New Quizzes: Timed Quiz Minutes/Seconds

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(3)

I would like to see the ability to set a quiz time limit of minutes and seconds, or just seconds. This will allow us to be more precise with short 30 second or 90 second quizzes.

8 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open
 
bpetty
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

There can be a significant amount of lag time and play with the following issues:

  • Slow or unreliable internet connections
  • Delays in processing, recording, and submitting responses
  • Improperly configured, or out of sync clocks on devices and/or servers
  • Extra security (and timer skew) with server-side timer checks to prevent students from cheating the timer by changing their device clocks in the middle of taking quizzes
  • Allowing for some potential lag due to intermittent API rate limiting
  • Issues introduced through less tested environments like locked down browser tools or students using unsupported or outdated browsers.

While the timer in the browser on the quiz tries to mitigate as much of that as possible, and (in ideal conditions) delivers the quiz restricted as close to possible to the configured time, timed quizzes (in both Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes) actually have up to an extra minute or two of extra time built in on the back end, just in case any of those problems occur.

Given all this, it's generally not recommended to design timed quizzes for less than 3 minutes (especially when not using a controlled testing lab/center with more reliable and consistent devices and connections), since any shorter makes it exponentially more difficult and risky to prevent those kinds of issues from affecting a student's ability just to take the quiz while being given the full claimed amount of time to legitimately respond to questions.

Kelvin_Dean
Community Contributor

@mollenkampm, please see my blog post Hidden Gems: Who's Got the Fastest Finger? for more details about settings time limits with seconds.

(When we did some testing, time limits can be only set in 3-second (0.05-minute) increments. Furthermore, the maximum time limit on a New Quiz without any accommodations is 168 hours (7 days).)

hlovett
Community Participant

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Canvas automatically rounds up availability timeframes on quizzes which is very confusing to students as it makes them think that they have  more time on a quiz than they do. I would like to see either the exact time or remove the timeframe. 

hlovett
Community Participant

No sure how my idea got linked to this one as they are different ideas. 

 

Fardelsbear
Community Member

Yes, please - more precise times on student displays would be helpful, down to the minute at least. I agree that we don't have the precision to accurately measure seconds.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

@hlovett In the note that accompanied your idea's move, I explained that our product teams are no longer developing new functionality on the code base for Old (Classic) Quizzes, which is scheduled for deprecation. This is the idea focused on New Quizzes that most closely aligns with what you were hoping to see on the Classic Quiz interface.

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.