How can I download a list of all students' quiz durations (or start times)?

[dave3]

I need a list of how long each student takes to complete a quiz. Students start at different times, so submission times (which are easily downloaded) are not sufficient.

My class is large, so opening each student's quiz log, typing the start time into a spreadsheet, and computing the difference between start time and submission time is not a viable solution.

How can I obtain a list of all students' individual quiz durations (or start times)? 

Thanks in advance,

Dave

[Gabriel33]

Are you familiar with the Canvas API? The start time is a property of the quiz submissions there: https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/quiz_submissions.html

Alternatively, if you prefer to deal with HTML, if you go to the Moderate Quiz page and choose to "inspect" any student's line in the browser, there is a "data-started-at" property for each student, which can more easily be captured. A tampermonkey script can also probably make that visible to the user.

[Gabriel33]

I asked chatgpt to create this script, and it works for me. Edit the @match part to match your university's url.

// ==UserScript==
// @Name         Append Data Columns for data-started-at and data-end-at
// @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version      0.2
// @description  Appends new columns with "data-started-at" and "data-end-at" values for each row, and adds header cells for them.
// @author       Your Name
// @match        https://canvas.[insert university].edu/courses/*/quizzes/*/moderate
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'use strict';

    // Adds header cells to tables that contain rows with our data attributes.
    function addHeaderColumns() {
        const tables = document.querySelectorAll('table');
        tables.forEach(table => {
            // Try to get the header row from <thead>
            let headerRow = table.querySelector('thead tr');
            // If no <thead>, try the first row of the table.
            if (!headerRow) {
                headerRow = table.querySelector('tr');
                if (!headerRow) return; // skip if no row found
            }
            // Avoid duplicate headers by checking for a custom class
            if (!headerRow.querySelector('.tm-started-at-header')) {
                const thStarted = document.createElement('th');
                thStarted.textContent = 'Started At';
                thStarted.classList.add('tm-started-at-header');
                headerRow.appendChild(thStarted);
            }
            if (!headerRow.querySelector('.tm-end-at-header')) {
                const thEnded = document.createElement('th');
                thEnded.textContent = 'End At';
                thEnded.classList.add('tm-end-at-header');
                headerRow.appendChild(thEnded);
            }
        });
    }

    // Appends new cells with data attribute values to each table row.
    function appendDataColumns() {
        // Select rows that have either attribute (or both)
        const rows = document.querySelectorAll('tr[data-started-at], tr[data-end-at]');
        rows.forEach(row => {
            // For data-started-at
            const startedAtValue = row.getAttribute('data-started-at') || '';
            const newCellStarted = document.createElement('td');
            newCellStarted.textContent = startedAtValue;
            row.appendChild(newCellStarted);

            // For data-end-at
            const endAtValue = row.getAttribute('data-end-at') || '';
            const newCellEnded = document.createElement('td');
            newCellEnded.textContent = endAtValue;
            row.appendChild(newCellEnded);
        });
    }

    // Process all tables: add headers and append cells.
    function processTables() {
        addHeaderColumns();
        appendDataColumns();
    }

    // Wait until the DOM is fully loaded.
    if (document.readyState === 'loading') {
        document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', processTables);
    } else {
        processTables();
    }
})();

[Gabriel33]

Just went back to check the numbers, the start time above seems to be correct, but the end time above seems to just be the the start time + time limit, or the deadline.

So I think you'd have to get the end time somewhere else (such as by downloading the student analysis report).

I haven't tested what start time is used when a student has multiple attempts.