Hi again, @hlcark ...
Full disclosure, I am a Canvas administrator and do not teach courses, so my interpretations below may not be 100%, but I'll certainly try to be as accurate as possible:
@hlcark wrote:
Chris,
Thank you for this answer. I can see that if I click "Add", I can add a student and give them a specific availability window..so, then do I also need to give them an extra attempt? Because one of the initial tutorials I read indicated that the extra attempt was the way to allow a student to take a quiz after the availability had closed. Or did I just accidentally allow my student to take the quiz twice?
As I read through Once I publish a quiz, how can I give my students extra attempts?, it says (in the light blue box), "Moderating the quiz lets you allow extra attempts for individual students as well as multiple students at once. This option also allows you to grant extra attempts for students who have not yet taken the quiz." and also, "When extra attempts are given via the Moderate Quiz option, Canvas keeps the highest quiz score." My interpretation of this is that you are giving "extra" (that seems to me to be the key word here) attempts beyond just the initial attempt.
For future reference, the first paragraph of your reply to me is exactly the information that I needed, whereas this guide that you recommend (Once I publish a quiz, how can I give my students ... - Instructure Community - 1242 (canvaslms.com) is totally unhelpful, gives all irrelevant information, and on top of that is also confusing. It was one of the first ones I initially read and I felt totally lost as a result. Just feedback for Canvas on that. I am sure it's great for a very specific situation, but not for the problem I was trying to solve. My quizzes are timed, and I do know how to add extra time. That's not the problem I was trying to solve.
If you are having difficulty with any of the written Guides here in the Community, the Canvas Community team has a way for you to give them feedback so that they can review and revise anything for better clarification. For example, if you look at the Guide I linked above, scroll down to the very bottom of that page. You'll see a blue "Leave Feedback" button. Click on that button, and you'll see a form appear that you can fill out specific to that Guide. This gets submitted directly to the Documentation Team at Instructure (the folks that make Canvas), and they will review your comments to see if anything could be made clearer in that Guide.
As far as the "testing" environment, I think I have been stuck in that for a few weeks now. Every time I go to my roster, there is a "test student", and when I try to view my quizzes, Canvas has me viewing them as if I am a student, the timer starts, etc. I actually want to be viewing my quizzes as a faculty member, I want to be able to see my correct answers that I've entered, etc. I have never been able to figure out how to do that and it's a little frustrating as well. One of our instructional administrators who is well-versed in Canvas tried to help me figure out how to see my own correct answers in the quizzes that I created, and between us we couldn't figure it out (beyond going to the master shell, which is an extra step and a pain). He deleted "test student" for me, but the next time I logged in, "test student" is back, and apparently Canvas still thinks that I am "test student". Ugh.
It sounds like you have some terminology mixed up here...and I'll admit, it is a little confusing. The "Test Student" role you have been using is not the same as the "test" environment that I'm speaking of. They are two completely different things. The "Test Student" role allows you to see what your course would look like as a student. How do I view a course as a test student using Student View? You can use this as much or as little as you want within your Canvas "production" environment. The "test" environment that I mentioned in my initial reply is an environment that is completely separate from your "production" environment. You do not sign in to the "test" environment using the "Test Student" account. Rather, you use a different URL to access the "test" environment...as outlined in the Guides I provided earlier. For example, your school's Canvas URL would look similar to this:
Anything you do in the "test" environment will not be reflected in your "production" environment. That's why it is called "test"...so you can "play around" in it without disturbing anything in your "production" environment. This Guide details how often the "test", "beta" (yet another environment where new features can be previewed before they are released to "production"), and "production" environments are updated.
What is the Canvas release schedule for beta, production, and test environments?
I hope this additional information will be helpful to you.