Recognize individual student exceptions when assigning a quiz/assignment to a course section

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In a Canvas Quiz or Assignment, you can use the "Assign To" field to assign varied availability dates to individual students or to sections, but there are issues with using both together.

For example, a course has section 101 and section 102, and student A belongs to section 101. A quiz is assigned multiple available from & until times as follows:

  • Section 101 - 10am-11am
  • Section 102 - 12pm-1pm
  • Student A (exception) - 10pm-11pm

The expected result is that student A has the quiz available to them from 10pm - 11pm, while the rest of section 101 takes the quiz from 10am-11am. However, the actual result is that student sees the quiz available from 10am (section 101 start time which is the earliest of the two) to 11pm (student A end time which is the latest of the two). Since the student is assigned one time to them but also a different time to the section they belong to, it seems to trigger the scenario of "if multiple due dates apply to a student").

This is not ideal since it does not accurately reflect the time assigned to the individual student, and for added confusion it behaves differently from when a time is assigned to "Everyone" and entering an exception for an individual automatically adjusts the "Everyone" to "Everyone else".

Is it possible to allow Canvas to recognize and exclude a student from the assigned section when they have a custom "assign to" settings entered?

11 Comments
RobDitto
Community Champion

@maki1, agreed -- if this idea conversation becomes Open, I'll vote for it because I'm also interested in improved differentiation of due and availability dates.  Ideally, dates/times set for individual students would always completely override what's been set for the section, and both individual and section should override the dates/times applicable to Everyone Else.

You may be interested in this related feature idea:

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open

Thanks for sharing this idea, @maki1 . We've moved it forward for broader discussion, and wondered if you've already taken the step of running this scenario past Canvas Support. If you have, please provide the case number.

milesl
Community Contributor

We've run into this at Berkeley, and it's caused academic integrity issues since it unlocked access to an assignment earlier than intended.

If you open a support case, you might reference our ticket (07581026) since the support agent already acknowledged that this is not intended behavior: According to Canvas's own API documentation "One of student_ids, group_id, or course_section_id must be present. At most one should be present; if multiple are present only the most specific (student_ids first, then group_id, then course_section_id) is used and any others are ignored."

 

We've raised this issue with our CSM, but it doesn't seem like a priority for Canvas. It would be great if others can share their concern.

maki1
Community Participant

Thank you all, I've also opened a case with Canvas and the case number is 08195698. 

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Archived

Thank you, @maki1 , @RobDitto , and @milesl for contributing to this conversation. We've reviewed the cases you've submitted and have determined that our engineers will address this as a bug:  [OPEN] Edits To Timed Quiz Allow Current Attempts ...

As this idea doesn't need to move forward for community consideration, we've archived it. To stay informed of the status toward resolution, please initiate your own support case if you haven't already and subscribe to the known issue document linked above.

Thanks for your patience.

milesl
Community Contributor

@Stef_retired The issue you linked is different than the one we're discussing here.

The issue you linked deals with editing a quiz while a student is taking it. @maki1 's issue deals with assigning a section-specifics differentiated due date AND an individual-specific differentiated due date.

Is there a known issue page for this specific issue?

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hi, @milesl , as far as I know, the known issue document was created based on the case descriptions, but I'll check.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

@milesl  I've confirmed that the known issue represents what was reported in the first support case we received. For anyone who is experiencing an issue similar to what is described in this idea, please submit an updated support case with additional details so that our engineers can triage and address them.

maki1
Community Participant

Thank you for the update @Stef_retired. I'm with @milesl here that the known issues page titled "Edits To Timed Quiz Allow Current Attempts More Time And Thus Submit After Lock Date" does not reflect the issue posted in this idea. Would you be able to reference support case 08195698, which describes how assigning in advance to a course section as well as an individual is causing those two differentiated due dates to clash when applying to a student?

milesl
Community Contributor

Yeah, if the KI @Stef_retired posted is linked to my support case (07581026), that's a mistake, and I need to follow up with support to make sure they understand the issue.

maki1
Community Participant

After further discussion, the Canvas team was able to update my support case to attach the correct issue for investigation.

Again to summarize, this is when on a Quiz or Assignment, if a student is given an individual assignment override that is different from the date range for a section-specific override (but the student is also in that section), Canvas applies both the section-specific and student-specific overrides when we expect it to use just the student-specific dates and ignore all others.

Thank you everyone for the efforts to continue looking into this and attempting to address the behavior!