[Admin Tools] Allow teachers to temporarily block access to their Canvas site during exams

[ColinMurtaugh]

Some of our faculty wish to block access to their Canvas sites during the administration of exams. Currently our solution is to have them manually adjust the start/end dates of the course and block student access outside of those dates. Once the exam is over, they need to go back in and remove the dates and restrictions.  This approach is error-prone and is further complicated by the fact that our SIS feed may overwrite the manually-set dates unexpectedly. 

A better solution would be for Canvas to let the teaching staff specify temporary blackout periods during which students would not be allowed to access the site (using either a computer or mobile device).  Ideally the person configuring the block would be able to include a custom message to be displayed.  

The ability for teachers to use this feature could be controlled by an account-level setting, similar to the "Don't let teachers modify course availability dates" setting. 

[AnnieRota]

Colleague of @ColinMurtaugh here to add some additional perspective from our institution. We're specifically talking about seated, closed-book, in-person final exams here. We do strongly recommend that exam proctors ensure that students aren't taking devices with them on bathroom breaks and such, and certainly aren't allowed to use devices in the room during the exam. But we've had concerns come up with accidental access (e.g. students so habituated to pulling out their phones that they've apparently accidentally opened a browser while on a break), and so our academic integrity office would like to be able to recommend that instructors reduce the risk of either intentional or inadvertent access to course materials during the 3-hour window of the exam. 

Totally support Colin's additional suggestion that this (like so many other features) could be managed via an account-level setting, since it may not be a good option depending on your institutional setting. 

[abbyrosensweig]

We've also seen cases where students go to Canvas specifically to look at the practice exam problems to guide them during the actual exam. In some cases, Google isn't as valuable as the course site itself so blocking access just to the Canvas course is a valuable idea and could be a good tool for instructors to have.