Providing extra time in bulk for multiple students for multiple quizzes w/in a course

JACOBSEN_C

(is this where we now create feature requests now with the new community site?)

Hi, we're commonly looking at the workload to giving extra time for multiple students for multiple quizzes w/in a course. Canvas does not currently offer a built-in way to bulk assign extended time for multiple students across multiple quizzes in a course. Extended time is manually added individually through Quiz Moderation. What would be great is something similar to the page to bulk update due dates to assignments, just with quizzes and to add extended time that is normally done individually through quiz moderation.

Thanks!

jeremyfw

Hi @JACOBSEN_C

Canvas stores extra time as a per-quiz, per-student override. That decision was intentional: extended time is treated as an assessment accommodation, not a scheduling rule. Because of that, Canvas never built a bulk UI the way it did for due dates.

Why it’s hard:

• Quiz Moderation writes overrides at the attempt level, not the assignment level
• Each quiz is its own override table
• Canvas can’t safely assume the same students need the same accommodation on every quiz

That’s the architectural wall you’re hitting.

What can be done today (without Canvas API / admin scripting):

1. New Quizzes + Accommodations (best native option)

If you’re using New Quizzes, student accommodations (e.g., +50% time) apply automatically to all New Quizzes in the course.
This is the closest Canvas gets to “set it once, forget it.”

How do I add accommodations for a student in New Quizzes? This guide walks through the process of giving additional time, removing time limits, or using a time-limit multiplier for a student.

This was also answered by @Chris in his reply to a similar question last year.

Limitation:

• Doesn’t work for Classic Quizzes
• Applies uniformly (no quiz-specific variation)

2. Course-level duplicate quizzes (structural workaround)

Some institutions create:

• a standard quiz
• an “extended time” version
  and assign via differentiated assignments.

This works, but:

• doubles maintenance
• risks version drift
• is fragile at scale

3. Feature request (still valid, still missing)

This really is a feature gap, and posts like this are exactly how Canvas tracks demand. The fact that accommodations exist for New Quizzes but not bulk moderation strongly suggests Canvas expects users to migrate rather than extend Classic tooling.

The honest recommendation:

• If extended time is common and systematic → migrate to New Quizzes + student accommodations
• If it’s rare and contextual → manual moderation is still the only UI path
• If it’s institution-wide → API automation is the only scalable answer

This is one of those places where Canvas’s philosophy shows: precision over convenience. Reasonable for accessibility compliance — painful for instructors managing real classrooms at scale.