Standard for Extending Time on Quizzes

[christopher_phi]

There are currently a couple of different ways to add extra time for an accommodation on quizzes, I'm hoping to share some of the conversations in the community on the topic, how time extensions are done in classic, new quizzes and some 3rd party assessments and share some ideas on how that might be standardized. 

For context, we have 400+ students each semester who require this accommodation. When you consider all of the courses that those students take and all of the quizzes in those course - that is a lot of quizzes per student. We used to put the responsibility for extending time on instructors, but that wasn't working great so now all accommodations are handled centrally. 

Classic Quizzes
Per the instructions at Once I publish a timed quiz, how can I give my students extra time?, you basically publish an individual quiz and then moderate the quiz to add the time extension for any students for that specific quiz. Repeat for all quizzes in a course. At USU, we use the excellent quiz extensions tool created by UCF that saves us a lot of time by providing the ability to automatically apply a time extensions across all existing quizzes in a given semester. In addition, we have a data wizard who has created an automated report of any new classic quizzes added for courses where an accommodation is needed that we review daily to know when we need to go back into the quiz extension tool to add new quizzes. 

New Quizzes
New Quizzes has significantly improved the process as explained in the How do I add accommodations for a student in New Quizzes? instruction. You go through a similar process to an accommodation for a student, but with a significant improvement in that the accommodation you set automatically applies to all current and future quizzes. This is a huge time saver in helping to ensure all students have their required accommodation. The biggest challenge with this solution was determining which courses are using new quizzes, so a tool has been developed that provides a daily report of all new courses using new quizzes so we can know where we need to go in and add the accommodation. 

3rd Party Tools
We have at least 2 alternative assessment LTI tools that we offer to instructors that allow them to create timed quizzes. Both of these tools comes with a way to provide time extensions for students one quiz at a time and there have been challenges in identifying which courses those tools are used in. For one of the tools we developed a bespoke solution where we upload a CSV file of students who need accommodations in which courses and they automatically apply the extension. We are still working on a solution with the other vendor. 

A Unified Solution Available to LTI tools through the API
This next part is a feature request and I plan to submit it as such eventually - but would love to start with a discussion on what a single tool/workflow might look like that could be used to manage time extensions for Canvas quizzes and 3rd party solutions. In theory - it seems like you might be able to indicate that a student (or student in a course) needs a time extension and have that information be available to be used to used in all of their assessments. 

Here are the requirements I am thinking of and would love feedback from anyone else: 

1. At a course level, add the ability for teachers or admins to add a time extension designation for a student - similar to the accommodation functionality that currently exists in New Quizzes. 
2. That time extension would then be used by built in Canvas assessments AND with the proper permissions could also be exposed to LTI assessment tools. 
3. Confidentiality of that indicator would be of the upmost importance - but the potential value to something like this could be tremendous. 

There are some additional conversations in the community that I'll share below that provide some additional context: 

1. Extend time for student across all quizzes?
   Question raised pre-new quizzes with discussion on how it is currently available. 
2. Extended time for multiple student and multiple quizzes (don't refer me to New Quizzes)
   Discussion of the issue in classic quizzes, this quote is a good summary of the challenge of extending time in classic quizzes and 3rd party tools, "Here I go again with thousands of clicks to extend time for each quiz" 😃 
3. Accomodation for Quizzes with time limit
   Good discussion in comments on why this is important. 
4. extend quiz times per student, not just per quiz.
   Regarding one quiz at a time process, "this can prove tedious if you know that one student (or many for that matter), are going to need more time in ALL a course's quizzes than other students"
5.  [New Quizzes] Proportionate Time Adjustment Accommodations
   Some discussion on the implementation of the time adjustments. 
6. More Feature Requests: 
1. PLEASE extend quiz times per student, not just per quiz.
2. Adding Extra Time for All Quizzes
3. Is there a way to extend the time for a student on all quizzes and exams without having to moderate ...
4. Extra time for quizzes
5. New Quizzes: Quiz Availability & Extended Time
   Includes thoughts on potential conflict between extra time and quiz availability. 
6. Allow all timed quizzes to be extended for a student with one setting

Are there any assessment tool providers who would take advantage of this if it were available? 

[kbutts]

Here at FSU our development team has written a specialized tool for Classic Quizzes to assist in Exam Accommodations.  Only a few members of our LMS's Administrative Team have access to this tool, and input values upon request by instructors.  This is due to the power of the tool, the required information is not the most user-friendly, and if something is input wrong it can be a bugbear to restore/correct.

From our tool's interface we enter the Canvas Course ID (URL Course Number), the percentage value for all time extensions for within the course (50%, 100%, or anything other value we manually enter), then the last field is for Student Canvas ID's (URL Number from Canvas Account).  This last value being the only faculty/staff would not have access to without administrative access to the LMS.

The power of this tool allow us to grant accommodations to multiple students for every quiz/exam in a single course at once.  But due to the required information and potential risk of user error, we're unable to open it to faculty/staff and will use it only upon request.

I've included a screenshot of our user interface of the tool:

[christopher_phi]

Thank you so much @kbutts - I really appreciate this post and explaining your tool, it sounds similar to the excellent UCF Quiz Extensions tool. That is super helpful to understand that you are also using other tools to support this need in Canvas. 

Hopefully once the New Quizzes API is released we will be able to build similar to support this work as well. Do you deal with any other time-based assessment tools in Canvas (besides Classic Quizzes or New Quizzes) that also need quiz extensions? 

[kbutts]

For any other time-based submissions, we rely on the baked in Assign to option any assignment within Canvas.  Faculty/Staff will adjust that window for specific individuals to have a custom window of availability.  But nothing out of the ordinary in our normal use.

There are some departments on campus that opt to use their own third-party integrations, but our Canvas Support Team has little input, and even less access, to those tools.  These would be your Pearsons, McGraw Hills, Nursing's own setup, and even some (custom I think) content by the Math/Science departments.

[ElmiraFrancis-A]

Thank you very much!

I am a disabled veteran, my apologies I am just seeing this for the first time. I received my letter for accommodations had to be dropped 1 until May behind thoracic surgery but healing well. it is the PTSD and loss of left frontal lube and other factors I am still being treated for, really thank you again. 

LeeAnn

[christopher_phi]

@TamasBalogh  Hello Tamas - I understand that you are doing some work on a couple of features that might be related to this: 

• API enhancements enable administrators and instructors to customize test-taking accommodations in New Quizzes, adapting to varying levels of student needs and enhancing testing experiences.
• Instructors will be able to provide just-in-time accommodations of additional time for students, ensuring equitable access in the quizzing process.

I don't know the scope of your efforts, but would love to learn more - we have done a lot of exploration in this area and would be happy to share some of our use cases if that would be helpful.  

Thanks so much!