Quiz Fails to Record Student Answers - possible?

[ChristinaT2020]

Hi!

I am just wondering if anyone has experienced students' answers in a quiz not being recorded?

Currently have a student who has submitted his final exam and after reviewing his final grade is not happy. When we released the quiz along with students' chosen answers and correct/incorrect answers, he claims that half his answers have not been recorded by Canvas. (many are left blank).

I've never heard of a case where Canvas has not recorded a student's answers in a quiz. This quiz was a mixture of MC and Short answers.

In fact before a student submits, Canvas will show a list of unanswered questions and ask if you are sure you want to submit.

[gnoack · Accepted solution]

I have not heard of this happening in several years, and then it happened when students completed quiz activities on their mobile device. That was over three years ago.

Can you check the quiz log and student access report to verify what the student is saying? The quiz log might show he at least clicked on those questions and the timing of those clicks.  The access report might show him leaving the exam and clicking to other resources in Canvas. 

• How do I view a quiz log for a student?
• How do I view the course access report for an individual user?

[VivienT]

Hi,

I came across the same problem last week. The answers typed in after the last automatic saving and before submitting the quiz were not recorded. After submitting the quiz, '502 Bad Gateway' popped up, which might be the cause of the problem but I'm not sure. I have also found out that last week there were issues across Europe and the US, users getting error messages, see here: https://status.instructure.com/history . I'd completed the test on my computer and later found out that most of my essay had disappeared, but not just mine, other students' too. I'm trying to find out the answer why this could have happened or if it has any connenction with the 502 error code.

Do you have any news on the matter? Anything you could find out?

Thanks.

[ChristinaT2020]

Hi Guys,

The student has confirmed he did the exam on his laptop - but he notes that he had multiple excel windows open and his laptop was running slow on the day - (he assumes because he had so many windows open and not because there was a problem with Canvas). I had a look at the quiz log and interestingly he had in fact attempted every question, multiple times! see screen shots.

 I also note that the log shows that the student supposedly answered multiple questions within the first few seconds of the quiz starting.

 So would this be a technical problem on Canvas's side or something the student has done?

To give you some background, we did not expect this student to fail, his grades indicated that he should have received close to top marks. His Professor was very surprised to see that he left most of his quiz unanswered.

The student is able to show us all his workings out.

is there a way to download the quiz log into a file that his professor can look at?

Cheers,

Christina

[VivienT]

Hi Christina,

I definitely think it's a technical problem. Even if there were more windows open, that should not affect the quiz on Canvas. If it happened to this student, it would be reasonable to find out if it'd happened to other students too who did the same test at the same time. If it wasn't a technical problem on the part of Canvas, it wouldn't happen to so many students. In my case, almost all of us who did the test lost almost all of the essay, which was the last task. Each of the previous multiple choice tasks were on different pages, so when we answered one, Canvas showed the next one on the next page. Theoretically, when you go to the next page, Canvas saves your answers, so it's also a question if your student had several items per page or Canvas only showed him one at a time. If Canvas showed him one at a time and still did not save his answers when going to the next task, even I could have lost some of my multiple choice answers. 😞

Let me know if you have any update. I am also trying to find evidence to prove my teacher that we honestly did the task but the site did not record it.

[monica_a]

I am not sure why this is listed as solved. In any case, one student reported this happening last quarter on an exam, where they selected the correct answer, but then when they save the quiz, the wrong answer was recorded. That caused some issues with the grade last quarter. 

Another student has just reported this happening today. Today, it was on a minor assignment where students can take the quiz multiple times until they get the score they want. So there is no reason to think the student is lying about this. Here is what the student wrote: 

"Hi Monica,

I wanted to bring to your attention an issue I just had with the quiz. I am not sure if it has occurred with anyone else yet. I answered all the questions correctly, but when I hit submit it changed 2 of my answers to wrong answers. 

For Question #1, I chose answer #4 "b & c" but it was changed to answer #3 "c."

For Question #4, I chose answer #3 "a & b" but it changed it to answer #2 "b."

 I do not know how that could happen, but I thought I would let you know."

[monica_a]

Looking at the activity log, I see:

Clicking on #1 and #4 shows the incorrect answers are selected, not the correct answer that the student said they chose. For #2 and #3 the correct answers are selected. The quiz was open book; students were encouraged to look up the course reading materials and then return to the quiz. This attempt took 3 and half minutes. The second attempt took the student less than 1 minute and the correct answers are selected.