Quiz Timing

In this guide, we will look at the timing options available within eConestoga Quizzes.

Configuring your Quizzes timing settings

While some of your quiz timing settings can be viewed in the Content area, the full details are only visible through the Quiz tool. To access a quiz' full timing settings,

At the top of the screen, click Course Tools -> Quizzes.
Click the arrow beside the name of the quiz and choose Edit.
On the right side, relevant settings can be found in both the Availability Dates & Conditions tab and also the Timing & Display tab.

At a minimum, you will almost always want to configure the following settings for graded eConestoga quizzes:

Start Date and End Date - These two settings define the period where students can start your quiz (known as the Availability period). Depending on the needs of your quiz, the Availability period could be a few minutes (with all students writing during those few minutes) or several days or weeks (with students writing at different times).
Time Limit - The number of minutes each student will have to write the quiz.

Newly-built quizzes are hidden by default. It is safe to remove this option once the Start Date is set (in the future).

With those basic settings established, let's take a moment to understand some of the other optional timing settings within the Quiz tool.

Synchronous vs. Asynchronous

An option labeled Quiz Start with two options: Asynchronous, and Synchronous.

There are two very different ways that you can handle timing for your quiz: Synchronous or Asynchronous.

An Asynchronous quiz. Students start at different times, and everyone receives the full time limit to write.

If a quiz is set to the default Asynchronous setting,

A student may start at any time between the Start Date and End Date.
No matter when a student starts during that range, they will receive the full Time Limit to write their quiz.
If the student started after the Start Date, they can continue to write after the End Date as long as their personal timer still has minutes remaining.

A Synchronous quiz. Students start at different times, but everyone's timer runs out at the same time. Students who start late lose some time.

If a quiz is changed to use the Synchronous setting,

Every student's personal timer begins at exactly the Start Date, and then starts counting down the Time Limit.
A student may start at any time between the Start Date and End Date. They lose any time that has passed since the Start Date, so if they start a 60-minute quiz 8 minutes late, their timer will start with 52 minutes remaining.
All student timers will expire at the same time.
Note that the End Date technically isn't the main constraint that creates the "cut-off time": rather, students are finished when their Time Limit expires. Because an End Date setting can cause issues when providing Special Access accommodations for individual students, we do not recommend that you set an End Date value when using the Synchronous setting.

Important: Synchronous quizzes during class time

If you wish to run a Synchronous quiz that will occur during your normal class time, be very conscious of the Start and End times. If you have class from 2 PM to 4 PM and plan to run a 30-minute Synchronous quiz at exactly 1 PM, the quiz will assume that it should start everyone's timer at that time. If you encounter unexpected delays during the class and need the start the quiz at a later time, you must manually edit the quiz to push back the Start and End dates BEFORE students open the quiz.

If you do need to delay a Synchronous quiz, it is very important that you instruct your students NOT to start the quiz until you've edited its dates, otherwise they will lose the difference between the old and new Start Dates. If a student accidentally started the quiz during the original writing period and has lost some of their timer, you will need to manually reset the student's in-progress attempt to allow them to write the quiz at the new time.

Overall, a Synchronous quiz is best for exams and quizzes that will be written at a very specific time that is known in advance, with a specific cutoff time applied to all students no matter when they started. An Asynchronous quiz is better for quizzes that students can write on their own time whenever is convenient to them, or for quizzes whose start time may not be precisely known ahead of time.

What Happens When The Time Limit Expires?

Another important option you can configure is the one that determines what happens when each student's time limit expires.

By default, quizzes are set to Automatically Submit. When the student's time limit expires, the system saves whatever they've entered and submits their quiz for them.
If you choose Flag as Exceeded Time Limit, the system will not force students to stop answering questions after their time limit expires. They can take as long as they want to finish and submit. The quiz grading screen will notify you if a student submitted past their personal time limit.
The Do Nothing option is the same as Flag as Exceeded above, except that the system won't notify you if a student took more than the time limit. Only choose this option if you truly don't care how long students take to write their quiz.

Different Settings For Different People

Most of the time, you will apply the same timing settings for everyone in your class. However, scenarios may arise where you need to give different timing settings to specific people. Examples include:

A student with an accessibility accommodation may need more time to write each quiz.
A student may need to write on a different day due to an illness.
A student had a technical issue on their first attempt and needs a second attempt to complete the quiz.

In these and any other scenario where you need to give certain students different settings than the rest of the class, this can be configured using the Special Access feature.