Canvas giving students 5 extra minutes with a slow browser

[kxs456]

I have been using canvas for years at my university and I have never had this issue.  For all my Canvas quizzes, I put a time limit.  A student emailed me about a final they were taking saying that instead of getting a countdown timer, they got a message in red that said their browser was slow and it was removing the timer and giving them 5 extra minutes.  Like I said, I have been using Canvas for years, and this has never happened.  I reached out to a bunch of different people including Canvas support.  So I was figuring that student was making it up.  But then I was able to recreate it!  I had a few tabs open in Chrome and I got the message where the timer was that said in red "Your browser connectivity may be slow or unstable.  In spite of your browser's timer being disconnected, your answers will be recorded for an additional 5 minutes beyond the original time limit on this attempt."

Giving five minutes to students without my consent or knowledge makes me feel uncomfortable.  I also don't like that I don't know which students receive the message and additional time.  If a student is given additional time, shouldn't the instructor be informed?  I don't like it.  I also don't like no one knowing anything about it.  This sort of thing seems like something we should know.  But I don't know what can be done.  Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I guess the most helpful thing is acknowledging that it isn't necessarily a bogus thing students are saying.  I was able to observe it in a preview for a quiz.

[Kennybenny]

Hi i also had this problem and wanted to know if this error affected the answers? As in, were the answers saved and could you view all of them?

[kxs456]

For the quiz the student completed, it looked like they had taken the the whole time to complete it.  So it said they took the quiz for 60 minutes,  and had answers for all the questions they said they completed.  So as far as I could tell, normal Canvas quiz where students took the whole time to take it.  There was no indication that they were given 5 more minutes.

[TianaiZhang]

Hi, I just had this problem when I taking the quiz. I wanted to know did this mistake affect your grades in the end? Thanks.

[Chris_Hofer]

Good afternoon, @kxs456 …

I’ve never heard of/seen an error message like this before.  Nor do I recall any of our faculty reporting to my team of a message like this.  Do you know if this error message was while taking a Classic Quiz or taking a New Quiz?  I tried looking at some of the written Guides here in the Community to see if I could find anything about that message you are seeing, but I didn’t see anything.  I looked at the following Guides:

• What options can I set in a quiz? (Instructor)
• How do I take a quiz? (Student)

The second link does have a section on some Quiz warning notifications…but nothing specific about the one you are asking about.  I might suggest that you use the “share your feedback” link at the very bottom of that Guide.  This will allow you to fill out a short form that will get sent to the Canvas documentation team.  They will review your comments, and if necessary, they will update the information in that Guide so that it is more clear for you and everyone else.

[kxs456]

I think it is a Classic Quiz, because I have heard of some of the new features to the New Quizzes and they are not available to us.

I just submitted the documentation to the Canvas team.

[cstrikwerda · Accepted solution]

Hello @kxs456 thanks for posting in the Community.

I understand we are investigating the message we see when taking a quiz "Your browser connectivity may be slow or unstable. In spite of your browser’s timer being disconnected, your answers will be recorded for an additional 5 minutes beyond the original time limit on this attempt"

I was looking into that message and we have been seen this before and I know the wording is a little confusing.

When the user network is unstable, Canvas will extend the time period for saving the answer entered BEFORE the timer runs out. This means that the answer will be saved before the timer runs out so that the students answers will be retained, and not submitted blank due to an unstable internet connection. So this error we are seeing is actually, in fact, extending the time for them to be able to take the quiz. 

I was looking in our guides and I was not seeing this error mentioned, but that is something that would show for users that are having internet network connection issues when taking a quiz.

This used to be mentioned in our guide regarding quiz options, and as others have stated, this does need to be clarified. 
https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/What-options-can-I-set-in-a-quiz/ta-p/683#U683

I would suggest using the Share Feedback button at the bottom of that guide in order to ask about somehow clarifying that guide regarding this.

Hope this helps!

[kxs456]

So please correct me if I am wrong: I am going to make up an example: a canvas quiz that has a 30 minute time limit.  If a student is taking the quiz on a good internet connection uses all the time and after 30 minutes, their quiz ends and the answers are submitted.  For a student with a bad internet connection (specifically getting this message) after 30 minutes, the quiz ends, but it will wait 5 minutes to submit the answers.  So both students have the same amount of time to take the quiz, the recording of grades could have some lag due to connection instability.  Is that correct?

[gjarrett]

I don't know why this is marked as "solved." 

My students are having this issue today, January 21, 2022, with a Classic quiz that has a 40-minute time limit. When I tried the quiz in student view, I received the same message. My system and internet connection are just fine, and stats.instructure.com shows all systems green, so my guess is that something else is breaking the JS code in the quiz.

Please figure out what is wrong and fix it!

[Chris_Hofer]

@gjarrett …

Have you tried reaching out to Canvas Support?  The Support team usually isn’t logged on to the Community (as far as I know), because they are busy helping respond to tickets.  You might want to reach out to them … as they might have some other ideas for you.

[gjarrett]

Thank you for the suggestion. I believe I have to go through my campus Canvas admin, but I will do that.

[SusanNiemeyer]

I've gotten this message, too, in the past couple of days while previewing a quiz. Very strange.

[milesl]

@cstrikwerda Thank you for chiming in here, but I'm finding your reply a bit confusing, particularly this paragraph, which seems to contradict itself:

"When the user network is unstable, Canvas will extend the time period for saving the answer entered BEFORE the timer runs out. This means that the answer will be saved before the timer runs out so that the students answers will be retained, and not submitted blank due to an unstable internet connection. So this error we are seeing is actually, in fact, extending the time for them to be able to take the quiz."

Did you intend for your last sentence to be "So this error we are seeing is actually not, in fact, extending the time for them to be able to take the quiz" ?

[cstrikwerda]

@milesl No,  I did not intend for my last sentence to be different from what it appears.

After further testing this does seem to be extending quiz times to users with connectivity issues.

[ThomasHancock]

I agree this problem is not Solved.

I have had the exact same thing happen on Jan 26th it is not solved. I saw the same error on my completely stable platform on a 5 question practice quiz with no images (low demand) as well as a real 50 question exam. Perhaps a third of my students saw this error message and multiple trustworthy students report that questions they answered were not saved. Completely frustrating. The log shows the extra time is inconsistently added, but few responses were saved during those times. Also, there is no record in the log of whether this error occurred or not. 

Using a Classic Quiz by the way. I will switch to new quizzes before my next exam just out of the hope that this does not happen there, but that is not an acceptable alternative as my quiz banks have all been converted for easier Classic Quiz use, and it is just not an acceptable thing to not have a solution for regardless. 

Not to mention they shouldn't be given 5 extra minutes.