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- Quizzes – The importance of avoiding short Start and End dates
Quizzes – The importance of avoiding short Start and End dates
** Synchronous Quiz option now available **
Having students start exams uniformly and at the same time is a standard that post secondary institutions set to ensure fairness and reduce the likelihood of plagiarism among students. In practice this works great for live exams taken in an institution but for online or remote exams not so much.
The problem comes in trying ensure the same start time by lowering the amount of time students have to access an exam. While you can do this, this is not a practical solution. This is because students may often run into unforeseen technical issues which could prevent them from logging into the exam at the specific time. What will then happen is that these students will not be able to access the exam because they will miss the window of time between the start and end dates.
What to do if a student cannot access an exam?
If a student contacts you about not being able to access an exam because they missed the start time or because they were booted out then you can give that student special access which will allow them (re)enter that exam.
What we recommend
Exams with a longer run time (such as 120 minutes) can reduce the amount of online technical emergencies. To do this, set the start and end date/time of a quiz to equal the run time. This way students can access the exam through the entire time it is meant to be taken. However, this also means that a student could start on minute 119:59 of the exam and still have the full two hours to complete it.
Additionally students taking an exam may also run into a technical issues that will force them to exit that exam. These students will also not be able to reenter the exam because they are trying to access it after the end date.
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