Better handling of overdue quiz attempts
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| Handling of overdue quiz attempts | |
|---|---|
| Project state | Proposal |
| Tracker issue | MDL-3030, MDL-4309 |
| Discussion | Quiz forum |
| Assignee | [User:Tim Hunt |
Moodle 2.3
There is a tricky issue to do with what happens exactly when time runs on on a quiz. On the one hand, we want to let students use every second of time. On the other hand, the end of a quiz is often a time of high server load, and so Moodle is likely to responding slowly. Therefore, we have to prevent students from cheating on the time-limit while still processing their last-minute submission even if the server is heavily loaded.
There is also the problem of what happens if the student just logs out and does not submit at all. At the moment the attempt goes into a sort of limbo where Moodle can't really do anything with it.
What happens at the moment
At the moment, there are only really two states a quiz attempt can be in, and they are distinguished by whether quiz_attempts.timefinish is 0 or contains a time-stamp.
After time expires, (either because the time limit runs out, or the close date passes) the attempt is in a weird state. Well, not really, the attempt is still considered to be in-progress, but the student is no longer allowed to access it, so there is no way to get at the Submit all and finish button to submit it.
The known work-around is, as teacher, to:
- edit quiz settings to allow more time;
- login-as the student and submit the quiz;
- set the time-limit or close data back to what it should be.
This is a real pain.
New state diagram
