The Quiz Generator provides a great deal of flexibility when it comes to the number of times a student can attempt or access a quiz. It's important to differentiate the number of attempts a student gets on a quiz versus the number of times a student can access an individual attempt.
Multiple Attempts
An attempt on a quiz is when a student starts a quiz and submits answers to the quiz. By default, any quiz that counts toward a student's final grade in a class allows for one attempt. However, you can change this if you want.
If you allow students multiple attempts on a quiz, you can also specify if you want the student's highest score across all attempts to be their grade on the quiz, or if their last attempt on the quiz will be their final grade. These options are available in the quiz setup.
Multiple Access
In a single attempt on a quiz, you can specify if students should be allowed to access the quiz page multiple times in that single attempt, or only one time. Multiple access provides good flexibility for students who may run into technical problems while they take a quiz, or who are completing a quiz in bits and pieces over the course of a couple of days. When you allow multiple access, student work is saved as they answer questions, and the questions and display order of questions and answers is the same every time they visit the quiz page.
While only allowing student access to the quiz page one time is better for exam security, it will present additional administrative overhead for the course team. Random internet disconnects and computer shutdowns do happen, and students will reach out to you for assistance in getting back in to a quiz that only allows access one time. That's something you can manage on the quiz special permissions page.
Quiz Time Limits and Multiple Access
If you specify a time limit for completing a quiz, this directly interacts with whether you allow single or multiple access to the quiz.
The Keep the countdown timer running even if students leave the quiz page option in the quiz setup allows you to specify how you want the countdown timer for the quiz to work. If you select Yes, this means that once students start to access the quiz, they will have [n] minutes from that moment to complete the quiz, no matter how many times they access to the quiz page. If they are not on the quiz page when this time runs out, any existing answers will automatically be converted to their final answers for the quiz. If you select No, this means that students will have a total of [n] minutes to spend on the quiz page, and can spend as much time as they want between visits to the quiz page.
Here's an example of how this works:
- If the quiz has a 30 minute time limit, and you select Yes for Keep the countdown timer running even if students leave the quiz page, and a student begins the quiz at 9:00 AM, the student will only have until 9:30 AM to complete the quiz. If the student leaves the quiz page, and the clock gets to 9:31 AM, the student's answers will be saved and converted into their final answers for the quiz by CoursePlus. If the student tries to get back into the quiz at 9:35 AM, they will not be able to do so because their time ran out and their final answers were already saved by CoursePlus.
- If you select No for Keep the countdown timer running even if students leave the quiz page in this scenario, the student would be able to access the quiz page over and over again until they spent a total of 30 minutes on the quiz page or the due date for the quiz passed.