Assessments - Make resuming/lockout optional

Our students are living in different time zones all over the world and having them take assessments that fit their needs. Unfortunately, if a student clicks out of an assessment that they've started, or accidentally clicks the back arrow, or clicks something by mistake that takes them out of the assessment, it automatically locks them out as if they're finished. The teacher must unlock or resume their session. This has made the assessments feature unusable when we have students across the world taking assessments (and getting locked out) and have no way to get back in until the teacher wakes up to let them back in. We'd love for this feature to be optional so that assessments can be used more robustly in an asynchronous multi-timezone environment.

  • Nick Marchese
  • May 6 2020
  • Implemented
  • Attach files
  • Janice Bonczek commented
    4 Jan, 2021 02:12pm

    @Angela Addison I don't think the Save For Later feature is helpful for the way the students tend to click out of the test. (Unless changes have been made since the beginning of December)

    In order for the "save for later" button to work, the students MUST press the "save and continue" button on their test and then close out. No matter how many times you tell a student to do that, they will inevitably accidentally press the back button on the browser, or the refresh button, or accidentally open another Blackbaud tab and get a time out. At this point, save for later does not help. They cannot "resume" the test because they never "saved" their work.

    Also, not every teacher wants to use "save for later". In the previous idea I just left another comment on: K12OC-I-1110, the idea was specifically asking about the "back" browser button booting a student out of the test. If a teacher is giving an in-class test and doesn't want to use "save for later" (in case a student tries to abuse it, they can also still get their test messed up by pressing "back", "refresh", or opening another Blackbaud tab accidentally.

    Let us know if there have been any changes made to the "save for later" feature, or if you were just talking about it's expected behavior as-is. Thanks!

  • Nick Marchese commented
    11 May, 2020 06:04pm

    Angela, I agree with what Hannah said. It isn't about when students save and continue later. It's when they click back or get switched off of the exam for some reason and it locks them out.

  • Guest commented
    11 May, 2020 03:23pm

    We do have the Save for Later setting enabled, but if students click the back button or get logged off, the teacher still has to go in to the assignment for that student and allow them to resume.

  • Diane McCorkle commented
    11 May, 2020 02:33pm

    I use formative assessment in homework assignments and Discussions.

    • I want to go in on the due date, review submissions and make comments.

    • I want students to read my comments and re-submit their answers.

    • I want them to be able to do this at least three times per assignment, if necessary.

    • I allow them to do this until the end of the grading term.

    • Ideally, students would only need to correct those answers which had errors, and not copy and paste every single answer from one tab into another like they do now.

    • Ideally, I would be able to see that an assignment has been re-submitted without having to look for the "yellow" ones and click in to see if there are any that have been re-submitted (many of which continue to be yellow even after I have graded everything--but that's another issue).

    • I am tired of re-setting assignments.

    • In the other LMSes I have used (Schoology, Haiku, Moodle), being able to redo these "Quizzes" (for me, homework assignments) was very easy for both me and the students. Admittedly, they still had to re-do the entire thing (which is the lesser of the evils).

  • Angela Addison commented
    11 May, 2020 01:32pm

    Good morning, are your teachers enabling Save for Later in the assessment settings and students are still experiencing the inability to resume? I'm happy to look at cases and see what might be happening if you direct message me with some examples. We did make a couple of improvements in March to improve the experience - auto saving progress on session ends and allowing students to save and continue periodically so that if they're working on for example a long essay and are worried about bandwidth they can save as they go so they don't lose progress.

  • Michael Fugger commented
    10 May, 2020 09:43pm

    Many of our teachers do not use assessments because of this issue. They are not going to be constantly checking to see if anyone has been locked out and going in to the assessment to allow them to continue. Then the next day arrives, and there are students whose internet connection blinked and have been kicked out of the assessment. They should be allowed to continue with an assessment until the due time is passed, or they click the Submit button. Being disconnected is not a reason for them not to be allowed back into the assessment.