Clear Quiz Attempt

[jcox1]

Is there a way to delete a student's attempt on a quiz? I know you can allow multiple attempts, but I would like to clear the attempt completely from grades. Is that possible?

[kblack · Accepted solution]

Hi  @jcox1  - Basically, the answer is no...at least for now.  About all you can do is, as you said, allow multiple attempts or (in the case of a quiz that allows only one attempt) to give an individual student another attempt, as covered here: Once I publish a quiz, how can I give my students extra attempts? 

There is, however, a Feature Idea that is still open for voting that is currently on the Product Radar.  It does not hurt to register your vote here: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1479-delete-quiz-attempts , since there is still no firm date/timeframe indicated for this, though as you may be aware, the Canvas engineers are quite busy with Priority: Quizzes.Next‌ .

I hope this helps, Jo!

[kblack · Accepted solution]

Hi  @jcox1  - Basically, the answer is no...at least for now.  About all you can do is, as you said, allow multiple attempts or (in the case of a quiz that allows only one attempt) to give an individual student another attempt, as covered here: Once I publish a quiz, how can I give my students extra attempts? 

There is, however, a Feature Idea that is still open for voting that is currently on the Product Radar.  It does not hurt to register your vote here: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1479-delete-quiz-attempts , since there is still no firm date/timeframe indicated for this, though as you may be aware, the Canvas engineers are quite busy with Priority: Quizzes.Next‌ .

I hope this helps, Jo!

[tlutes5]

This is a terrible design feature that was not an issue with Blackboard. There are often cases where an instructor needs to clear an attempt to allow a retake. Power outages, system failures, etc. come to mind. 

[aroyal9]

Thomas,

Your comments are especially on point right now with so many students having to learn how to submit assignments and quizzes in Canvas virtually as opposed to being in a face-to-face environment where instructors can walk them through things and be there in person to assist with the technology.  For many years, I have had the ability to delete a student's assignment attempt in a particular online homework management system, so it really feels like Canvas is back in the stone age.  Accidents happen:  students hit the submit button instead of cancel, students forget to attach or attach the wrong documents, students have intermittent internet access issues that happen at the worst possible times.  Sometimes, we just need to be able to reset--not pile on extra attempts.

Gwinn

[tlutes5]

Gwinn,

Thank you for the reply. I knew I could not be the only one having this issue.

Regards,

Tom

[JoeBattistelli]

Especially when assignments are set up to average all attempts and are pulling questions from pools. Adding an extra attempt doesn't fix the fact that the student has a zero because they accidentally clicked submit before answering any of the questions.

[JoeBattistelli]

Hmmm... if I reopen the attempt it functionally removes the attempt from the student's grade calculation, though there are other issues. If the student had taken half the test they could have an advantage after having seen what they got wrong or possibly the correct answer depending on the settings. And they have the option to resubmit after having seen their score. 

[staplesn]

Or because there wifi went out, and they ran out of time on the quiz! O_O

[SLC00]

The question of allowing multiple attempts for an individual student (the same thing as clearing their 1st or unintentionall attempt is solved in the “solution” post with the link: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/Once-I-publish-a-quiz-how-can-I-give-my-students...

The Moderate Quiz features let’s instructors grant additional attempts and additional time (for ADA compliance).

[Rebelrona]

This does not solve the issue.

If I decide to give a student extra time after everyone has taken the quiz because they had technical issues.  I know how to do that via moderate the quiz. But what it does is count the second attempt - without merging the first attempt answers - so if a student comes back in to just finish up the quiz - they shouldn't have to take the whole quiz over again.  But what I see are two quizzes with two separate quizzes and thus two separate answers -that I have to go in and switch between the quizzes - using one quiz as the one that the grade is submitted to the grade book - it's a pain - If anything, it should either give the student an option to delete the first quiz and start over and/or complete the quiz questions on the original quiz without having a new one started.

[ckbeck]

Yes, I viewed as a student, and now I can't unpublish the quiz. One more reason to HATE Canvas. I miss Blackboard!

