I’m an LMS Admin in Higher Ed. As I’ve been diving deeper into our New quizzes testing, I’ve noticed some issues with the Manual Submit function on the Moderate tab that have me seriously concerned. Does anyone else have similar concerns? How are you approaching them?
Why aren’t students immediately notified that their attempt has been submitted and prevented from continuing?
I tested this in real-time by logging in as a teacher in Chrome and as a student in Firefox using a New Quiz with a 10 minute time limit. When I submitted the in progress attempt as the teacher there was no pop-up or message in the student’s browser indicating that their attempt was submitted. I was able to continue answering questions as the student. The only “changes” I noticed were:
- The timer at the top of the student’s screen disappears about 2 minutes after the teacher submits their attempt.
- The Quiz Log continues to note when/how the student answers New Quiz questions after the manual submission occurs. Although this appears to end once the original timer that disappeared from the student’s screen ends.
- The student begins to get a small error message “Sorry, there was a 403 error.” when they answer another question once the original timer runs out. The appearance of this error message coincides with when the Log stops noting activity. It also aligns with the nature of 403 errors (the server received your request but refuses to process it).
- The first actual indication to the student that their attempt was already submitted comes when they try to submit it themself. That’s when they get another small error message “This attempt was already submitted. Showing results from prior submission.”
- When the student views their results they will only see what they answered before the attempt was submitted for them.
Where is this action by the Teacher recorded?
When a Teacher manually submits a Student’s New Quiz attempt there is no record of it on the Quiz Log. A normal quiz log shows when the student began their attempt (Session started), when/how the student answered each question (Answered question 1, etc.), and when the student submitted their attempt (Session submitted). However, when a Teacher manually submits a student’s attempt there is no record of that on the log. Is this recorded somewhere else in the system that I’m not aware of or don’t have access to? If it is being recorded, why isn’t it recorded on the log?
Potential for Abuse
This function creates the potential for an instructor to retaliate against a student with a very low risk of being caught. If the student does not escalate the issue beyond the instructor then the instructor will get away with it. The only way to know that the instructor possibly submitted for the student would be for both 1) the log to be reviewed and 2) for the person reviewing the log to know that when an instructor submits an in progress attempt the log will be missing the “Session Submitted” entry. It may be a small risk, but the consequences are high.
How do we turn this off?
We already do not allow instructors to submit on the student’s behalf for assignments. How do we extend that restriction to New Quizzes?
