Quiz Generator: See a Student's Activity in a Quiz

It can sometimes be useful to see what a student has done in a quiz before the student has finished taking the quiz. This is particularly useful when students contact you about technical issues with a quiz.

When you view a student's individual Responses and Grades page in a quiz, you are shown all questions displayed to the student along with all the answers the student provided thus far.

CoursePlus also tracks student activity while taking a quiz. Starting a quiz, leaving the quiz page, selecting individual answers, and submitting answers are all tracked. If a student accesses any resource in CoursePlus (pages, files, lecture videos) while taking a quiz, this is also tracked and included in the report. The reference to question numbers in the activity log matches exactly what the student saw when taking the quiz, even if question randomization is used.

How to See a Student's Activity in a Quiz

1. Click Quiz Generator under Activities and Assignments on the main Faculty Tools page.
2. Click the quiz title on the main Quiz Generator page.
3. Click Responses and Grades in the main navigation bar at the top of the page.
4. Click the student name in the list of all students.
5. All answers submitted by the student thus far are displayed on the page.
6. Click View Activity Log in the Options box in the upper-right corner of the page.

The log lists all activity by the student while taking the quiz, even if that activity spans multiple days.

Note: Activity log data is only retained for six months.

Further Information:

• If a student loses their connection and signs back in to the course website to continue taking the exam, then that counts as viewing another page in the course website. As such, the student will be flagged.
• If the student switches away from the exam and looks at the main course content page, or a lecture, or the Online Library, that counts as viewing another page in the course website. As such, the student will be flagged.
• If the student opens a file that's linked in a quiz question, the file will open in another window and the student will be flagged as leaving the quiz page. As a result, faculty who have files attached to their exam questions should use this option with caution.
• If the student switches away from the exam tab into another web browser tab or another application on their computer, the student will be flagged. CoursePlus cannot look into other web browser tabs or desktop applications to see what a student did while away from the exam page. That is a basic limitation of web browsers.
• If the screen saver gets activated on the student computer while taking the exam, the student will be flagged. CoursePlus has no control over when a browser fires off a “the user has switched away from the page/tab” event. It only listens for that event and record that it occurred. CoursePlus also cannot filter on what caused the event, so it has no knowledge if it was the launch of the screensaver, switching tabs, or visiting another document on the host computer. Again, this is a basic limitation of web browsers.
• On the macOS, it is possible for a student to have a document open in another application, and, while taking the exam, scroll over that external application without ever clicking in that external application. This is a feature of the macOS that cannot be turned off or otherwise intercepted. In this case, the student will not be flagged as leaving the exam page because the "user has switched away from the page/tab” event is never fired.
• The flag is there to highlight a potential problem. Just like any tool which “detects” potential cheating, data needs to be reviewed. The data in this case is the log of student activity while taking the exam (“View activity log” on the individual student responses page).