
• Published Quiz Results: Keep in mind that if the quiz results are published when you reopen their attempt then the student will be able to see that information before they continue their attempt. This could mean they would only see their overall score based on the questions they already answered or they may even see the correct answers for all questions, if that is what has been released.
• On Previously Answered Questions: Students will be able to change their answers to previously answered questions (as long as the questions aren't on pages they can't go back to). Their new answers are the only ones that will appear with the attempt and are the versions that will be graded. There will be no way to determine what the original answers were after they are changed.