ISSUE: New Quiz and auto submit when student leaves a test before time runs out

[Lsheehy7]

Hello,

I found this issue talked about in 2021 from the community archive, but I didn't see any follow up.

The question is technically how does auto submit work for New Quizzes? The scenario below is what I am looking for insight about. I also wonder if it applies to Classic Quizzes.

1. Student starts a timed quiz (50 minutes allowed) at 22:36:44 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time).
2. According to the quiz log, at "31:51 Stopped viewing the Canvas quiz-taking page...". This is the last entry in the quiz log. 
3. The student was only in the quiz 31:51 minutes; however, the submit time for the quiz is very different from 31 minutes after.
   • Submitted Oct 28 at 1:43pm
     This attempt took 907 minutes.
4. According to this data, the quiz was "auto submitted" long after the 50 minutes expired.

The archived issue stated that if a student leaves a quiz but doesn't submit it and leaves Canvas, then it's possible that the quiz will not auto submit until the student logs in again. According to New Analytics, it's not possible to see the time for the 5 instances of accessing the quiz, but only the last access is viewable. I believe the student realized they didn't submit then submitted.

MODULE 8: QUIZ 8

5

1.0

Oct 28, 2024 1:43PM

Questions:

If it's the case that the student has to actually click submit or stayed logged into Canvas for 20 minutes after they finished (since it was a 50 minute limit), does this mean that if the student doesn't actually submit and leaves Canvas, it will wait until the next time they log in to submit?

Shouldn't the timer work that whether they are in Canvas or not, once they start a quiz, it auto submits when time runs out?

Does New Quizzes handle this scenario any differently?

Final question: shouldn't the final line in any log be the time it was submitted and whether it was automatic or student initiated?

I tested this with the test student, but the results were odd. The start time was 4:00 pm as I expected, but when I re-entered View as Student over two hours later it showed as submitted at 4:30 pm (it was 6:11). I also clicked on the quiz as the student and saw that it was submitted but it recorded that I viewed the page in the log. 

• 03:29 Stopped viewing the Canvas quiz-taking page...
• 03:29 Resumed.
• 02:11:57 Stopped viewing the Canvas quiz-taking page...
• 02:11:57 Resumed.

Any insight will be most welcome.

Thank you,
Laura

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @Lsheehy7,

This has been an issue I've tried unsuccessfully to get Instructure to change for years.  My understanding from multiple tickets is that quiz submission is a function on the client (web browser) side of things instead of being a back-end function. So what is likely happening is that the student closed their browser 31:51 after starting thee quiz, but without submitting it.  They then logged in 875 (907-32) minutes later, and that's then Canvas realizes there is an in-progress quiz that the timer has expired for and submits it.  It's a very weird way to do things.  I tried to suggest making this a back-end function so it could run any time.  I also suggested if that wasn't possible that the logged times should be adjusted somehow so the data isn't so confusing (the student did not get 900+ minutes on a 50 minute quiz, but it could appear that way with the way they log and display things).  These are basically the things you were asking about, but Instructure never wanted to make changes around these issues.

We are actually transitioning to New Quizzes right now, but I haven't tested this scenario out to see if the same issues exist or of they did make some adjustments.  I'd guess because of the way New Quizzes is built that the behavior will be different (whether it will be "better" is probably subjecting).  I'm curious if anyone else has tested this with New Quizzes and would like to share the results.

I hope the info does help you out a bit!

-Chris

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @Lsheehy7,

This has been an issue I've tried unsuccessfully to get Instructure to change for years.  My understanding from multiple tickets is that quiz submission is a function on the client (web browser) side of things instead of being a back-end function. So what is likely happening is that the student closed their browser 31:51 after starting thee quiz, but without submitting it.  They then logged in 875 (907-32) minutes later, and that's then Canvas realizes there is an in-progress quiz that the timer has expired for and submits it.  It's a very weird way to do things.  I tried to suggest making this a back-end function so it could run any time.  I also suggested if that wasn't possible that the logged times should be adjusted somehow so the data isn't so confusing (the student did not get 900+ minutes on a 50 minute quiz, but it could appear that way with the way they log and display things).  These are basically the things you were asking about, but Instructure never wanted to make changes around these issues.

We are actually transitioning to New Quizzes right now, but I haven't tested this scenario out to see if the same issues exist or of they did make some adjustments.  I'd guess because of the way New Quizzes is built that the behavior will be different (whether it will be "better" is probably subjecting).  I'm curious if anyone else has tested this with New Quizzes and would like to share the results.

I hope the info does help you out a bit!

-Chris

[Lsheehy7 · Accepted solution]

Hi @chriscas,

Thanks for the observations. I'm sad to see that this is a remaining issue for so long. By the way it still happens with New Quizzes. I didn't notice until after I posted that the quiz I was testing was a New Quiz. I'm going to try more testing today to confirm, but this is very confusing for everyone, especially instructors.

Once I do additional testing to confirm behavior, I will probably post this as an idea to hopefully get traction.

Thanks!
Laura