General help

Instead of having teachers turning InstMsg of for members of a course, perhaps the IM system could check if a user (stud) is member of a course with a quiz that is active.

select xxx from course,user_students,quiz
where (appropriate join) and quiz.timeopen (mumble..)
and quiz.timeclose (mumble ..);

mumble is here a check on date/time to see if the quiz is running just now.

If no such quiz then open instant message window as requested, otherwise give a scary message