[Mr_Z]

Can you reset the student view and then unpublish?

[AlexUrquhart]

This statement is the single most ubiquitously applicable comment for Canvas' terrible lack of functionality in general.

[Rebelrona]

but. I have a situation where I gave my student a 2nd attempt for 5 minutes - when I went in to grade - I saw the second attempt didn't have his original answers - was able to navigate to the first attempt and grade it but the grade book is recognizing the grade - I even went into the 2nd attempt and fudged the score to match and then emailed the student to choose the earlier attempt to see the correct answers and my comments.  The gradebook still doesn't recognize the first attempt - this is messed up - I would have deleted the 1st attempt - and cut and pasted the two extra answers he gave in it on the first attempt (the latter I did do) but without getting rid of the 2nd  attempt which is registering it late now - I am stuck as to what to do and how to figure out his grade. Any advice on this???

[JoeBattistelli]

It's really frustrating! I think I would manually figure out what the student's grade should be and type it in the grade book rather than in speed grader: not sure if that would actually work or not though.

It's really a mess. In new quizzes (I don't know about classic quizzes) there is an option to re-open an attempt, but that only works if the attempt was not a timed quiz. If it was timed, re-opening isn't an option.

[llancaster3]

@kblack Thanks for connecting us to the existing "Delete quiz attempts" thread. 

It really is absolutely absurd that this issue has been posed since 2015 with no solution. 

It is unsolved rudimentary technical limitations, such as this one, that make us really appreciate the power of more intricate LMS' such as BlackBoard. 😤 

[ScottGraham1]

Canvas needs to learn from Blackboard.  They have a customer base.  Eventually, everyone will get tired of the fact they never listen to user comments. This post is so old, the "Priority" link is broken.  5 years and counting guys.

What do the engineers do?  This seems like an easy fix, at least on other platforms. Maybe 30 minutes of coding, a quick check for functionality, then go to production.

At some point the users will go elsewhere.

[Chris_Hofer]

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This post is so old, the "Priority" link is broken.

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@ScottGraham1 ...

The response from Ken Black (now retired from the Community) was back in 2018.  In the Summer of 2020, Instructure migrated from their previous platform (Jive) to the current platform we are using today (Khoros).  [By the way, you can read a bit of the history here...which was just posted: Community Engagement - Growing Together - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com).]  Unfortunately, when the migration happened, some links did not convert properly, and you happened to find one of those links.  I did look at the link in question, and it looks like there was a dedicated space to Quizzes.Next back in the old Jive platform.  I would direct your attention to the current Community space called New Quizzes Hub - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com).

What do the engineers do?  This seems like an easy fix, at least on other platforms. Maybe 30 minutes of coding, a quick check for functionality, then go to production.

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What you and I may consider to be an "easy fix" might not necessarily be the case.  I'm not a coder, so I don't know what all would be involved...but I do know that a lot of testing goes on before something is released into the "production" environment of Canvas.  You might want to read through the two links under the heading "Ideas and Themes" located here: Community - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com).

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@ScottGraham1 wrote:

Canvas needs to learn from Blackboard.  They have a customer base.  Eventually, everyone will get tired of the fact they never listen to user comments.

---

You and I may not see postings directly from Instructure employees here (but sometimes they do chime in), but I do know they read our feedback.  This site isn't the only way they gather feedback from us...the end users.  As outlined in What is the feature development process for Instru... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com), the "Discover" section details other ways that Instructure gathers feedback about what we want to see developed in Canvas.

I know this might not be the answers you were looking for, but I hope some of these resources will help to clarify things for you a bit more.

[khahn1]

This should not be marked solved! There is nothing solved here. I am having to manually make grade adjustments rather than letting the system run because of unintentional submissions/issues. Power outages, internet glitches, accidental submissions, errors in pages loading, all reasons why we should be able to exclude an attempt from counting in the grade book. You don't want to make it so we can delete an attempt, I get that, but at least make an option to exclude the attempt from counting towards the student's grade. 

[wjh621]

why on earth would they not want to "allow" a teacher to delete an attempt? It is my class and I am fully capable of making the decision to delete an attempt.

