Giving students extra time

[toms]

I have had nothing but trouble getting this to work. It really shouldn't be this hard.

1. I'm using the New Quiz module. 
2. I set both the student's "due" time and "available until" time to accommodate their extra time (incidentally, why is there a separate "due" and "available until" settings at all? Why aren't they connected, such that if one is later than the other, it overrides the other??).
3. I gave the student a time multiplier (2x) in the moderate section. It then indicated "Time: multiplied by 2" in the "accomodations" column
4. the student informed me that it didn't indicate they had more time on their end.
5. I then gave the student extra time in the moderate section. It then said: "Time: multiplied by 2; +2 hr 15 min"
6. The student was kicked out of the exam by the system at the same time as everyone else.  So none of these adjustments worked at all.

Again, why is this so hard to get working??

[Ron_Bowman · Accepted solution]

@toms @tbassuncw -

I agree that everything seems more complicated than need be.  I have not had problems with moderating quizzes - however, I only use Classic Quizzes and plan to do so until there is a compelling reason for me to use New Quizzes - fortunately all of my quiz questions are easily handled in Classic Quizzes.

My process (this may have to be different for New quizzes - I just don't know) is the following:

1) I have a quiz with a 30 minute time limit, so I set the available time and then put a due date/time at 40 minutes later (padding for when  a student can start).  I also use the due date/time as the until time - this setting is applied to everyone

2) I create another group for those students allowed extra time - the available date/time is the same as for everyone else, the due date/time and until date/time will then be 55 minutes later (for 1.5X students) and 70 minutes later for 2X students.  I then go into moderate for the quiz and moderate the quiz for those allowed extra time.

My guess is that the above is what you are doing as well, and if so, then there is definitely an issue.  

On a side note there is an LTI extension by UCF that I tried to get my admins to put into our instance of Canvas, but to no avail. https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Accessibility/UCF-Quiz-Extensions-LTI-now-Open-Source/m-p/162560#...

This extension allows you to set the moderate times for a student at the beginning of the class and then it is applied to all future quizzes automatically.  According to the page, it does not apply to New Quizzes, but they may have updated it.  Just thought I would throw that out there

[Ron_Bowman]

@toms 

1) the reason for the due time and until time is so that assignments turned in by the due time receive full credit and those turned in by the until time will be marked late an can be penalized.  Another reason is that without the until time, I believe students can work on timed quizzes for the quiz duration if their time goes beyond the due date and time.  So using the until time set as the due time is a hard cutoff.

2) having the until time automatically change to the due time if the due time is changed so that it is after the until time would be a nice feature (but then again may not be desired by all)

3) it sounds like you did everything correctly - although there may have been something that was done wrong.  What I would have done is setup the quiz for the entire class with the from date/time and the unmoderated due date/time and made the until time the same as the due time.  I then would add another group of students to the exam to handle the ones with extra time.  Then set the start time as the regular student start time and the due/until date/time to what they would have with their time accomodation.  That way there is no need to use the moderate feature.  it sounds like this is what you did, but I could be wrong.  

It almost sounds like the time for the moderated students used the same times as the regular students and they were therefore kicked out at the end of the regular time. 

Did I miss something?  I have never had issues with doing the above in classic quizzes (which I use for several reasons) instead of new quizzes.

[toms]

I can see how having two dates (one for when something is supposed to be turned in, and another a hard cutoff) might be useful, but the terminology wasn't well thought out. The distinction in plain English between "due" and "until" is not at all obvious. A few additional words of clarification right there should be added (we shouldn't have to guess what is meant by them).

Regarding the "until" time changing to the "due" time by default (and letting people change the "until" time to a later date if they want to allow late entries): why would anyone ever want to have the "until" time (which you say is a hard cutoff) be before the "due" time?  This makes no sense, but maybe I'm missing something.

Regarding what I did: yes I did all that, and it still told the student they didn't have extra time.  So there is apparently a bug in the system.

Also: Making a separate group with different "until" times doesn't do anything about allowing extra time.  That is set separately. If you set a time limit on the exam, that should be adjustable directly in the moderate section DURING an exam.  It doesn't work.

[toms]

Any quiz or test module needs to be able to do the following:

1) All students have a particular predefined window during which they can take the quiz.

2) All students' windows start at the same date and time (unless they have been given express permission to take it later).

3) Most students windows extend for a particular length (call it "1X"). However, some students have gotten administrative permission (because of a disability or other issue) to have their window be longer by some predefined proportion (e.g., 1.5X).

4) No one is allowed to take the exam twice, or at any other time than their particular quiz 'window'.

How exactly do I set "available", "until", and "due" settings to accomplish this?  

I expressly set up my quiz to start at the same time, but it was impossible to moderate any students' test to allow them more time. Again, why this is so hard to accomplish is particularly frustrating.  Is the issue that the system doesn't allow changes once the quiz is published and/or is being taken by a student? If so, why would that be??

