I have created quizzes with a time limit of 53 minutes. When some students get to school, they may only have 20 minutes to start the quiz and therefore I have used the option for allowing them to save and continue later. The problem is that when they save and not submit, if they come back the next day, or even the next hour, the time has expired because the timer is not pausing when they close the quiz. Is there a solution to this, am I doing something wrong in the quiz setup? I am using version 1.8+ from Oakland Schools in Michigan with the Pontiac School District.
The timer is not meant to pause when the student logs off. It it did, it would open up all sorts of ways to trick the system (basically log off while you think, and only log on briefly every time you want to enter answers, and then you could get lots of extra time).
And actually, that is the key point. The important thing is thinking time, not sitting at the computer time. If you are letting students do the quiz in multiple sittings, restricting the time they sit at the computer is not so helpful. Why not just give them unlimited time, (but tell them they should only spend about 53 minutes on it). The fact they have a life outside school will probably ensure they don't spend hours of extra time trying to research the last few points.
(And I have to ask, why exactly 53 minutes?)
And actually, that is the key point. The important thing is thinking time, not sitting at the computer time. If you are letting students do the quiz in multiple sittings, restricting the time they sit at the computer is not so helpful. Why not just give them unlimited time, (but tell them they should only spend about 53 minutes on it). The fact they have a life outside school will probably ensure they don't spend hours of extra time trying to research the last few points.
(And I have to ask, why exactly 53 minutes?)
I think it's a major shortcoming of the countdown timer if it doesn't pause on logoff. My situation is slightly different. I have EMS personnel (EMTs, paramedics, nurses) who take quizzes, which are timed to encourage answering questions from their memory / knowledge rather than allowing them time to just look everything up. But they are often called out in the middle of an attempt, and need to quickly log off and go answer the call.
I was under the impression, not sure from where, that the clock paused / stopped on logoff. Is there a workaround that would make it function as such?
I was under the impression, not sure from where, that the clock paused / stopped on logoff. Is there a workaround that would make it function as such?
Sorry if our questions seem foolish, but: Seems to me, too that what you are asking would defeat the entire purpose of the timer.
If you want to control how long they have for the quiz, then it can not be possible to pause the timer since that would effectively mean that students can control how long the quiz lasts, for example by writing the questions down and thinking through the answers, and then logging in again after they have decided what to answer.
Or do you think there should be a predefined amount of time allowed for the pauses, that is, 53 minutes for the exam and a total of 7 minutes for the pauses? Could you not then do this by just setting the time limit to 60 minutes?
If you want to control how long they have for the quiz, then it can not be possible to pause the timer since that would effectively mean that students can control how long the quiz lasts, for example by writing the questions down and thinking through the answers, and then logging in again after they have decided what to answer.
Or do you think there should be a predefined amount of time allowed for the pauses, that is, 53 minutes for the exam and a total of 7 minutes for the pauses? Could you not then do this by just setting the time limit to 60 minutes?
It all depends on what your intent of the timer is. I suppose my situation (with paramedics being called out in the middle of an online quiz) does also lend itself to your cheating scenario. But since the quiz philosophy we're embracing is randomizing the quiz questions, adaptive scoring, and multiple attempts possible, I'm less concerned about the few that might use the opportunity to look up answers and much more concerned for those who have "quizzus-interruptus", a term that I shall now trademark.
I am not quite sure what you are saying. Do you trust your students to not cheat or do you not? 
If you do, you do not need a timer, but a recommendation. (I bet I am still missing something here.)
In the words of President Reagan, which he almost always presented it as a translation of the Russian proverb "doveryai, no proveryai" (Russian: Доверяй, но проверяй) - Trust, but Verify.
I trust them but watch over them. If I see unusual activity in the logs, such as logouts for only a few minutes, I will inquire further.
The 25 question quizzes we give can be easily taken in 15 minutes, so the 30 minutes we give them is more than enough. The timing as we will administer it is primarily for the fire chiefs to be able to schedule their staff to take their quizzes in the event they have limited hardware resources available (ie: only one workstation with unfettered internet access). So they can slot their staff in half hour "appointments". It may prove to be unnecessary, but I'm making every accommodation I can.
