Important: Quiz timing changes

Who Will Be Affected

LEARN received an update that changed the available options for timing in Quizzes (only affects quizzes with time limits) for those open/submitted between 9:00 PM EDT on July 27, 2023 and 1:00 PM EDT on July 28, 2023. The changes with the most significant impact are noted here. Note, this change will be fully implemented in August. Exact date/time to be confirmed.

This issue WILL NOT affect you and will not impact your students if:

• all of your timed quizzes for this term (Spring 2023) have an End Date before 9:00 PM EDT on July 27 (i.e., are closed).

• your quizzes do not have a time limit.

This issue WILL have affected any student who started or submitted the quiz between 9:00 PM EDT on July 27 and 1:00 PM EDT on July 28 where: 

• any timed quizzes that were open as of 9:00 PM EDT on Thursday, July 27 or later, and the Grace Period was greater than zero (0).

  • students who took the quiz during the impacted period would not receive the same grace period as their classmates who took the quiz before or after the impacted period.

  • at the end of the time limit, the quiz would have automatically submitted (previously students still had to click the "Submit" button even if they could not make changes to answers).  

• any timed quizzes that were open as of 9:00 PM EDT on Thursday, July 27 or later and modified the Grace Period in Special Access for any students.

  • if the grace period was used for accommodations, students would have lost that time and would not have received appropriate accommodations.

What action do you need to take

• Review quizzes that were open as of 9:00 pm on July 27 to see if there were any quizzes started or submitted between 9:00 PM EDT on July 27 and 1:00 PM EDT on July 28.

• Check if any submissions were for students who had accommodations via Special Access settings or the Accommodations tool.

• If the quiz was submitted BEFORE the time limit expired, there should be no issue.

• If the quiz time limit expired and the quiz was auto-submitted, it is worth investigating further to determine if there was a negative impact to the student, especially if they had accommodations via Special Access.
  
  

How to determine if your students were impacted by the quiz timing change

Students affected would have completed their quiz between 9:00pm EDT on July 27 and 1:00pm EDT on July 28. To identify students with an alternative grace period in a Quiz, determine which quizzes were open during the above time frame and you can either export a report or visually scan for submissions depending on the number of students and quizzes affected.

1. To visually scan the submissions, go to the Quizzes page, click the down arrow to the right of the quiz title and choose Grade from the list of options available. Once the page reloads, visually scan for submissions during the time frame.

2. To export a report of submissions during the time frame, click on Reports in your course navbar to go to the reports page.

Open

3. On the reports page, click on the Select a Report option and choose Quizzes from the list of options. Enter a description for the report and choose the specific quiz from the list of quizzes available and click Submit Report.

Open

4. Filter the excel report to identify students who completed their quiz during the time frame in question.

5. Next, you will need to determine if any students who completed their quiz during the time frame were provided with an alternative Grace Period. To see this, go to the quiz and click the Edit option from the list of options available from the down arrow to the right of the quiz title.

5. On the quiz edit page, click on the arrow to expand the Availability Dates & Conditions arrow then click on the Manage Special Access link.

6. Once in Special Access, look for the grace period icon to determine if any of your students were provided an alternative grace period.

Grace Period Removed

If you used the “Enforced Time Limit” setting in your Quiz previously, the Grace Period field in the new timing settings has been completely removed. This means that any Grace Period of 1 min or more (extra time) has been eliminated and when the time limit for the quiz expires, students will not have any extra time to submit (i.e. the “grace period”).

If you have previously used Grace Period as a key part of your Quiz timing setup, you will need to integrate this into your overall time given to students (i.e., add the Grace Period to the overall time limit. For example, a 30 min quiz with a 5 min grace period should be edited to be a 35 min time limit to incorporate the Grace Period if desired).

How to change the Time Limit (adjusting for previously used Grade Period)

Special Access

If you used Special Access for accommodations and adjusted the Grace Period for a student in Special Access (e.g., to allow for breaks in addition to extra time), that needs to be checked and adjusted because any time allocated in the Grace Period will be removed the student will have less time. See more about Special Access in LEARN.

Changes to Exceeded Time Limit options and Auto-Submit 

Previously, users had two different primary options for timing (Recommended or Enforced) and then sub-options under Enforced timing for what should happen when exceeding the limit.

This has been simplified to a single option for timing with options for what should happen when the Time Limit is exceeded. The wording and functionality changes are laid out below.

Auto-submit has arrived. LEARN will now actually auto-submit quizzes with a time limit when time expires instead of requiring students to click the Submit button. Please inform your students of this change of behaviour.

Overview of timing changes