Late submission even when available until date is set?

[AHDinh]

Hi, 

I have a quiz with a due date set to 3/22/23 at 10 am and the same for the available until date. The quiz time limit is 2 hours. I was under the impression that the student quiz would be automatically submitted at the available until date. However, I saw that several students have late submission after the 10 am deadline. 

Does setting the time limit override the available until date? From what I could find, that shouldn't be the case. I attached screen-cap. The student with the late submission is not the same as the one that was given the extension. 

[chriscas]

Hi @AHDinh,

In my experience as a Canvas admin, this is more of a quirk with how quiz submissions work.  Instead of the system auto-submitting on the back-end at the available until time or the end of the timer, submissions are apparently handled by the web browser.  What this means is that if a student starts a quiz, but then just closes their browser and doesn't submit it, the submission won't be made until the next time they are online (after the timer runs our or the until date).  That's why you can end up seeing a submit date much later than the until date or an attempt that looks like the student got a ton of extra time.  In reality they didn't get extra time or work on anything after they should have, but it's just when they next logged in and the system saw they had an overdue quiz to submit.  I wish Instructure would adjust to show the submit date as either the until date or the time when the timer would have ran out, but it doesn't seem to be something high on their list of priorities to adjust right now.

Hope this helps explain things at least!

-Chris

[mzimmerman]

Hi @AHDinh 

My understanding is that there is a process which runs every few seconds which looks for open attempts where the "Available until..." date has passed.  Because this is a batch process which runs at regular intervals, the automatic submission may actually occur a few seconds after the "Available until..." time has passed, which is why you have an automatic submission that occurred 5 seconds after the quiz stopped being available.

[Ron_Bowman]

@AHDinh -

in addition to what @chriscas and @mzimmerman stated, you could look at the quiz log to verify that no action occurred after the 10am time period (just to make you feel better about what may have happened).

You are correct in that the until date/time is when the quiz or assignment becomes closed and no more work can be done on it

Ron

[AHDinh]

@Ron_Bowman @mzimmerman 

I'm not too familiar with how the log is written so please correct me if I am wrong. Screenshots attached. 

From that I see, the student started the quiz at 8:10:29. So if the quiz is available until 10 am, then the student should have a max of 1 hr and 50 minutes. The log shows that the students was still answering questions 5 minutes after what should be 10 am.  

[Ron_Bowman]

@AHDinh -

You are interpreting that information correctly.  I tried 2 things yesterday with a quiz and a student account.  I tried one where I started the quiz and closed the browser.  Another test I started a quiz and just left the browser open.  In both cases the answers I had selected were marked answer and the quiz auto submitted at the until time.(no extra time).  I did not try something where the student was still active in the quiz, but my guess is that it would have been auto submitted at the end time as well.

With what you posted, something does not seem correct - the last line of submission for several problems is what I would expect for several questions being answered and then the quiz being submitted finally.

The good news (mostly) is that the student did not get more than the allotted 2 hours.  

By the way my test above was with classic quizzes(which is what I use).  What quiz type were you using? Classic or New?

Ron

[AHDinh]

I was using classic. It's strange because for most students, it did look like the quiz auto-submit. There was maybe 4 students (aside from the one that has an extension) that was able to continue working past 10 am. I asked the student to submit the quiz because the final period was over. Otherwise, I think the student could've continued working until the 2 hour timer is over.