How to assign a quiz to a single student?

[taras8055]

Hello,

I am trying to personalize quizzes by assigning them to individual students (groups of students).

I tried

curl 'https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/123/quizzes/456/overrides.json' \
-X POST \
-F 'assignment_override[student_ids][]=789' \
-F 'assignment_override[title]=New Overridden Title' \
-H "Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>"

But I receive a page saying:
There was a problem with your last request.  You may have tried to perform an action after a long period of inactivity.  If that&#39;s the case, try going back, reloading the page you were working on, and resubmitting.  If not, please let us know what you were doing when the error happened.

I also tried replacing token quizzes in the URL with assignments, but nothing changed.

My token is valid and I can perform other actions by API.

What is the correct way to assign a quiz to a single student?

[scottdennis]

Hello Taras,

The easiest way I know to accomplish this is to create a section with just one student (The good news there is that because you are using Free For Teachers Canvas you are allowed to create as many sections as you like).  Then create a quiz via the UI and assign that quiz to only that student's section.  Or you could opt for less complexity by assigning more than one student to the sections you are using to limit access to the quiz.

Hope that helps!

[taras8055]

Hi Dennis,

I tried it with a section, but with the same result - nothing changed.

curl 'https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/123/assignment/456/overrides.json' \
-X POST \
-F 'assignment_override[course_section_id]=789' \
-F 'assignment_override[title]="New Overriden Title"' \
-H "Authorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>"

And again - the same error message. Apparently, I am doing something wrong. Or the overrides API does not work.
Please advise.

[scottdennis]

Hi Taras,

Sorry, like I said, I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to API calls.  I know you can do this manually (which isn't what you are asking, but...).

[taras8055]

Might it be possible to get in touch with someone who knows?

[Stef_retired]

Hi,  @taras8055 , you can pursue the inquiry further with the experts at Home · instructure/canvas-lms Wiki · GitHub 

[taras8055]

Thank you, Scott.
Never thought about using sections, will try it now. I thought there might be a direct way to assign a quiz/assignment to a student though.
Just to make sure I got you right: you write that I need to create a quiz via the UI, but I am trying to do everything by API. Hope it is possible to do everything by API, I am right?

[scottdennis]

Hi Taras,

You are very welcome.

I'm actually not sure if there are limitations on creating courses and sections and doing enrollments in sections via the API.  I've never tried.  Just out of curiosity why are you trying to use only API calls?

[taras8055]

Yes, I am working on a learning personalization technology that creates individual sets of tasks for every student. I can create modules and quizzes, but the problem was that I could not create quizzes per student.
Now I hope I'll be able to do it.