New Quizzes: Pause/resume feature

(12)
As online learning continues to boom, online proctoring is becoming a more popular option for distance learning programs. Online proctoring is less costly, more personalized, and more convenient, especially when a student’s nearest proctoring center is 2 hours away. Unfortunately, Canvas does not currently offer the tools or API endpoints necessary to create a truly secure, online-proctored testing experience.
 
Our university's distance learning testing coordinator manages our distance students taking exams remotely, including online proctors. She have experienced that students may get disconnected from their proctors while the exam may still be running for the student. While the student is disconnected from their proctor, it is very easy for them to copy the test questions and answers to a document or to consult outside materials. It is very easy for a student to fake a network disconnect and then reconnect after they have gotten away with cheating. To secure an exam’s contents, She wants to assure that a student is not left unsupervised while the test is still accessible. Even the vendors that offer an advanced proctoring software have no built-in way of pausing or terminating an active test session in Canvas because that endpoint is not included in the APIs. Nor is there a way for the institution to do it through the Canvas interface. You are simply out of luck.
 
Our team would like to have a pause and resume feature that the proctor, instructor, or other system administrator controls. With this feature, any time a proctor loses access to the student’s webcam, screen, or the entire connection altogether, we would like the proctor to be able to pause the student’s attempt, preferably kicking them out of the test page. This will force the student to reconnect with the proctor before resuming.
 
After discussing this idea with our CSM, we understand that this is not a feature that could be developed in the current Quizzes, but we think having this feature or at least the end points necessary to control this through an external application would be worth developing for Quizzes.Next. Please vote that this feature get included on the roadmap!
Tags (1)
14 Comments
e_j_armstrong
Community Member

This would also be useful for student who are entitled to take a 'rest break' during exams

john_magee
Community Novice

This is also essential for kids with IEP's who get extra time but cannot use their extra time that day and need to access the test the next day in a supervised learning skills class

ronmarx
Community Contributor

Great comments and description for this feature idea. This functionality would also serve teachers and their students in a K-12 setting too—can you think of young kids excusing themselves to go to the bathroom during an assessment? In the early grades K-8, this is common; by the time the kid gets to high school teachers are already training them to sit for their college entrance exams where bathroom visits lose time on the exam.

I'm happy to vote this idea up since its development would confer benefit over the entire Canvas user base.

Cheers,

i.Ron

john_crisford
Community Novice

DItto on all the above - in the K-12 setting you have to deal with the needs of the physically and mentally immature, and with that comes the need to pause the test, suspend it, whatever. We also use NWEA (MAP) testing, and within that framework (they also have a lockdown browser which is nice!) they have a "Suspend" function which allows the test to be stopped for up to 30 days or so, and resumed at a later point, taking up where they left off. It seems that function should be an inherent part of Canvas' abilities as well. This is a MAJOR problem for K-12 users of Canvas.

In NWEA's task lineup the "Suspend" function is for stopping the test and resuming at another day or time. There is also a "Pause" function for short breaks like the bathroom etc.

JC

sdavick
Community Contributor

The pause feature would also help if you want to put a time limit on your assessment.

Currently, I believe that if a time limit is put on a quiz, the time continues running even if the window has been closed. 

 

When a student is unable to finish their test and needs to stop at the end of class and resume at a later time, the clock continues to run and time runs out before they can return and finish the test. 

 

I would love to see the option to set a time limit for quizzes that allows for a student to close the window and have the timer stop running until the test is reopened. 

 

It seems as if it would be more useful to have a timer that is only running when the test if actually open and being taken. We have been unable to use the feature because there are too many times we need to discontinue a test and resume it at a later time.

ronmarx
Community Contributor

Ditto on what  @sdavick ‌ wrote, even though I'm not sure whether/how often Canvas polls the user idle state.

annette21
Community Member

Please add a teacher's ability to pause a canvas quiz after the students have started it.  I need to be certain that if students need to finish a test either the next day or later in the day, that they do not have the ability to get unauthorized access/help while at home or from another student during center time.

K_Gremillion
Community Member

It would be fantastic in New Quizzes to have an option for the teacher to pause and resume a student's timed test.  This would be especially helpful for students who run out of time that period, or for students who have a lunch scheduled in the middle of their period.

PatrickErrico
Community Novice

Quizzes and Tests need a pause feature.  Special education students need additional time for assessments. The only way for them to finish the next day is to give them a second attempt.  If you create a pause feature, teachers can easily just change the access code and students can pick up where they left off. 

TiffanyHostetle
Community Novice

Now that we are back in-person at school, it would be fantastic to have the option to add "school hours" to assignments or quizzes.  Or to be able to pause a test to return to the next day and the students don't have the option to work on it at home, with their parent's help on a test.  I know I've used other sites for testing and I could set the hours tests could be used.  This would be VERY helpful to me - especially since I didn't know that I couldn't re-open an assignment and about 10 of my students' tests closed and they weren't finished.  No way to reopen the test without them having to do the whole thing again.

Naomi
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: Open
 
elizabethburr
Community Member

It would be helpful to be able to pause quizzes, especially for students with IEPs.

ddamschen
Community Participant

Please look to add this feature to New Quizzes. We have students with IEPs who have specialized test taking needs. Also a good feature if a student doesn't finish in class and wants to come after school to complete it. This will keep them from taking the test outside the classroom testing environment. 

ProductPanda
Instructure
Instructure
Status changed to: Archived
Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.