I trust them but watch over them. If I see unusual activity in the logs, such as logouts for only a few minutes, I will inquire further.
The 25 question quizzes we give can be easily taken in 15 minutes, so the 30 minutes we give them is more than enough. The timing as we will administer it is primarily for the fire chiefs to be able to schedule their staff to take their quizzes in the event they have limited hardware resources available (ie: only one workstation with unfettered internet access). So they can slot their staff in half hour "appointments". It may prove to be unnecessary, but I'm making every accommodation I can.
With Examview, you can choose to allow the students to pause the timer or not to pause, but if they for example come in late to a class, are called out early for some reason, are being accommodated in a special ed setting, etc., then the ability to manipulate the timer becomes much more important. Working in the environment of an intercity school setting with some very challenging settings just gives us one more option to try to accommodate every possible situation. As well, it would be nice to be able to individually set certain items for some of the students we need to accommodate and we will be required to accommodate special education students next year with mandatory inclusion in the regular ed classroom here in Michigan next school year.
The 53 minutes began with 53 minute periods in the school. When using Examview, which was only available at the lab, I would allow some of the students that were being accommodated in a regular ed class to save their work and come back the next day to finish the exam. Or in the case of this week, there was a fire alarm during the period and I had the students save their work and come back, which when they came back we realized what was actually happening to the exam and timer scenario. I can certainly work around the way the timing works with both the posting end time, unlimited time to take the quiz, etc. I was just curious how the timer worked in comparison to the timer facility with Examview because there doesn't seem to be any documentation on how it actually works from what I have read.
I agree with you in most points and I do several things to ensure fairness when the students take a quiz or test. Let's say for example you want to give a test over two sittings though, our seniors for example that come in for two days of testing rather than everyone else that who are given one 90 minute period for the test in one sitting. One strategy would be to create two different tests that would be taken over the two class periods, another would be to create one test to take in two class periods without a timer and the test ends when the bell rings and hide the test between periods so the students can't logon between class and open of the test to work on, or have a timer on the test that would pause when the students log off so that everyone has the same total amount of time to take the test. One nice thing about a timer is that it stops the students at approximately the same time and does put pressure on the student to know the answers when working on the test. Also, a timed test works well in developing the environment for high school students to prepare them for timed environments like the MME and ACT that they currently taking. Again, flexibility in the function of the timer would be nice, but at least I now know the way the timer actually works so that I can properly set up the tests for each environment I want to create.
As I understand it, the timer javascript will autosubmit the test but the test ends irrespective of whether the timer is stopped because an end time is set as soon as the user takes the quiz.
It would not be too difficult to add a pause button to the count down timer that would pause the clock and delay the auto submit, but you would also have to add certain variable amount to the quiz end time. That sounds more difficult.
It would not be too difficult to add a pause button to the count down timer that would pause the clock and delay the auto submit, but you would also have to add certain variable amount to the quiz end time. That sounds more difficult.
It would be difficult since I don't have any idea of how to do any of that.
I'm just disabling the timer for now.
I'm just disabling the timer for now.
Thanks everyone for the interesting discussion. You have convinced me that there are situations where it would be useful to manipulate the timer in various ways. However, I don't think it is very hight priority.
One difficulty is that, at the moment, Moodle just works by storing the start time for each attempt, and enforces the time limit by relative to that. To cover more sophisticated situations like pausing the timer, you would have to create extra fields in the database to store extra information, and it is not immediately clear to me how much extra timing information you would need to store.
One difficulty is that, at the moment, Moodle just works by storing the start time for each attempt, and enforces the time limit by relative to that. To cover more sophisticated situations like pausing the timer, you would have to create extra fields in the database to store extra information, and it is not immediately clear to me how much extra timing information you would need to store.
Any updates on this topic ?
I'm looking for a way to give extra time to some students (ie. +15min). A way to temporary pause the timer could also work.
Thanks
In Moodle 2.0 you can set different time limits for different groups, or different individual students.