[aroyal9]

I think that the option to fully delete any student work from the Canvas environment is not available for reasons of security, liability, and academic integrity:  while most faculty would use extreme caution and exercise great care to ensure that this corrective measure is enacted properly, equitably, and only under certain conditions, it still leaves open the possibility that something could go wrong that could be tantamount to, lead to, or construed as academic misconduct.  For example, suppose an instructor accidentally deletes a submission for the wrong student--now that student is still responsible for resubmitting (and, of course, the resubmission might be altered, intentionally or not).  If I was the student whose results were deleted accidentally and my initial score was replaced, the new score might have an undeserved substantial impact on my overall course grade.  If my grade goes down with the re-take, I'm not going to be happy about that, and I'll feel that the resolution was unfair to me.  If my grade improves dramatically, I reap the benefit of the second chance that my classmates did not get, which is not fair to the rest of the class.  Now, suppose that an instructor's account is hacked and some or all student assessment attempts are permanently deleted--do all the students have to re-test or just the ones whose results were "conveniently" deleted?  If there's no time for a major whole-class do-over, does everyone now get a 0 or full credit for the deleted assessment scores?  If it's a minor quiz in a grade category with many other quizzes, then the loss of one quiz might not make much difference, but if it's the midterm exam that counts for 30% of the overall course grade, then whatever becomes of it will be a really big deal that has profound implications moving forward.  With great power comes even greater responsibility, so the ability to delete student attempts/submissions is a huge request, even if we would agree to be forthright and conscientious about safeguarding its use.

Perhaps the idea of a "don't count this attempt" option is a good compromise because that's what instructors really want (my guess is that we just don't want the impact on the grade and that we really don't care if it's still present, especially if an option to hide null attempts is available)--and it maintains the paper trail for all attempts/submissions for security and academic integrity purposes.  This also relieves Canvas of the liability for assessments that go missing--whether the deletion is accidental or intentional.

Gwinn

[kcoats]

Because I let my students "see" the correct answers AND the explanations - unintentional submissions result in a compromise of the entire test.  Totally unacceptable.  

[sigh]

It's actually bordering on if not criminal behavior for Canvas (Instructure) to mark this as solved.  Yes, money where our mouth is, but our instructors have NO CONTROL over which LMS they buy.  They buy from who is selling.

As a disabled person who teaches a combination of online and in-person classes (simultaneous for some classes) under very difficult circumstances, if I accidentally publish something and a student takes the quiz, my options are:

- delete the quiz completely

- leave that single student with access to the quiz and ban everyone else from accessing it

Sometimes I think that the Canvas folks should do a bit of soul-searching about whether they are truly helping the higher-education community with their product.  But, $$$ don't care, do they...

[zulaica]

Adding another situation in which it is necessary to delete the attempt when you have the student retake a whole course because they failed it. We need to be able to delete the previous attempts from a previous term. the course was reset and the student was deleted and then re-enrolled and we didn't expect the old scores to be there. 

[zulaica]

I see that, but that solution doesn't address the issues we have raised and the specific and valid needs we have. 

[PAdams3]

I is ridiculous that Canvas will not allow us to delete an attempt.  I have students, both EC and Regular Ed, who accidently open attempts, accidently submit, etc.

Canvas needs to get with the program, ESPECIALLY since so many students have IEP, a legally binding document, that students get to take quizzes as many times as necessary to get a 60.  

With the average mechanism, a student may have to take the quiz 8 or 9 times in order for the average to get that high.

And if we are in a MIXED and INCLUSIVE setting, we MUST be given the option to set ALL assignments for INDIVIDUAL NEEDS.

[JohnWilkins]

Nothing I can do will override the ungraded attempt mark, so I am not sure how the two students who did this will get their score. Has anything happened since October 2020?

[JohnWilkins · Accepted solution]

Hold the fort! I added .1 to the marks and it took that as the score.

[None12]

This should not be a problem to delete attempts, but it is. Very Frustrated. Had recreate another test. The amount of extra time it took.