[Darrell2]

Students should request extended time only if their disability causes them to work more slowly than other students. If a student is usually able to complete school tests in the allotted time, or if the student's inability to complete tests is not related to a disability, then extended time should not be requested

[nwilson7]

@toms I was doing a bunch of testing on this last week and everything did work.  As @Ron_Bowman stated, the "due" and "until" times serve very different purposes.  Due, is when students need to have it done, and Until is the last opportunity they have to work on it, the "hard cutoff" (which may involve a penalty).

In new quizzes and classic quizzes all of this MUST be done before a student starts the exam.  There is some misleading information in the community that you can change it once a student has started but this will not work.  So your attempts to change it once the student was in, would not have worked.  I believe this is because letting an instructor change the time once a student was in, could also work against them (like changing an extension of 90 min to 60).  That is just a guess though.

For the setup, New Quizzes looks at the until time, the moderate/accommodations, and when the student beings the quiz and does all the math.  For example, if I have given students 90 min to take an exam and set the until time for 3pm and a student starts taking it at 2pm, the clock will only show (and the quiz will only allow) 60 min for the exam.  The until time completely overrides the allowed quiz time both for all students and any accommodated ones.  It sounds like you did account for that in your setup but just including it here.

As a side note, you can't make an Until time before the Due date, Canvas will bark at you.

If you feel like you did all of this and made the changes before the student(s) started, I would reach out to either your school's Canvas admin or Canvas support and have them take a look.  From all the testing I have been doing, it should have worked.

Not sure any of that helped but thought I would share.

-Nick

[tbassuncw]

@toms, I feel your pain. These explanations prove that the system is complicated beyond common sense. We're able to set a time limit--in the case of my exams, 100 minutes. We can then use Assign To as a tool to adjust the time of availability for students who need accommodation for more time--but that doesn't extend the time. Why not?

The only way I can see to extend the time is to do it while the exam is in progress. (@nwilson7: This has worked for me.) There must be some way to give a student the time accommodation in the presets: X student gets Y minutes. This should override the setting for Everyone Else.

I have a student whose accommodation allows 2x time, but he didn't get it--even though I was careful (so I thought) to set everything up in advance. He watched the clock, then bailed out of the exam to e-mail me with requests for more time (and this cut into his time even more).

Yes, I might well have overlooked some setting that would have prevented this. But I was careful, and I worked days in advance to get it right. The settings are ridiculously complicated--mainly because they're unclear. Meanwhile, Canvas has plenty of real estate on the right side of the settings screen to add clear, helpful settings.

This problem will only get more complicated as we move forward, because we're getting so many accommodation letters.   

[Ron_Bowman · Accepted solution]

@toms @tbassuncw -

I agree that everything seems more complicated than need be.  I have not had problems with moderating quizzes - however, I only use Classic Quizzes and plan to do so until there is a compelling reason for me to use New Quizzes - fortunately all of my quiz questions are easily handled in Classic Quizzes.

My process (this may have to be different for New quizzes - I just don't know) is the following:

1) I have a quiz with a 30 minute time limit, so I set the available time and then put a due date/time at 40 minutes later (padding for when  a student can start).  I also use the due date/time as the until time - this setting is applied to everyone

2) I create another group for those students allowed extra time - the available date/time is the same as for everyone else, the due date/time and until date/time will then be 55 minutes later (for 1.5X students) and 70 minutes later for 2X students.  I then go into moderate for the quiz and moderate the quiz for those allowed extra time.

My guess is that the above is what you are doing as well, and if so, then there is definitely an issue.  

On a side note there is an LTI extension by UCF that I tried to get my admins to put into our instance of Canvas, but to no avail. https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Accessibility/UCF-Quiz-Extensions-LTI-now-Open-Source/m-p/162560#...

This extension allows you to set the moderate times for a student at the beginning of the class and then it is applied to all future quizzes automatically.  According to the page, it does not apply to New Quizzes, but they may have updated it.  Just thought I would throw that out there

[cassidy_reed · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Thank you for contacting reaching out with this concern. While the "Available from " and "Until" will lock quiz access to specific date/times you would need to go under "Moderate" in order to properly give students extra attempts, extra time, or open a quiz that is passed the original availability dates. I will include links for how this can be done through the New Quiz type and the Classic Quiz.

I hope that clarifies things a little more.

Thank you and have a great day!

Cassidy R.
L1 Canvas Support
support@instructure.com

[ValorieHammond]

I've been trying all night to figure out how to ask for extra time pls somebody help me

[Chris_Hofer]

@ValorieHammond ...

If you need extra time for completing an assignment or quiz/test/exam in your course, you'll need to contact your instructor.  You've posted your question in the global Canvas Community website, and we do not have access to your Canvas environment or any of your courses.  You can contact your instructor by following the steps in How do I get help with Canvas as a student?.  Good luck!