Quiz overrides
User and group overrides allow teachers to change quiz settings for specific students or groups — for example, extending a deadline, allowing extra attempts, or setting a different password for a student who missed the original sitting.
Accessing overrides
From the quiz page, go to More > Overrides.
From here you can add and manage user overrides and group overrides separately.
Adding an override
- Click Add user override or Add group override.
- Select the user or group.
- Enable and set only the fields you wish to override — leave others blank to keep the quiz defaults.
- Click Save.
Fields
- Require password
- Override the password students must enter before starting the quiz.
- Open the quiz
- The date and time from which the student can start the quiz.
- Close the quiz
- The date and time after which no new attempts can be started.
- Time limit
- How long the student has to complete an attempt.
- Attempts allowed
- The maximum number of attempts the student may make.
- Reason for override New feature
in Moodle 5.2!
- An optional note explaining why this override was granted (e.g. disability accommodation, medical extension). Visible to teachers in the override list.
Precedence
If a student belongs to more than one group that has an override, the most lenient value applies for each field: the earliest open date, the latest close date, the longest time limit, the most attempts, and the student may use any of the group passwords.
A user override always takes precedence over any group overrides.
Inactive overrides
For example, consider a one-hour quiz that will be held on April 14, 2021, between 14:00 and 15:00. You want to set a 15-min extension for a student. In the quiz settings under "Timing", you set "Open the quiz" to 14 April 2021 14:00 and "Close the quiz" to 14 April 2021 15:00. In "User overrides", you set an override for the student with "Close the quiz" set to 14 April 2021 15:15. It all works fine.
However, if you have also set "Date" restrictions in "Restrict access" so that the quiz can only be accessed "from" 14 April 2021, 14:00 and "until" 14 April 2021, 15:00, a warning will be displayed when you set the override. This warning tells you that although you have extended the close time to 15:15 for the student, the quiz will in fact be inaccessible after 15:00 due to the Restrict access settings. The only way for the student to access the quiz after 15:00 is to remove or extend the "until" date restriction in the quiz settings.
You should also consider other access restrictions, for example based on group or role assignments, and ensure that the quiz is not hidden.
